"The inspiration of a noble
cause involving human interests wide and far, enables men to do things they did
not dream themselves capable of before, and which they were not capable of
alone. The consciousness of belonging, vitally, to something beyond
individuality; of being part of a personality that reaches we know not where, in
space and time, greatens the heart to the limit of the soul's ideal, and builds
out the supreme of character." (Joshua
Lawrence Chamberlain, October
3, 18 89)
My name is Edward. I generally
function under the persona of 'Pastor Edward'. That's because I am a
priest. Apart from being a priest I am also a Geologist and all-round youth
educator. I am also a 'youth worker' of sorts.
In some places in the world I would
be granted an enormous amount of respect because I am a priest. In this
community, I find; I receive more respect that I deserve on account of my
reputation for educating people. I personally believe that the only role in
that list that really demands respect is the one of 'Youth Worker'
Working with young people is hard. I
am a young person too. I am hard young person to work with. I was a difficult
student at school. I went on to be an argumentative University student and then
a troublesome student pastor. I've left behind me a whole string of academic
institutions that have been somewhat glad to see the back of me.
Now I've been working with hard and
difficult young people from campus to streets, from east to North and now in
the West- Lagos for the last twelve years (which may be God's way of bringing
me back from my own youthful exorbitances). Some of the young people I've
worked with have really got their lives together and gone on to do bigger and
better things with their life. A number
of them have died - mainly from overdoses, carelessness and sexual vises, but also from unrepentant heart toward God
their creator. Others I'm still working with. They're just not quite as young
as they used to be.
People ask me all the time 'Pastor
Edward, what do you think is the biggest problem facing young people today'.
Most people think I am going to answer 'drugs'.
I do not consider drugs to be the
biggest problem young people are facing today. That's not because I don't think
drugs are a big problem. I've worked with a lot of drug-addicted young people
over the years from campus to campus. I have been robbed and manipulated by
them, and I have watched many of them. Even so, I do not consider drugs to be
the biggest problem plaguing our young people.
Some people think 'violence' is
the biggest problem facing young people, and I am conscious of the fact that
for young guys (in particular) problems of violence can still be a major issue.
Violence is not nearly so big a problem in my area as it was five years ago.
Problems of violence are alive and well in Lagos Street, and National Campuses.
Even so, I do not consider violence to the biggest problem facing young people.
Some people think in terms of lack
of employment opportunities as the major issue. Others would speak in terms of
family breakdown or problems of prejudice - all real issues. Personally though,
I believe that the biggest problem facing our young people today is something a
little less tangible. Personally I think the biggest problem I see with our
young people is that most of them don't feel themselves to be a part of
anything that is bigger than themselves.
Most young people I meet have
tragically small horizons, very little ambition, and hence live in very tiny
worlds. When I ask teenagers about what they would really like to do with their
lives if they could do anything at all, most others speak in terms of getting
something, whether that something be a horse or a car or a girl or just 'a lot
of money'.
No one I speak to says 'If I could
do anything I wanted I'd find a cure for cancer' or 'I'd negotiate a peace deal
in the country. And this reflects, I believe, the fact that most young people I
know have very narrow horizons. Indeed, most young persons I know seem to live
in worlds that are not much bigger than themselves.
Go back a couple of generations and
most indigenous Nigerians were ready to lay down their lives for their King
and Tribes. You wouldn't find many young people today willing to sacrifice
themselves for President and country. You won't find many young people who have
any real sense of loyalty to the community or to the country. Indeed, if you
ask most young people what it means to be a Nigerian, you won't generally get a
reply that contains any ideals.
There are positives as well as
negatives in this equation of course. Strong patriotism often goes hand in hand
with strong prejudice against people of other nationalities. And our Nigerian
cynicism towards our governing bodies at least means that we're not easily
fooled by political propaganda. Even so, the downside of our 'loss of national
identity' means that we've been thrust back upon ourselves and upon our peers
to find some sense of personal identity.
Now if you're following me here at
all you may well be thinking 'Yeah, Pastor Edward thinks that because he's working with a group
of no good loser negative traits addicts. Hell, I don't know what happened to him
since he left Bible School, but that guy has been on a one-way downwardly
mobile trip. Over here we've really got it all together.' Yeah? I don't
know.
One of the most depressing groups of
young people I've encountered in the past few years has been at the last Senior
Secondary School where I thought Geography in Northern Nigeria. As I thought in
different government run selective high school. I won't say which one. NOT THIS
ONE! When I first started attending classes in each school there I asked the
whole class 'what did they want to be when they finished school?', and
almost every person there would say different things. some, said 'a lawyer',
many said ‘a doctor’ and few opt for ‘famer’.
Now people, maybe I've been
prejudiced over the years by the enormous amount of time I've spent in juvenile
courts and in visiting the prison system, but it seems to me that if we're
really on about building a better Nigeria, the last thing we need is more
lawyers!
Now I know I shouldn't be black and
white about this, but when I went around and asked young people 'why do you
want to be a lawyer?' Some of them answered 'because my dad is a lawyer'
or something like that, but MOST of them said that it was because being a
lawyer was a 'good job', by which they mean what ….? A job that can help
a lot of people? NO! When people say a 'good job' they mean a job that
makes a lot of money.
There was a time when we used to
speak of the 'idealism of youth'. What's happened to that? When did
youthful idealism get replaced by this 'I want to make a lot of money' mentality?
Why do people who should know better want to make a 'lot of money'? Is
it because you think you need a lot of money in order to survive? You don't! Is
it because you think 'if I have a lot of money I will be really important and
people will look up to me?' GET A LIFE.
Friends I do not think that there is
any greater tragedy in this community than a highly trained intelligent young
person who has all the gifts and abilities necessary to really make a
difference in this society, but who has no idea where to direct those gifts and
abilities. It's like having a powerful loaded weapon and not caring where it's
aiming when it goes off.
This is the tragedy: that most of our
young people, I fear, drug-addicted and non drug-addicted, well educated as
well as less well educated, winners as well as losers, live a life wherein 'my
life is basically about me'. That's a tragedy.
I see a similar tragedy taking place
in the lives of so many of our young people who really have no hopes, dreams or
ambitions in this life that go beyond themselves. What a small life to live!
It's like trying to beautify the wallpaper in your own solitary cell!
It's this loss of idealism that I
see as the greatest scourge afflicting our young people today, and my response
to this situation is to teach these young people to fight, which might not seem
like the most obvious solution to the dilemma to everybody.
The relevance of fighting to an
individual's value system might not be immediately obvious to everyone, but I
do seriously believe that pugilism and idealism are intricately linked. The
bottom line is that I know that it all works.
I know that I've had an almost 100%
success rate when it comes to taking in guys who have serious societal problems
or violence problems, that by the time I get them to the side of the ring for a
serious fight, they are no longer having problems with stuffs like that or
violence or any of those things, but have actually developed a real sense of
who they are and what they are on about.
I know it works. I'm not sure I
fully understand why it works, but I would note that if you go back to Plato's
Republic, to the wisdom of the Ancient Greeks, you'll find that Socrates
assigned a very high place to the value of 'themos', which we translate as
'aggression' or 'fighting spirit'.
According to Socrates, no individual
and no society is complete without properly developed 'themos'.
Individuals and societies need to know how to fight if they are going to know
real harmony and real justice.
The other authority I would appeal
to today is Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain:
" The consciousness of
belonging, vitally, to something beyond individuality … greatens the heart to
the limit of the soul's ideal, and builds out the supreme of character."
Chamberlain writes this out of his
experience in the American Civil War - one of the most terrible wars in
history.
Chamberlain was, ironically, a
contemporary and a colleague of William Tecumseh Sherman who coined the phrase 'war
is hell' and I don't think Chamberlain would have necessarily disagreed
with Sherman. But Chamberlain also found that, for all its horror, war had one
very positive side effect - it gave people a sense of belonging to something
that was greater than themselves and so it could bring out the best in people.
Of course Chamberlain isn't the only
person who’s seen this. My old dears at the church used to say it all the time.
"What these young people need is a good war" they used to say.
Now they weren't stupid, and they knew as well as anyone else that the last
thing we really need is a 'good war', but their point was that they felt
young people needed some experience like they'd had in their youth, where they
were forced to work together with a broad range of people across the community
and to make sacrifices together as they committed themselves to a cause which
was something far bigger than any of them as individuals.
Perhaps fighting is not your thing.
That's OK. Find another way to get in touch with your ideals and values. Spend
more time in church. Head up on a mountain by yourself for a couple of months
and just think and pray about it. That works for some people. Just don't be
content with a life that has no greater horizon than your own wealth and
self-importance.
We live in an extraordinary society
in an extraordinary period in human history. Think about it. At how many other
points in history, and in how many other places in the world, have any group of
people ever had the degree of choice about the future that we have today.
Think about it. The rest of your
life lies before you and you can really choose to do with it just about
anything you want to! Your options are really only limited by your imagination
and your genetic potential. At how many times and places in human history has
that been true?
If you were born a few generations
back in a village you wouldn't have had these sorts of choices. Your dad was
the village Smithy, so that's what you were going to be. If you were born on a
farm you were probably going to stay on that farm until you died. If you were a
teenage girl you probably already had a couple of kids by now and your path was
fully set.
We're at the opposite end of the
spectrum now. If you decide to spend the rest of your life entirely devoted to
playing your guitar you can do it. You may become a great rock star, but even
if you don't you won't starve. Though our government has no safety net that will still support you in the
end so that you can keep doing nothing but guitar playing if that's what you
really want. Think about that.
If you decide to devote the rest of
your life to scientific research you can do that. If that's your vision and
you're determined, nobody is going to stop you from giving your life to that.
If you want to devote your life to
feeding the hungry and healing the sick you can do that, or if you just want to
sit around on your bum all day too, you can do that too! The choice is yours.
But this is our dilemma. Never
before in human history have we had such a wonderful variety of choices before
us, and never before, I fear, have we had so little idea of what we should
choose.
One final illustration from a Fuel
Subsidy Protest March: I trust that plenty of you guys made it to the January
2012 Fuel Subsidy Protest March and good on you. Let me mention to you one
placard that I heard about at a march. I didn't see it but was told about it.
It said "nothing is worth dying for". I thought that this was
very clever at first, but then it occurred to me if fuel is worth dying for, is
anything worth living for?
Friends, I believe that there are
things worth living and dying for. Find out what they are and live them! Live
your life to the full. Fight the good fight. Keep the faith. And the blessing
of God Almighty - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - be amongst you and
remain with you always. Amen!
From
Pastor Edward Freedom
(The Apostle of Restoration)
Edward
Freedom is a Geologist tuned priest of the Most High God. His vision is to
rescue the lost and restore them back to Gods glory and praise.
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