I want to add an addendum. Two addendum actually.
1. The result of what Bamidele described so eloquently is that nowadays, Christians do not know how to cope with or even thrive in adversity. They lack the capacity to anticipate and cope with adversity because they have been taught that adversity is for the faithless or those who live in sin. Buoyed by the doctrine of positive confession, they never entertain the thought that life is full of trials, temptations, and tribulations, and that even our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, faced adversity. If you do not face adversity how can you be refined and toughened and how can you appreciate God's goodness and not take Him for granted. When Christians are reoriented to believe that nothing bad will happen in their lives and that adversity is "not their portion," when adversity comes, which it will, two things happen: they collapse in helpless surrender and their faith is shaken. Some of them even go so far as to question God, asking, "if your word says this is not my portion then why am I facing it?" Unfortunately, there is no where in the Bible where it is stated that Christians will not face hard times, so clearly these folks are willing victims of false indoctrination.
READ: Do Not Link Adversity With Sin, By Bamidele Ademola-Olateju
2. This teaching does not originate in the Bible but in the glib words of some "men of God" who themselves face adversities. The teaching extends to other domains and has a corollary of making gullible Christians feel good by blaming their troubles on other people. So, sometimes, the sin or wrongdoing blamed for the adversity is not the sin of the sufferer but that of members of his/her family. The family is a favorite blame target. In recent times, it is very popular for "men of God" to blame a mother or father or grandmother for some adversity befalling a Christian. They would then advise that, to break the curse or the bondage, you should severe all links with such a family member. These men of God have already caused the separation of many families by counseling some Christians to cut off their parents whom they claim are responsible for their travails. Many Nigerian parents are groaning from being separated from their children on the advice of some pastors. This is not a conjecture; I personally know of some cases. The tragedy is that the Bible says we should test every spirit with the Word of God, and such a counsel directly contradicts the teaching in the Bible about honoring one's father and mother, one of the Ten Commandments. How can you curse your parents out and cut them off and still honor them? If only these Christians would elevate the Bible above the advise and teaching of their "men of God" they would see that by cutting off their parents, they are depriving themselves of the blessing that is promised for obeying that commandment.
So, along with the attribution of adversity to sin, there is a simultaneous trend of externalizing the sin and wrongdoing to members of one's immediate family, thereby instigating one against them and causing familial strife. These "men of God" are playing on the gullibility and biblical illiteracy of these Christians. They are also capitalizing on these Christians’ pre-existing cultural predilection because many Nigerian ethnic cultures teach that one's enemy is usually in the family, and that the people likely to cause one harm are people who know one best and who know one's vulnerability (one's family) as encapsulated in this pidgin English saying: the worm wey dey chop the wood dey inside the wood. A cultural idiom foregrounds the “Christian” teaching of some “men of God.”
By Moses Ochonu
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