Official Secrets

I recently wrote about the people Jesus promoted from servants to friends (the Hagar series) with the main point being that any breach of such trust results not in a demotion to our former positions but to complete banishment.

Let us deal it in a slightly different way by looking at the public service.

When I joined the government many years ago, there was a form we had to sign that was taken from the Official Secrets Act.

In it, you agreed that you will not share anything you came across by virtue of your position.

This meant that doing so would be a criminal offence punishable by a fine or prison sentence.

Why am I bringing it here?

Nowadays it happens so often I wonder whether anyone signs such a document on joining the government.

I remember listening about a senior government official who resigned because he disagreed with his boss on an action the boss took using the information he got by virtue of his position.

However, the saddest part of that drama is that he wrote a letter, available to the media, explaining his reasons. And people were lauding him!

You wonder how we can be so foolish as to praise a snitch!

Reminds me of someone some time back in our country who secretly recorded his colleagues and made the recordings public to score a political goal as an anti corruption champion.

Again, he was praised.

But that prise was very short term as he disappeared completely.

Yet it was said that he made his name working for international NGOs before returning home to make a difference.

Who do you think will be comfortable with such a person in their boardroom?

I have heard pastors complain that nobody goes to them for prayer or counselling. Only to discover that it is because they cannot keep their mouth shut.

You share something with them and hear it in the sermon with only your name omitted.

Will you ever go to him again? Will anyone who knows the story you shared with him trust him with theirs? Will you ever recommend him to anyone else, however desperate their situation is?

Trust is like a rare clay or ceramic jar.

It is priceless but also fragile.

You break it and there is no way of reconstructing it.

Let us get back to official secrets.

You get a senior position because you are trusted.

Incidentally, that comes even before competency.

That trust means that your boss will be vulnerable to you because he knows you will always have his back like they say.

It is therefore immoral to use that vulnerability to expose him.

Leviticus 18 talks about sex and uses the term nakedness.

Sleeping with someone’s wife is called exposing his nakedness.

And that is the vulnerability I am talking about. Her husband has exposed his vulnerability (and nakedness) to her and you are exposing it.

No wonder the sentence for that was stoning.

It means that if I occupy an office, everything I encounter in that office literally belongs to that office whether I have taken any oath or not.

Incidentally, the law also says that anything I receive by the virtue of being in that office belongs to that office, even personal stuff.

A former prime minister in Asia is dealing with a case where he sold a watch they were given when on a state visit to another country.

Yet most will simply transfer the ownership of everything they receive to themselves.

That is why we have people who have insane amounts of land and shares in almost all profitable companies operating in their countries as well as having properties and money in safe havens abroad.

Yet they do not call that open pilferage as theft of national wealth. They do not think (or choose not to think) of that as grand corruption.

They will call that traffic cop receiving half a dollar bribe as corrupt when they are transferring wealth their office (through them) receives to their person.

The cop is bending the rules for a pittance when his boss is stealing truckloads from the nation he is pretending to lead.

The education official in charge of scholarships rigs the system to ensure his unqualified child gets that scholarship at the expense of the validly qualified needy student when his salary is adequate to educate his child.

The health official must travel outside the country for a flu shot when the ministry he leads is unable to provide care for the masses, the same ministry that is paying for that overseas treatment, yet his salary could afford that treatment.

And I must not leave the pastor of course.

A pastor who makes his living from a church in the slums lives on the suburbs on the land that slum church bought him and travels with the guzzler they bought him when they can hardly afford to put food on their tables.

His children will be taken to premier education institutions and even universities abroad when his parishioners struggle to take theirs through public schools, yet it is these same people who pay for that education.

And pastors also travel abroad and receive gifts that they quietly transfer to their persons. Yet he was sent by the church.

Ruffling feathers is fine when you are the one doing it but very bad when you are on the receiving end.

And it is comedic when you are pointing out the sins of others when you are guilty of the same or even worse sins. Remember Romans 2?

That is why I have put the minister of the Gospel on that list, because I am a minister too.

You will see such a preacher pouring hell and brimstone on thieving politicians and other public officers from that ornate pulpit he forced his congregation to buy when they could not afford because he felt the previous was beneath his status.

He will then get from that pulpit to drive that guzzler he forced his congregation to buy for him, a congregation less than 5% can afford a bike, let alone a barely moving jalopy.

Then he will drive to his mansion on the leafy suburbs that the same congregation was forced to buy, a congregation where less than 1% have their own homes, a majority barely able to afford decent abodes.

No wonder the church has lost her cutting edge.

Most of the leaders at the top carry the same rot the politicians and public officers carry.

And it is also no wonder that the same politicians are completely at home in our churches. The people at the top are kindred spirits.

They probably gave the pastor a gift and saw him swallowing it alone instead of taking it or even sharing it with his congregation.

Some are thinking that I am hitting so low.

But as a minister I am fully aware that I must intentionally be very careful how I handle any gifts I receive. I must pray and listen very keenly to know what to do with any gift I receive.

This is because there are two offices in one; minister the person and minister the office.

I must establish with God which one received the gift in question.

Incidentally it is the same way in a church where the leadership must (though I doubt any does) establish where the giving was directed to before spending it.

This is because most givers trust the spirituality of the managers of that gift to know the focus of their giving.

Imagine the pain the giver will feel and the prayer he will pray when his focus was on missions and you diverted it to maintenance of structures!

Imagine the pain the giver will feel when he gave his offering to minister to the needy in the church and you divert the same to beautifying the steeple or buy a new pulpit!

Imagine the pain the giver will feel if he gave toward neighbourhood evangelism and you used it to buy new instruments when the old ones were almost new!

And I am not saying that those other needs are unimportant. I am not saying that the pastor should not eat of live well.

Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. (Deuteronomy 25:4)

I am simply saying that the ox should be eating as it is treading the corn. It is not released to feed on the corn

It is a travesty when the ox is released to the corn when it is not treading it.

It is a sin when the incidentals (structures, emoluments) take the lion’s share of the offerings.

This is because very few think or pray about them when considering giving to the church

Elevating them to primary focus is therefore a clean breach of trust.

It is akin to releasing the ox to the corn before it starts treading it.

I hope I am making a point here.

I am dealing with things that bring judgment to us because we are like that ox that thinks the corn belongs to it and therefore gets to the store to eat it because it does not see any difference between eating as it treads it and eating it from the store.

In any case, it is easier and fills faster eating from the store.

Sawasawa?