Melville Cooke
If police can take innocent life
Why me cyaan tek my enemy life?
- Ninja Man, Sting 2006
IF WISHES were numbers, everybody would 'step up inna life' and if prayers were action, Jamaica would not be the world's murder capital.
I am always amazed at the fervour with which Christians 'bawl out' against violence, the feverishness with which they turn their faces to the sky and extend their hands, fingers trembling, as well as the earnestness with which they plop on their knees and beg their God for something or the other.
With the amount of prayer that has been sent up and out for Jamaica, the most recent mass offering of mumbling coming at the start of the year along with a prediction of a lower murder rate (and if we kill 'only' 1,000 people this year, said preacher would really have the heart to claim a victory?), the various funeral parlours should be complaining that business is alive and kicking, not nodding sombrely that it is dead.
The effusive efforts of the vaunted 'prayer warriors' are not only useless in solving Jamaica's crime problems; in as much as they reflect the Church's attitude of slinging words and taking up collection, they are a large part of the problem.
(And I do not give a communion crumb if some of the money goes towards poor relief efforts. Every bloody body is interested in poverty alleviation, but precious few in having no poor to dish out the dole to.)
CHURCH IN THE MAJORITY
The Church (from 'clap han' to robes and altar boys), from the committed to the twice a year attendee, comprises the majority of the population; we avowedly non-Christians are in the minority. And the Christians whom I respect are good people, who would still be seeking to do good even if they were not Bible-thumping. (The Christians I don't respect, on the other hand, are John Crows in the pew and out.) This majority, encompassing but not incorporating all classes, colour, job descriptions and sexual preferences, can make a tremendous difference in Jamaica, simply by speaking up against a political system which has torn Jamaicans apart and made murder, both of the casually clad and uniformed kind, acceptable.
With all the 'bawling out', the Church has been remarkably silent about monumentally important issues such as the Kraal ruling, which has effectively told us sheep that we should not baa Wolfe, as the shepherd has on his quota of white wool and is cheerfully leading us to the slaughterhouse. We do not seem to understand that, as Ninja Man said in his own way at Sting and quoted above, the ruling and the actions of the state set the tone for the rest of the society. If cops can kill at will, so can the 'shottas'.
The Church was vocal in its condemnation of the killing of three policemen within 24 hours last year, but how many people have the police killed in supposedly questionable circumstances since then with not a peep from the 'bawler outers'? Do they not understand that justice swings both ways?
Let us not forget that it was an edition of the National Prayer Breakfast that Jamaicans For Justice (an organisation I deeply respect) pushed for an enquiry into the carting away like hogs of the street people in Montego Bay. There was another JFJ, Jesus For Justice; was it not he who defended the prostitute from stoning and chased the moneychangers out of the temple?
So how come you all are praying against murder and saying wonderful things over dead dons?
There is much hullabaloo about 'faith as small as a mustard seed' moving mountains, but that faith had better be backed up by some bulldozers and dynamite.
It seems to me that the Jamaican Church has faith as large as a husked coconut, but spends its time mumbling its desires to the clouds and expecting cirro-cumulus to act on behalf of the Pharisees and Sadducees to keep the unworkable 'system' stable. If I may, I will remind you Christian folk about the most important line of your most important prayer:
Let us pray.
Our Father
Who art in Heaven
Hallowed be they name
Thy will be done on Earth (repeat line thrice)
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
