CONSTRUCTS OF REALITY.

As culture evolves, there seems to be an existential struggle, an inward battle to distinguish between the sacred and the secular. The only thing constant about culture is that, it evolves; fashioned into the image of the current progressive thinking of man. However, one can notice the heavy lines that are blurred between the sacred and the secular. Some believe that the society must be fully secularized- removing any strain of religion and superstition. Others make a case for maintaining objective values even in this progressive era. I invite you into a conversation, one that was once internalized. At the behest of many events, I deem it the right time to open up my cogitations.

I remember the key soap concert party hosted by Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. I am pretty sure that this is new to some millennials. But I remember that the attendants were dressed, fully covered with Ghanian textiles, almost all the females were in Kaba and slit and the auditorium echoed with local highlife music. Everyone from that era remembers the likes of Santo and Judas these men made men and women scream with laughter. No matter the intensity of the comedy present in the stories and skits they played on the stage, they always managed to tell the essence and the lesson of the story. ”Fa aba wei y3 suasem”, was how they ended their skits, drawing people’s attention to the import of the lesson than the eccentricities they witnessed. It is interesting, the Twi languages call these vital lessons aba. Aba in Twi simply means seed these men were sowing seeds into the hearts and the minds of people using storytelling as the means. They expected that through their arts, people would see the essence of maintaining morality. They demonstrated the extent and the end of human decadence and the result of immoral living and the greatness of upholding virtue. The truth is that the virtues in these stories have been lost. The stories we hear of today do not contain or do not stress the good seed they plant in the heart and the minds of people. One could expect that from a money-enriching system, one would expect that the import would be to sell to people what they want to hear and see instead of planting in them the seed required to shape people and to make them fruitful in the community they are in.

The seed is the essence of the story and the essence of the teachings. Seeds are embryos in seed coatings, the genetic material that can replicate another tree in this case. The seed is the strategy from reproduction prior to, existing reality. It is one of the reasons why Jesus described himself as the sower and the word of God as the seed. For the seed is the force of reproduction and if the seed was to fall on good soil, the harvest was assured. In this time and season, can we not see that the lines that separate the sacred from the secular are being blurred, one of the contributing factors is that much of the seeds that are being preached are bad seeds or fall on bad ground. My Ghanian ancestors were deep philosophers who shrouded their ideas into stories and proverbs. Today, we are so much in a hurry to be like the west that we have forgotten to tell our own stories which in my opinion has the seed required for anchoring our society into the values of the sacred.

The sower and seed are not divorced concepts but are essentially one. The sower draws from a bag of seeds and spreads the seed of words in the hope that the seed will reach fertile grounds for germination. The bag symbolizing his heart; For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. The issue is this, many sowers carry bad seeds that cannot yield fruits of righteousness. The impact when they speak is zero. When a man speaks, it is the force of his words that are picked and attended to not just the words, the words are merely the consequence of being vocal with his thoughts. A mango tree and a mango fruit seller are two different channels of acquiring mango. With the mango tree, its fruit is an organic product of living as a tree, drawing its nutrients from the earth that anchors it; the other, which is the seller, is but a businessman. He could care less about who eats the mangoes. He aims to sell many mangoes to gain profit. The mango tree attracts people’s animals by simply bearing fruits which is its lifestyle- and organic living, the seller has to shout to call people’s attention to the fruits. He must of course employ all manner of tactics even to the point of exaggerating the product to titillate the imaginations of the buyers. A good sower is as unto a tree that grows its fruits organically from lifestyle and so when he spreads his seeds they are easily replicated because he serves as the template which is the icon of the seed he preaches. However, a seller does not know the means of producing fruits, he only gains the fruit or the mango from a tree closest to him or buys it from another seller. He is into spreading the seed for money and fame. He will not necessarily like mango fruit but will sell it anyways to make profits. if a seed does not bear fruit, we must not merely check the heart of the hearers but also the heart of the one who spreads the seeds. Perhaps the reason we are not seeing certain uprightness is that the sowers have issues in their hearts. Real change starts from within.

The hand that writes on the wall appears only when the sacred is defiled. King Belteshazzar who succeeded the throne of Babylon took the sacred articles of the temple and then used it for a feast in his palace. A clear violation of the sacred, perverting the sacred articles for hedonism and sensuality. Society today has done that with institutions that have the image of God on them, which is sacred like marriage and even human beings. All in the bid to celebrate our sensuality. But then in the process of feasting, the hand of scribes begins to write on the wall, bringing the signs of our deviation from truth, weighing the society in its perverseness. The handwriting on the wall comes to inform us of the judgment we have prepared for ourselves. In the bible’s narrative, king Belteshazzar was murdered the same night the handwriting came, which tells you that instead of indulging their sensuality, they could have been able to defend their land. That is what indulgence does. It is one to be so much self-absorbed that they forget to tighten their security. The hand always comes to inform us that we reap what we sow, if we sow in the flesh, we will reap corruption.

The hand only appears at the peak of indulgence, when a man decides to violate the sacred for pleasure. This is why prophets are needed. And when I say prophets, I do not mean strange bearded people in tarted clothes shouting “thus says the Lord”. But then I want us to observe who a prophet is and what they do. Prophets from the bible are holy men who were servants of God, they declared the counsel of God to men. They lived a different lifestyle as God had chosen and determined for them and the objective when it came to God and his purposes I use the term prophet to represent men and women who are living their life for a cause greater than themselves because they were separated and called to live for that cause and because of that cause they live a certain lifestyle, they live and exemplify their ruler within which is the voice of God. but most importantly, they call people to repent which is a nice saying to change your mind, they call people into having paradigm shifts. Prophets are those who call people from overindulgence of the ego and the self to serve a higher purpose they are those who call out our immorality reminding people that the objective standards and duties do not evolve with time but are grounded in something greater than man, like a teacher who teaches a student or a parent who corrects and trains their child to be effective. These are prophets as well. I regard artists, musicians and writers to be like the prophets. An ideology can sell faster with a song or a book than loud preaching and shouts. I love poets and musicians, they have a way of painting so many pictures on the canvas of our imaginations, condensing long stories into words of few but still weighty to deliver the seed into people. Scientists and engineers deal with physics and natural phenomena but the arts deal with metaphysics and spirituality. That is because artists view themselves to be conduits of higher wisdom. Today many of the artists who are showings are merely peddlers of nonsense. I was in a conversation with a friend of mine. I remember telling him that I was not surprised by the extent of moral decadence because, Imagine someone’s definition of love is solely rooted in the definition of a popular artist who projects love to mean sex.

Social media or as I like to call it selfish media has become an instrument of promoting the self. It has become the new sensation of the modern bagnio if you ask me. The idea of social media is to bond with our fellow humans, building a strong connection and oneness. The idea of a community is derived from the French word “community” which means everyone, or common people. What that means is that when a city has truly achieved a community, societal barriers, caste system, and social class is dissolved. The only thing is the oneness that has been achieved. I think we have not achieved the consciousness of a community yet, because social media is only used to project the self. People sell and promote themselves, making them the center of attention. To maximize social media to its maximal potential we must endeavor to truly become one as it is, the means to build a sense of community. It may be difficult, but as long we are willing to cast away selfish intentions and acts, we can get there.

Meaning is not a subjective personal construct nor is it a social construct. It is God who fashions the meaning and purpose into us and we can intuitively know it. There are those who spread the idea that the world is without meaning and life inherently is without meaning other than the meaning we ascribe to it. C.S Lewis made a point in mere Christianity that “if the whole universe has no meaning, we should have never found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there was no light in the universe and therefore creatures with no eyes, we should never know dark, dark would be without a meaning”. What is relevant here is that our features and inclinations we possess demonstrate that we were made for a purpose without those features we would not even realize our significance to even assign ourselves certain responsibilities. In other words, it is because we know that we are in the image of God, we are aware that God made us for a purpose. A tree’s purpose is to produce fruit, that is its purpose. Giving shade is secondary, bearing fruit is its main purpose. Sometimes we get caught in majoring in the secondary without attending to the crux of our being. Meaning is not constructed; it is only realized. However, it is the moral seeds present in Christ that will serve as a guide to find meaning. without meaning, life is like a barren land. In the bid to make meaning of a subjective construct many have tried and entered into very gory regions. Because a creature cannot obtain its purpose outside of the will of the creator. That is because God the creator bequeaths value and essential worth on the creators he created.

The rate of suicide is an indication. Many suicide notes leave unpleasant reminders of how the people found life to be unlivable and meaningless. Life is best lived when anchored to a transcendent who gives us the moral law as seeds to guide us in the path we walk. As G.K Chesterton said “before you take down a fence, find out why it was put there”. The deeper questions of life are the “whys’ ‘ and not just the ‘what’s . when we understand the why(meaning) we can minimize abuse. If you are thinking of ending your life; I would advise that you seek help. Talk to someone; You are not alone!

I would like to address an issue. The concept of selling your soul to the devil. What I will not do is to give the impression that people meet with the devil at some obscure place to sign a contract for fame and stardom. Satan is known in the bible lore to be an angel and was the brightest of God’s created angels (not that I affirm the story, as I do not possess that knowledge of the ontology of Satan). He fell as a result of pride and seeks to wage war on anything good. In my opinion, we can draw much wisdom from this. Making a deal with the devil is tantamount to marrying concepts and the systems that produce such concepts. In that manner, the system you marry and embody promotes you in a manner or a way of life that is appealing to an already morally corrupt society. That is how a star is born when a “deal with the devil is made”. The devil is the embodiment of all the systems of the world that is against the ways of love and moral uprightness. This is how people of the world rise; they must embody ideologies and the systems that produce these ideas and promote them. The system promotes them at the end of the day. Much of the arts do not spread good seed in people, nor do they spread seeds that will foster contemplation of moral uprightness. You can easily forget the scripture you read this morning but you remember the song Shatta wale produced word for word because music can repeat a thousand times in your head, a feat shouting can’t do. If we must become a society that is upright and moral then one of the biggest things to do is submit our hearts to the Lord Christ and allow his seed to first deal with our hearts. The arts must be adamant about using the instrumentality of their arts, be it music, skits, stories to spread the seed. When the seed enters the right heart, it will bear fruits of righteousness