Do humans really care about God or its about what he can do for them? Why would people drop a certain faith, what are the reasons, if not based on performance. Ultimately, Man made God in his own image of perfection. Original Africans – Niger Congo ethnolinguistic family – dropped their beliefs for those of the Arabic and Oyinbo colonizers. The lightskinned won so their God must be better.
Even those that still hold onto their Original African culture aka Ifa warm up to Ifa adherents in the Diaspora more than their counterparts in other local tribes. They would shine their searchlights to the most obscure corners in the American Diaspora but frown at the obvious fact that at the foundation of all ethnic groups in South and Middlbelt of Nigeria is the 16 sector Original African Information Retrieval System aka Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa.
In God we trust, only on the dollar bill.
‘Success has many fathers while failure is an orphan’. The Yoruba had become distinct from San 89,000yrs ago, and survived well with other Original Africans with their idea of God that spread across the world until about 4000yrs ago, when light-skinned Oyinbos entered the world stage. That created just 6000yrs ago came with swords and guns of God to conquer and enslave those created 80,000yrs physically and spiritually is not attributed to the quality of weapons but quality of God. .
Money and power changed the concept of God called Olodunmare in Yoruba. The reversal of global power structure led to the reversal of the concept of God as the complete was painted incomplete and vice versa. Basically the Almighty African God was a God of good and bad, while the colonists saw God is always God and the devil is evil.
Africans that understood the complete ramifications of Olodunmare were turned into Aborishas, and labeled idol worshippers, while those who rose through the use of Iron, Ogun, Jehovah God of War were turned into the Almighty God. Money, Power and Respect.
As Ooni of Ife recently affirmed we worship Eledunmare, an Almighty Universal God, not Orisas. Orisa are past ancestors who excelled in certain fields, derived from eni Ori Sha somebody who destiny made distinct. They are equivalent of Catholic saints. They are patron saints that intercede between Man and God in specific endeavors. Most important, they hold the knowledge bank of particular essences like Ogun, whose main ingredient is palm oil, a lubricant to enable smooth working of iron and prevents rust. Osun for fertility and love, Osanyin and Soponna for herbal medicine, Esu for information, Shango for Justice, Oya for revolution etc They were not worshipped but were an understanding of the different spiritual components of God, the Universe, and were an access to Eledunmare.
On the other hand, Eurasians have essentially relied on Ogun, from their coming out of the central Asian caves around 2000BC with bow and arrows to rid Black Africans from Asia; to the institutionalization of Ogun as the Almighty God from 4BC when Esu was crucified in the Ogun month of Passover and the use of the Great Swords – Roman Catholic Spatha and Islamic Scimitar to clear out Blacks from Europe and North Africa; to using the Ogun Gun to terrorize, enslave and exploit. It is clear that through out their history starting about 6,000yrs, Iron war, Ogun has been the most important element in their evolution. Ooni of Ife is justified to state that Abrahamic dogma draws from only two irunmoles/spiritual essences – Ogun and Osoosi – out of the 401 irunmoles known to Ife.
Greek democracy is the foundation of European democratic ideals, but Greek civilization was an offshoot of the Ancient Egyptian Original African civilization and not its Russian motherland. After the fall of Greece, the bastion of European democracy could only be reconstituted in the USA, where the Original African Shango and Oya inspired the quest for justice and revolution. It was also the original African intellectual foundations of Orishas that brought about modern medicine, as Soponna informed the use of vaccination and antibiotics, while Osanyins knowledge of herbs was converted into pharmaceuticals.
With such deep and diverse intellectual foundations and the natural laws of retributive justice, Africans disturbed Eledunmare less than those with only Ogun and Esu. The Igbo system showed that God was universe, the collection of all souls and spiritual essences called Chukwu, the Ukwu (conglomeration) of all Chi (souls). However, the concept has been misconstrued as the worship of single Chis and alushis, and not their combination known as Ukwu.
This was what brought about the controversy of whether Oonirisa call of Eledunmare was Abrahamic during Olojo, the festival of Ogun for Eledunmare, and his statement that we were not Aborishas but worshippers of Eledunmare.
Basically, it is impossible to truly identify the essence of God, the universe and your relationship, if you can not articulate your cultural origins, identity, linkages and foundations. Instead people have shunned their cultural background for immediate means and needs to adopt the God with current good performance levels, Jehovah/Allah God of War and the Almighty dollar as presented by Christian Pentecostalism and Islamic fundamentalism.
The question is what will happen when the USA and the West are surpassed and overwhelmed by the Chinese, who worship Buddhism that is a close derivative of Ifa/Afa? The Ooni of Ife has to unify the Original African cultural sphere for the African to see the full picture of God in our own image before we can leave our spiritual slavery to money and power.
As the late Dr John Henrik Clarke said in his famous speech, ‘My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is part of you then in your imagination God is supposed to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the diety assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoner of that other people’.
Prince Justice Faloye
