The Purpose of Wealth

But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. (Deuteronomy 8:18)

Writing so much about corruption, I feel it is important to look at wealth in the eyes of God. This will help us focus on how we can use wealth, from its acquisition to usage, to live out our purpose in ways that please God.

This is because many, even ministers, behave as if God is only involved in handing out wealth and then pulling His hand out of the resulting mess. No wonder many plead with people to give as the usage is 100% in the hands of the possessor. God must also plead with people to give.

But that is not the Biblical position. It is interesting that cults and even demonic religions do not believe in such deviant theology as they know that everything they have belongs to their god, whether for good or evil. That is the reason terrorism is funded by Muslim tycoons, even if they will hide it under funding this or the other foundation. That is why we talk about devil worshippers who must fund their fellow ‘believers’ to succeed.

The Biblical position is that God owns everything and everybody and does not need anyone’s permission to use what is His. Our battle with possessing wealth is thus a battle of rebellion. It really is our profession that our father is the father of rebellion, the devil.

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: (Colossians 1:16)

God really does not need anything from us as He already owns it and can take it if and when He wants.

I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High: (Psalm 50: 8 – 14)

It is therefore deceptive to teach people that God needs their giving to move His agenda forward.

God is more interested in you than in your money and things. You see He created you in His image and likeness.

God gave man things to manage. And a manager gives account of his management to the owner. This means God is more interested in how you manage things than how much of them you give. And especially that you know that you are accountable to Him for that stewardship.

How would you feel if you employed a manager in your business and found out that he has changed the name and line of business because it looked an excellent idea to him?

Chances are that you would surcharge him and sack him. It won’t be surprising if you took everything he has to recover from his creativity.

Why do you penalize him for his creativity?

It is simply because it is your business. You built it, invested heavily in it and had sleepless nights before it could require a manager.

That is how God feels when we take the things He has entrusted to us and use them without making Him our reference. And it is not much different in the way we acquire them.

That is the context through which this is written

For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:25)

It is hard because wealth has a way of making one independent of God.

Let me ask a question we all need to answer.

How many of us will pray for direction after receiving a salary or even gift? How many will ask God for direction after receiving a gift?

Chances are you will start implementing your desires before caring to know what God requires of that money. Many times one gets into prayer after realizing that the money is not enough for all the desires they had. They then want God to stretch the little remaining to cover the desire deficit.

That is where many preachers hit, when the iron is hot. You must give so that God will stretch the little remaining to cover that deficit. Or you tithe early enough to constrain God to stretch what remains to cover all your desires.

That is not the reason God asks His people to give.

How many times do you think of God’s glory when you are budgeting for the little or much money you have? How many people pray for God’s manifestation when they receive the money or resources due them? How many pray that the contract or salary they get will enable God make maximum use of the resulting resources?

We are very good at praying before the resources come, for them to come. But we forget prayer once they come.

I have written about Solomon and his backsliding many times. Yet it has dawned on me that that is how he drifted.

You see, mammon is a god like no other. He does not seek direct worship or submission to. He is a channel to the worship of other gods. And what he does is to slightly shift one’s focus from God (not the false gods). Then he introduces the false gods very slowly.

He many times uses commerce and resources to make us too busy to continue pursuing the godly things that led us to the acquisition of the positions or things so that we slowly find ourselves swimming to stay afloat in busyness of that answer to our prayer.

Once that happens, it will be easy to then introduce alternative worship in the name of better ways to maximize on that busyness.

Let me illustrate.

You are going through very tight financial straits and can barely feed your family and therefore pray for a job that will make you sufficiently provided. You are also very active in church. In fact that is the pain that drives you to pray almost to the point of bitterness as you wonder why people who are casual about their faith are the ones who are sometimes providing for you.

Then you get one of those dream jobs that pay you way beyond your dreams and offers you everything; from a big house to schooling for your children and cars, one for you and another for your family. You even get a chauffeur.

But the job is also very demanding. You realize you barely have any free time even during the night. Church therefore becomes hard to attend.

There are quite a few job related social functions, sometimes in the evenings and other times during weekends, especially Sundays. In a short time you notice that your family has not been in church for months.

Due to being ferried in cars all the time, you add quite some weight until it becomes a bother. It also dents your company’s image. You therefore must create time to go to gyms almost daily, time you couldn’t get to go to church weekly.

Then your spiritual malnutrition starts showing off. You become just like the people who led you to pray for that job, in fact infinitely worse because you completely forget about God and His standards.

That is what happened to Solomon. And that is what happens to the best of us when we forget God in our success. Mammon just slightly shifts our focus from God as he knows that it is the only thing required to get us to worship other things.

Very few pastors imagined in their wildest dreams being unfaithful to their wives as they knew it would have disqualified their calling. How come they are comfortable with pursuing any girl they see in their success? Their focus shifted from God to what they were doing.

Like the first verse I quoted says, God enables us to make wealth for the purposes of a covenant. Simply said, the wealth He gives is meant to connect better with Him in a covenant relationship. He gives us wealth to enable us to work with Him in His agenda of reconciling the world with its creator.

For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. (Romans 8:19)

Sons of God are those who will use their wealth in accordance with the revelation and covenant that will demonstrate that heaven is reigning in their whole life, especially in their acquisition and usage of wealth.

The Aftermath of Corruption

Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. (Proverbs 20:17)

I have been writing about corruption for some time now. I want to put closure to this topic by looking at some outcomes of the same, this time looking at the beneficiaries of the said corruption.

I am doing this because the victims of corruption are clear to most. But I may have to mention a few beyond the obvious.

When someone diverts drugs from the public hospitals, the ones the drugs were meant for could die or live in ill health because they can’t afford those drugs in your pharmacy.

When someone sells food meant for the poor (that is why it is called relief food), the said poor could very easily die of hunger when you are using the money you made from selling it to buy a piece of land or new car.

When as a traffic officer you overlook an overloaded and underserviced vehicle under your watch and it has an ‘accident’ that kills several, you really are partnering with the criminals causing death by dangerous driving.

When you are harassing children to pay for extra tuition, the parents who took their children to public schools because it was free may pull them out of school due to that pressure, or the children may drop out of school due to that harassment.

Some might decide to take the teachers to the education offices and discover that the illegality of private tuition is a ‘private’ matter as the teachers may be sharing the spoils with those bosses. Then their children are harassed even more. Or the parents know how it feels to be jobless and choose not to report the law-breaking as it could make some other persons suffer as they are suffering.

When you use your office to profit instead of serve, the ones who will be unable to afford you will have to suffer the consequences of that decision you made.

And when a Christian minister has preferences it is the worst of a bad case because he is assumed to be representing God, the epitome and reality of what justice and fairness is.

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: (Romans 13:3)

Corruption is thus an affront to God. That is why He strikes back in His own way.

He does this by overturning how we may want to enjoy those fruits of corruption, making them a grief instead of a joy.

How many have bought those superfast automobiles so that their children literally get to enjoy life on the fast lane end up becoming victims of that fast life? They then have to bury those heirs they had amassed all that wealth for.

How many used dark forces to get into a position discovered too late that they had bartered with their posterity and die in great frustration and regret?

How many families are in those leafy suburbs yet probably have their only child sleeping on the streets, by choice? Yet they would willingly surrender that wealth to redeem that child, not realizing that it was their choices that ‘sold’ that child to the streets. Their hearts bleed every time they see him all dirty, smelly and haggard, begging for food or coins when their wardrobe is full to overflowing with imported clothes and the new car they bought to bribe him into coming back home is rotting in the garage.

How many have everything they may desire yet are unable to enjoy the taste of food as taste is poison to their system? The doctor has recommended they eat nothing they enjoy.

How many wealthy people are literally walking pharmacies? They must be swallowing this or the other almost by the hour that they must employ someone to manage all that drug taking.

How many wealthy people would not dare eat anything from their family members because they are sure that they want to eliminate them so that they share that wealth without caring to know how it was gotten?

God is fair just as He is just. It goes without say that we must reap what we sowed.

You see, corruption is a sin like any other only that it many times affects more people, people you may not know. You bribe to get a job that was meant for a person in desperate straits. You are accountable for some of the sins they might get in to survive. Can you imagine that you pushed a girl into prostitution because you bought her job? And she went that direction because that was the only job that did not require financial capital and she had to do something for her family that sold their land and only cow so that she completes her education.

Or you decided to double the fare because it had rained. What will you do about the mother who is unable to raise that fare? Then she is caused to arrange alternative accommodation that may compromise her morals. All the time her children are crying for their mother. How will you account for that student who may be forced to sleep on the streets as their neighborhood is dangerous beyond certain times, times that the fares would have gone down?

Maybe you thought that your money or position justified your experimenting with sex. You therefore took any attractive girl and woman to bed, irrespective of their moral standing because you could either pay them to keep quiet or use the law to cover up your crimes. You therefore destroyed destinies and marriages at will because your money or position spoke volumes. Do you think God is swayed by the volume of that money?

God’s justice goes beyond the present, though that does not mean He overlooks the present. If you destroyed people’s destinies, God will deal with your dynasty. If you destroyed people’s children, God deals with your posterity. The level of your corruption will be the extent of the gravel you will be forced to eat. Remember Achan? His whole family was destroyed by his sin. Remember Korah and his cohorts? Their whole line was swallowed when the earth opened up. Remember Daniel’s accusers? Everybody in their line was eaten by the lions.

In my not so few years, I have seen God doing similar things in this dispensation of grace. And it may be worse because many times the guilty may have forgotten the offense and are therefore wondering where their curse came from. Many will go unceasingly to prayer experts and witch hunters to reverse the consequences of their corruption.

Some of the doctrines people preach are meant to soothe people suffering from the consequences of their sins, especially corruption as many times they do not know their victims and so may assume they are guiltless. Some of the generous givers in churches are suffering from feeding on gravel looking for a way to come out of that suffering.

From generational curses to being bewitched to deliverance, you might be surprised to learn that the root cause might be blood crying out or the destitute shivering of cold, even at the generational level.

Or you not remember what happened to Abiathar in 1Kings 2:27? Eli had taken advantage of his position of priest to fatten his posterity until he crossed God’s line. Abiathar was just reaping what his forebears had sown. Even the captivity of Judah and disintegration of Israel was a result of the corruption of their leadership and consequently of the populace.

On the contrariwise (KJV), coming out of that wickedness attracts favor, even a reversal of fortunes.

Rahab the harlot was a doomed person in a doomed city. Yet her intervention on the spies saved her father’s house. That double condemnation was cancelled by her radical faith in the God of Israel.

Remember also the midwives of Egypt? Choosing life above abortion opened God’s favor upon them. Their curse was changed to a blessing.

How does one do that? You may be wondering.

And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. (Luke 19:8)

He knew that giving offerings was not enough to counter the effects of his corruption and so basically gave out almost everything he had. Half of his wealth would cater for the people he (and they) had no way of remembering the injury while the rest compensated those who could trace their injury.

Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity. (Daniel 4:27)

That is the pill the corrupt will have to swallow if they must get a chance to reverse or at least soften the whip heading their way from the heavens.

Being active in church and giving fat offerings have no capacity at all to reverse the judgment due them.

Yet it is wise to avoid corruption at the onset. It will save you so much pain, especially on your posterity.

Too Busy to Obey

And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; (Genesis 28:8)

I want Esau to teach us to avoid being too busy ‘serving’ God to do what pleases Him.

You see, Esau as the firstborn was expected to know the beatings of his father’s heart. Yet we notice that he only was the expert of Isaac’s culinary tastes. I have argued elsewhere that the birthright was a spiritual asset and that Esau lost it long before he sold it to his brother for pottage.

Yet this verse points clearest to his problem.

Imagine a son marries two wives and has no idea that they are a grief to his parents! Yet from the previous chapter he must have been living in the same neighborhood with his parents for him to be tasked with preparing venison for Isaac.

The long and short of what I am saying is that Esau was so preoccupied with trying to satisfy Isaac’s stomach with pottage that he had no capacity to connect with his heart’s desires.

Imagine that it took his father warning his brother against Canaanite women to realize that his wives were a grief to his parents! And he had two of them.

Is Esau’s story alien to our experience or does it come too close to home many times?

How many people look for money and lose the family they took all the time looking for money for? How many ministers get swallowed by the ministering that they have no time to listen to God? How many of us are so absorbed in things that we forget relationships that make life livable? How many die of hunger looking for food to feed generations?

We can be too busy to connect with the purpose for which we are busy. I know you may feel offended if I call it childish. But let me tell you why I say so.

Have you parents ever sent a child to the shop? Do you remember being sent by your parents, especially when there was something else you would rather have been doing?

The child is so eager to run to the shop that he takes the money and listens to your order revving to go, wondering why old people take so long to give simple instructions. They then fly to the shop. Only to realize that they have in their eagerness to obey forgotten what they were sent to buy, or even buy something else. And many times the shop may be not very near.

For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. (Romans 10:2)

Do we see that in our faith and churches?

Why do we start projects that abort before they complete? Why do we start relationships that break yet they were headed to marriage? Why do we commit to support a course yet become weary midway?

We become passionate and believe that our passion will overthrow every obstacle. Many times we believe, or at least behave as if God will be swayed by our zeal. We even treat those not showing our kind of passion as backsliders when they want logical answers for our passion. We even dismiss those seeking to know where our conviction for the same is from as we think that even prayer is subject to our passion.

I have made enemies when I asked church leaders whether they had prayed about a course they were taking their church to. Yet they feared to come back to me when their project flopped. I have been rebuked a few times when I stood for an unpopular position when the whole team thought otherwise because I knew what God had spoken about it but couldn’t persuade anybody because they were following a zeal lacking in spiritual knowledge.

I remember an incident where a church pleaded to own a follow up mission we were planning but sadly decided to change almost everything about it. It became clear to me that I couldn’t have gone under those terms as God’s word to me was clear concerning my involvement in that harvest field.

I therefore respectfully communicated my withdrawal from the team and the reasons for doing so. I also offered to give those who would go any support they would need. And I remember sending the pastors personal e-mail to communicate as they are for the most part only available after long appointment setting.

Interestingly, an older person who was nowhere near that planning came to read for me (Swahili for scolding) for insubordination to the pastors. I chose to be gracious instead of asking him how he came across the information he was using. Ultimately, the whole thing flopped.

They were ready and willing to pump a lot of money in a project they had no capacity for as it would have given them a lot of visibility. Like Esau, they did not want to know what it was that God wanted, thinking that mission is simply that, a mission. And we were foolish enough to entrust our vision with people without first knowing their spiritual capacity, just because they had a lot of money, the only resource we felt we did not have enough of as it would have cost loads of the same. I just wish we had asked them to give us money and entrust us with the vision and training of those they would have wanted to accompany us.

I remember once deciding to go for a hurried completely dry fast because I got a break from a troublous environment for a short time. That is when I discovered the importance of planning instead of operating on impulse and passion as I was not able to go far. I was simply not prepared and so had no capacity to sustain my decision.

Solomon was too busy building that he failed to see his heart slipping from a right relationship to the God he was building for. Peter was busy following Jesus that he was unable to notice himself denying Him. And we must not forget that Ahimaaz was so intent on taking the message to David that he forgot to ask what the message was. And of course Saul was too busy being a good general that he forgot God who had issued the orders.

We could in looking for Jesus fail to notice Him when He makes an appearance. Like we see in Matthew 25, Jesus is not talking about the heathen but people who knew Him wondering why they did not recognize Him when they ministered or failed to minister to Him. It will not be surprising that some of those being sent to hell will be leaders of huge and mammoth church systems that for the running of the structure missed the visitation.

It is just recently that I realized that Jesus was not talking about general hospitality in that passage (Matthew 25).

He had been talking about persecution, about the whole world going against His followers. That is the context at which people will be hungry and thirsty, sick and in prison, for following Christ.

They will be those who for their faith are hungry and thirsty because they have been chased from home or have had everything they owned confiscated. They have lost jobs because they have refused to follow worldly standards or refused to grab like their peers. Others have been called outside ‘normal’ and so have no support whatsoever. They are sick because they have been ‘buffeted’ for their faith, or for living according to its dictates. And they are in prison because believing in Christ is a crime to the rulers of this world, even of the church.

God’s people must connect to these people. Otherwise they have lost connection to the Head, even Christ.

That Moslem who for believing in Christ is on the run because they must kill him and his whole family needs a safe haven for his faith to grow.  That tycoon’s child who got saved and has to hide lest he be taken captive and retaught to serve mammon also needs a safe haven. And that cultist or witch who discovered how perverted the systems are and decided to follow Christ must be protected from the demonic barbs and curses they are unceasingly throwing in his direction, and of course the real attempts on his life because they fear his exposing their secrets.

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:40)

Being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit will help us not to miss the visitation, and the reward.

But we can be too busy for that. Those visitations will be too discreet for the busy and active believer to connect God with them.

We must like Elijah develop a lifestyle of being desperate for accurate directions from God to run away from the drama that life is constantly releasing. We must be discriminating enough to realize that even acts of God (wind, earthquake, fire) are not necessarily His voice for us. We must tune our spiritual ears to hear that still small voice (or the voice of a gentle stillness) amidst all that noise.

Only then will we be able to walk in the Spirit as the Bible instructs us.

We must watch against being too busy serving God to not only know what He requires of us, but especially to know who He is. Else we could very easily become too familiar with Him, treating Him like one of our buddies. Then of course He will show up as who He is, or allow us to take that familiarity to hell.

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)

Unlike what most teachers say, the Spirit does not use thunder to guide. He is not dramatic in His guidance.

Yet His voice is clear to the one who seeks to walk in obedience. To the one who, like Paul, daily asks Him, ‘What will Thou have me do?’

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: (John 10:27)

Only goats are too preoccupied with their issues to know what the shepherd is saying. No wonder He says that their father is the devil however much they think and confess that God is their father.

The Kawaida Corruption

And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand. (Malachi 2:13)

In my last post, I said that our fiber is stained with corruption. I suspect there are some who are disputing that because they are not connected to the billions that are stolen. They think corruption applies when vast amounts of cash and prime tracts of land are mentioned. They assume the ones down there have no opportunity to be corrupt.

Kawaida is Swahili for commonplace and usual. That is where I want us to look today.

What do you say about those rich men who queue with the poor for relief food or freebies? Why would someone with more than enough spend a whole day yet he will probably feed what he gets to his animals?

What do you say about those who cut queues, however short they are? Or those who will attempt to empty your pockets if you offer to buy them a meal? What about those who go for missions and Christian meetings to be able to eat what they can’t afford?

Elders are entrusted with justice in small issues. Yet do you realize that many times the offender makes them so comfortable that instead of serving justice to the offended they dismiss their cries as petty?

Someone is dismissed from a place he had served so diligently and faithfully. As in most such cases, such jobs will not allow one to join a union. It therefore left him in the cold. He goes to the labor office for assistance, even if only for a severance package, sometimes pay for the days he worked before his sack. Now, instead of settling the dues of his faithful worker, the boss goes to the official involved and feeds him properly so that the case is dismissed. Incidentally the money he uses to oil the official’s palms is more than what would have sorted this guy.

Someone’s chickens get eaten by a neighbor’s dog. He decides to go to the chief instead of pursuing the long and tedious journey of the courts. The offender sees the chief privately and offers a reward. The chief collects all the evidence, but not to as to build a good case for the offended.  He dismisses the case after collecting all the evidence, thus locking out all avenues for redress.

A couple has a disagreement that threatens to break their marriage. Since one party is close to the pastor, the other thinks that the pastor is the best arbiter and calls him to diffuse the tension. But the party closer to the pastor, who could be the offender, goes to the pastor privately and the pastor does not even respond to the distress call, or even acknowledge receipt of the same. Or he takes the side of his friend against the one who sought his intervention.

Two parties go to court and each hires an advocate. The advocates sit together to look for a way to fleece these two fools even as they play with the law. An injunction here, a delay there, lack of witnesses somewhere else becomes the order of the day. Yet they are being paid for appearing in court and building their case. A case that could have taken three days ends up taking years. And when it is determined they advise the parties to appeal so that the gravy train continues.

A person suffers an injury that requires compensation and decides to go to the police. But instead of the police fighting for the right of the injured they haggle for their cut. The police end up being compensated even as the injured goes home emptier than he was before he sought justice. Not only is he not compensated, but the one who has injured him becomes abusive, challenging him to go wherever he wants as he has bought the system.

These are things I have come across in the process of ministry. The victims came to me to get a responsive ear, many times just to vent.

Let me give an analogy by something I saw happen.

We all know that the matatu industry in Kenya is for the most part anarchic. But they are not so because there are no laws or law keepers.

One day I was in a matatu and it was stopped by a city council traffic enforcer. The conductor gave him fifty shillings (about half a dollar) and said something I have never forgotten.

‘I have now bought Nairobi’.

He can stop anywhere; even block traffic to look for passengers as the person responsible for holding him accountable to maintain the law is in his pocket.

Why do police kill known robbers instead of arresting them? That has raised numerous debates.

What does an officer do when the person he arrests time and again is set free by his superiors and he is even reprimanded for it? Then the same guy starts threatening or ridiculing him because he has connections with the senior officers. And the public he is paid to serve and the law he swore to enforce is suffering.

What does one do when his witness statements are given to the criminal he was hoping to help send to prison? Then the said criminal starts harassing him and asking him what he had hoped to achieve by his witness.

Do you realize the reason people take the law into their hands? Many times they realize that the law is meaningless as it serves the interests of a few.

I remember when lynching started in Nairobi. Robbers had become blatant. So much that they would even tell you in advance when they will be breaking into your house and there was nothing you could do.

Imagine a policeman who loves his job in such a situation. You know what you are supposed to do yet your hands are tied as the robbers have arranged the robbery with the knowledge of your superiors!

Think about this parent who neglects their family to seek thrills outside their marriage bed, neglecting the children in the process. I wonder whether you realize that one driver of that is the perennial lifestyle lived outside God’s boundaries. Many times it is the direct product of corruption.

You see money that is not the product of your sweat MUST be wasted on worthless pursuits. That is the reason you find some of those people buying more cars than they can drive. They will buy more clothes they will never wear, even once. They will be in more relationships and more abominations than their systems can handle.

That is the reason as a victim of the freedom struggle, according to the reworked narrative, those who amassed land during the adjudication are losing that land so fast, many times as soon as fathers hand over it to their children who sell it in so much hurry you wonder what is eating them. All that advantage works out as a disadvantage when God steps in to reconstitute His kind of justice.

That is the reason I am saying that in the narrative we create Christ must be central. Otherwise we could be pursuing justice and fighting corruption using tools that are contrary to His.

Let me give an example. Someone in the course of working used a short cut to get something he wanted. He is proven to be corrupt and it is decided that he forfeits everything to the public as he was the only one of the network who was caught. He therefore loses even what was from his sweat. Nobody cares whether he is sorry or not as there is no measure for the same. His family therefore loses everything and must start worse than afresh.

His children will be unable to afford the basics and could suffer extreme deprivation. In our passion to fight corruption we have crucified one person for the sins of the whole team. The rest go scot free to enjoy the loot while the weakest link suffers their consequences.

What then happens to his children? As you know no one will want to be connected to the convicted ‘sinner’. They could even die of hunger as their father serves his prison term. Yet his was not even worthy of being called the tip of the iceberg. But the worst part is that he may even have been innocent, with the real criminals having fixed him to cover their tracks. For example do you realize that during the aborted coup in 1982 some of the people who suffered the most were those who had no idea something was amiss with their lack of information being treated as cover up? Their lives were messed up because they could not explain why they did not know about it or give facts they did not have.

Only Christ has all the evidence to deal with corruption conclusively. And His solution is giving us new hearts not stained with our past sins.

Remember John 8? Everybody wanted to lynch the adulterer, probably a prostitute who may have been set up to rid society of her kind.

Many people ask where her partner was. They even wonder why Jesus didn’t ask that question.

That question was irrelevant. Jesus was about restoration. He knew whether it was a set up or a ‘genuine’ case. But that was not important to Him.

He was about restoring the sinner as well as society. And the restoration begins when we look inward. We must see our sinfulness to be able to deal with the sins of the nation. It would be impossible to judge sin rightly unless you realize that it also is part of your make up.

As with David, his self-righteous judgment of a criminal is what God used to help him look inward to his sin, a sin he had effectively covered up.

Corruption is sin, only that most times the victims are not immediate acquaintances. Many times the devastation caused by corruption is immense. How many die because someone diverted drugs from the public hospital and they are unable to buy them from his clinic? How many children give up school because of the pressure teachers are applying on them to pay for the extra tuition when their parents can’t afford it and it is compulsory, though illegal in our laws? How many can’t get a job however qualified because they do not have a tall relative or money to oil the system? How many lose their livelihoods because they have decided they will not bribe to carry out a legally registered and operated business and for that are harassed to no end? How many accident victims die because the first respondents are after looting instead of helping him? How many die because the person entrusted with taking relief food, seed or fertilizer to them made himself a retail outlet?

That is why we must be able to clearly see the corruptive tendencies in us to be able to deal with the mega aspects of graft we are seeing in those higher offices. We will very easily throw those stones until we see that we are really not much different from the culprits. Chances are that we would be just like them if the same opportunities were availed to us.

Then, and only then, will we be in a position to deal with the issue, by handing it over to Jesus to deal with. Like David said, all sin, corruption included, is ultimately against God. And God is the only one who can address it conclusively by transforming hearts. And His forgiving is so total that He chooses to forget what He has forgiven.