I'm dealing with a conflict here in real time. Religion is slowly drawing me in. I mean, it's attempting.
It's almost like it has this effortless pull. And I'm comfortable where I am now in my religious belief, or where I am in terms of spiritual beliefs, is that yes, I know that there is source energy. And source energy is the rawest way of explaining what many people call God.
So I believe that there is God. I believe in God. And the existence of that entity, first of all, I think it's probably more female than male.
But I don't think it has a gender. I think it's an entity. But if I were to bet on what energy it is, I'd say it's feminine.
It only makes sense now. How mothers, women, and then all of a sudden, the one that birthed us all, the creator of all things, is now a man. He just doesn't align for that reason, yeah.
So yeah, I believe there is God. But then the thing is, Christianity is the thing. I grew up Christian.
Anglican. All my life, Sunday was for church. You know, wear your good clothes, go to church.
My dad used to work at 7-Up. And so we had this luxury of every Sunday, we get to drink Mineral, yeah. Every Sunday, with our rice lunch, we get to drink a bottle of Mineral.
So that made Sunday very exciting. You had school friends and then you had church friends. And then the many people that I knew, plenty of acquaintances from church, just not friends as in school.
But also, that was because of our routine. It was come to church, and we rarely ever made it to church, like early, early, you know, like before the service starts. You know, rarely ever.
We always come in on time or when one phase of service had already started. So there was no time to make church friends, so to speak. So it was me, my parents, all my family, and God, I guess, and the church.
And after church as well, everybody had to go and convene at the car and then we'd go home. So, unless Daddy had this meeting, you know, you know this after church talk that fathers used to talk now? Those types of stuff, most of the time I would just spend time with my brother and my sister. But in my constant desire to question things, I started to develop a strong sense of conscience, and I started to question things that I didn't understand.
But one of the things that led me to question, I think, was me going to secondary school, boarding school in Kaduna. In 2006, my mother died. And three years later, 2008, I needed to go into GS1.
So it only made sense for my father that all these children who are young, I was 10 at the time, my older sister was 14, and she was already in boarding school. And so it only made sense now that my dad is a single parent for him to send the children in secondary school to boarding school so that he can have some time. But the boarding school they sent me to was Adventist College in Kujama, Kaduna State.
In Adventist College, the school itself was a missionary school, a new one. You know, we were going to be their first set. That was where I went to school.
Now, the Adventist church, if you don't know, are the Sabbath people. They go to church on Saturdays. And see me, 10-year-old, in GS1, enjoy going to church on Sunday all my life.
And then I had to settle into this boarding school routine where Saturday was for church. And then we did Saturday stuff on Sunday, like laundry and labor. And then on Monday, we started school again.
And I needed justification for this, but everybody was so convinced because the majority of the students were Adventists. Adventists, basically, they went to church on Saturdays on a normal day. The school is an extension of the church, and so it is members of that church that brought their children to that school.
So many of my friends were Adventists, and they called us Sunday worshipers. So it was a weird kind of minority to be. Because I didn't even know there was such thing as a minority within the religion.
You know, it was... And then I started to wonder, you know, exactly why do you guys go to church on Saturdays? I wish this episode was a bit less spontaneous, and I would have explained it to you by going to do my own research, because all I know is that I had been convinced about it being Saturday. It is the truth. The calendar as it is, I think they predated the basis of church worship, God worship, being on Saturday was linked to Jesus' resurrection.
Jesus' resurrection. And it is from that day that they had been counting to know that, oh, this celebration, this resting day of God was actually on a Saturday based on our current calendar. And then they now gave you insight as to the origin of the current calendar.
So you see that it now, the Adventist's own basis predates the Sunday calendar and the Sunday worship. And the Sunday worship was now given, was, you know, the issue of Sunday worship was basically that it was government's past. It had nothing to do with correctness or history.
And I was convinced by that. You know, another point they always used also was Good Friday, you know. If Good Friday was the day, how did they put it? But it was the day before Sabbath that is Good Friday.
So if Good Friday is Friday, then Sabbath is Saturday now, you know? And I think this is something that everybody already kind of knows. But getting, having those two ideas in my mind of never knowing the history beyond, the history behind my Sunday worship all this time and just going with the flow and now seeing new information that debunks what I've believed all my life, made me realize that many things are not what they seem. Many things are constructs.
And many things need to be deconstructed by the people within that construct so that they can, by themselves, form a spine. And then from that spine, they can begin to attach their identities to things that are compatible. And that is where that was born.
And I remember coming back home to even tell my decision. I came to tell my one day, I just told my dad, do you know we're not supposed to be going to church on Sunday, it should be Saturday. I don't, I kind of, he was not impressed though, you know? He was, he was like, I sent him to school.
He said something along the lines of, I sent you to school to go and learn, not to come back and be challenging me and be arguing. That kind of stuff. And I understood, you know, in adulthood, I now understand.
Imagine paying money for your child to go to school only for him to come back home. And it's not as if he's pulling down trees in the school academically. He's not coming back home to challenge your own fundamental beliefs.
My father has been going to church Sunday on his life. He didn't pay for this. He didn't pay, intend to pay for this trouble.
And so I did not, I decided not to have that argument with anybody anymore. I was convinced about it, you know? And I kept the conviction to myself. Now, I need feedback.
If I'm going to put this episode out, then I do need feedback. If you've gone to do some research to actually prove one way or the other, then let me know. Let the group know.
Put it in discussion group. Let's know. Please do some research.
I'm counting on you, Ndeye, if I use that people in the discussion group. I'm counting on you guys to bring back some research or let's see where you stand on this whole Saturday, Sunday worship thing. Now, lately, coming back to present day, I've met a lot of people, especially girls.
Almost everybody unanimously has this conviction about Christianity. They all believe, everybody's a believer. Now, I'm thinking it's this new wave thing where people just find themselves by finding God and they just attach themselves to that and then there's wrong with it.
So this is why they are so convinced because up until this moment that I'm recording this thing, I have not found a logical argument that proves Christianity as the right religion or as the right way to go spiritually. I've not found a logical argument that proves that right to me. All I see is evidence of people, even Bilonians I follow online, being very, very passionate about Christianity, about Jesus.
Imagine, one of the Bilonians I admire is PBD, Patrick Bedd David, and he's very, very open and passionate about his faith. And a lot of people, a lot of popular people you see, I'm like, what is it? Is it that maybe, I don't like to think of it like this, that maybe those who don't think deep enough into the universe or the secrets of the universe, they've not asked these questions to the point where they got the answer that I've gotten that has made me deconstruct totally and not ever want to come back. You know, maybe they didn't do it up to that moment.
Maybe they don't know what I know. Maybe they did know what I know then. They think differently.
But it seemed okay, I'm fine. I want to be a Bilonian, and this guy's already a Bilonian, and he seems peaceful and loves the fact that he loves Jesus. And he seems like he's doing life correctly.
So should I just... But it's going to now feel like pretense. Now, like I said, even if it's drawing me back slowly, I'm trying to struggle between, is it drawing me back because that is the right thing? Or is just my environment affecting me so badly? It's just my environment affecting me so badly. And I'm just trying, I'm struggling to shake it off.
Because like I said, logically, the Christian religion is not the thing for me. The way we practice, okay, now, I went to church last week Sunday for the first time in a very long time. And I enjoyed the service.
Even though, even inside the service, I did not still agree with one or two things. Like one scripture where they say they are launching in. I discussed this thing with Enya.
Like one scripture where they say they are the children of Israel. And the rich people are those that the wall of Jacob fell down. Then they entered the city and destroyed everything.
Old and young, women and children. And I'm like, but God has supposed to love all of us. That he said, love me too.
And created everybody. And there's always room for forgiveness, I'll be. And what, what, what.
It's still him that favoured certain people to go into somewhere and massacre both women and children. Children. Ha.
It's like saying, bandits that go to Yelwata and massacre everybody there. Amongst them, there could be somebody now writing that story and saying, this is what God has said. And God has given them Yelwata.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then 30 years from now, it's inside a religious text that half the world is using. This is the dissonance I get that I cannot fully conform to a religion that has that book as its basis.
But why is there still that pool? Probably the environment, but maybe something also deeper. Maybe that is the truth. Maybe behind whatever I think I know, or have found out, it's still, you know, it's still that truth that I need to get to.
Okay, can somebody lead me there? With logic, because God did not give me logic to fucking split my head in half in trying to answer the question, you know? Logic works in answering all life's questions. Why does it not work for this one? In fact, why does it work against the current system? Why does logic work? It should have been neutral. Why does logic work against the current system then? You know, why does the Bible not contradict itself? And here I say the Bible doesn't contradict itself.
And as she said that, in real time, I was like, I can't even find the contradiction off the top of my head now. But people who are more passionate about it may find, like for example, how harsh the God of the Old Testament was and then the one that Jesus is talking about seems like this all-loving guy, you know? Seems like he's not the same person. But also, religions that we don't agree with have the Old Testament plastered all over them.
So is that all of them worship the same God at one point in time, and then we'll be devoted to another God at some point in time in the new book? So why did we not still keep the old book then? So there are certain questions that not even just me, people who are even 80s, I have a friend that is just totally 80s. I've tried to get him an N-year to have a conversation and I'll put it on our podcast, N-years and mine. My friend Kevin has these questions, even deeper, much more insightful ones that I think would challenge Christianity a lot.
And so I'd like to hear him ask those questions to somebody who may provide the answers. But honestly, I know many of you listen to this maybe deep into one religion or the other, and I've seen the happiness that religion, especially church, brings to people. That community of worship, the connection to a higher being that you get in whatever way you believe it to be.
My one is, I don't want to be cheated. I don't want somebody using my head and things like that. That's the thing that me, I'm against.
If you get one of those intangible things, things that money cannot buy, like community, like a feeling of love, sense of belonging. If those things that money cannot buy, this religion gives it to you. It's probably a fair trade for anything else.
Honestly, I really think about it like that. It's why I've stopped trying to, people can verse against Christianity and say, people shouldn't go to church because it's not right. I used to be there before, but I'm not there right now.
I wish I could have that, but I can't pretend it. It has to be real, and I'm not there yet, I'm not there yet.