Opinion / National
A potent enemy always lives within
21 Apr 2019 at 08:50hrs | Views
Hallelujah. . . But wait . . . why was he killed in the first place?
You see, over time, societies evolve into hierarchical and stratified communities that pit the powerful against the powerless; the haves against the have-nots; the bourgeoisie against the proletariat; and the masters against servants.
Relations between and among the various social groups is often exploitative, with the powerful appropriating power from the powerless and the haves subsisting off the have-nots.
As Bishop Lazi always tell his followers, the powerful cannot exist without the powerless, nor will the bourgeoisie survive without the proletariat.
Also, there cannot be a master without a servant.
By their very nature, human beings, including men of the cloth, crave superiority and lofty titles.
"Shefism" – itself an irresistible urge to lead and massage egos through the notional and material gains that come with it – is an age-old societal plague.
The Bishop always grapples with it even in church, where supposedly chaste madzimai eruwadzaro are often locked in ferocious, uncivil and heathen-like fights for superior positions within their guilds.
The unending stories of sleaze and skulduggery in burial societies always make me cringe.
I also often ask myself why elections for church parish councils' and guilds degenerate into Stone Age existential battles, where the primate that can wield the biggest stick or stone becomes the most dominant specie of the group.
Well, of course, it is because of that craving to be served, and not to serve.
This is the same disease that affected the "all-knowing" noble clergy that called themselves the Pharisees.
They were sticklers of the law; in fact, laws, rules and regulations were their fetish.
In essence, they served the law, and not God.
If you read Matthew 23 verses 1-39, you will get the extent to which God was thoroughly displeased by the hypocritical and haughty clergy that were obsessed with nothing but their social standing.
"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them."
He added: "Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries[a] wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi' by others." (Matthew 23: 1-7)
Dear reader, these were powerful people that Jesus was berating.
But he was not finished.
To add salt and paprika to injury, he called them "snakes" and a "brood of vipers" who were like "whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean."
Kikiki.
Upheaval
Jesus preached about an ideal that was disruptive to the status quo.
History has proven, and continues to prove, that any attempt to reshape or re-arrange any social order often results in upheaval.
Inferences about reforming the status quo – and with it the various leeches that fed off it – which was the centre of Jesus' message, naturally attracted the wrath of the leeches – from the Roman Empire, the Pharisees and petty criminals who had found a lucrative way around the system.
So Jesus had to die. Jesus died. And - thank God! – Jesus resurrected.
But much more importantly, ideals never die.
They are like a seed.
This is why the world now boasts of Bishop Lazi and 2,1 billion other Christians.
Cleaning the Augean Stables
The Greeks – borrowing from their mythology – equate any difficult task to cleaning the Augean stables.
Well, according to Greek forklore, Hercules – a character that we can describe today to be similar to the Hollywood versions of Hulk and Superman – was tasked to clean King Augeas's stable, which reportedly had more than 3000 oxen and had remained unattended for more than 30 years.
Legend has it that the wily Hercules accomplished the seemingly onerous task by diverting a river through them.
The Bishop also thinks that our stables have been gathering dirt since the turn of the millennium, and cleaning them will not be an easy task.
There is a whole generation that has grown up in the filth and created an ecosystem around it.
What used to be abnormal has now become normal.
Corruption, misgovernance, nepotism, incompetence, maladministration had seemingly become a normal staircase to success.
It is a mess.
If it were practical, Bishop Lazi would propose that we evacuate the whole country and invite applications for all those willing to return, a process that would necessarily involve strict vetting.
We will have to invite the Pope if need be.
For those gremlins who don't qualify – well, tough luck! – we will have to ship them to Siberia, or any other remote isle where they don't have any prospect of returning.
What is worse is that these gremlins are embedded deep within our own system, which makes for a huge problem.
You see, returning the country to normalcy, where the dignity of hard work is valued and meritocracy is the only gateway to aristocracy, would mean upending the status quo and pulling the rug from beneath the feat of tenderprenuers, influence peddlers and other miscreants within the system.
It is daring the devil.
It is, therefore, unsurprising that this self-serving clique is militating against efforts to put the country on an even keel.
Of course, they will tirelessly work to scupper any well-meaning reforms that work against their interests.
The enemy always lives within.
This is why ED concedes that corruption is deep-rooted in most State institutions.
And this is why I always say the journey to success will not be easy.
It is now a monumental fight between good and evil; an epic finale, where the collective will of the people is now pitted against the interests of a greedy few.
But bit-by-bit - from the police, who used to cream off motorists at roadblocks, the prosecutors and judges who used to hawk justice, and civil servants who used to slothful serve the people to induce bribes - the taps are being closed, albeit gradually.
A grandmaster who is skilled in Statecraft knows how and when to move the pieces.
Like a crocodile, he knows that patience is a virtue.
Rome, as they say, was not built in a day.
It was built brick by brick.
The skeletal foundations of any building are not easy to the eye, but only after the building takes shapes can the aesthetics be fully appreciated.
But it will all be revealed in good time.
You just have to be patient.
Bishop is out!
You see, over time, societies evolve into hierarchical and stratified communities that pit the powerful against the powerless; the haves against the have-nots; the bourgeoisie against the proletariat; and the masters against servants.
Relations between and among the various social groups is often exploitative, with the powerful appropriating power from the powerless and the haves subsisting off the have-nots.
As Bishop Lazi always tell his followers, the powerful cannot exist without the powerless, nor will the bourgeoisie survive without the proletariat.
Also, there cannot be a master without a servant.
By their very nature, human beings, including men of the cloth, crave superiority and lofty titles.
"Shefism" – itself an irresistible urge to lead and massage egos through the notional and material gains that come with it – is an age-old societal plague.
The Bishop always grapples with it even in church, where supposedly chaste madzimai eruwadzaro are often locked in ferocious, uncivil and heathen-like fights for superior positions within their guilds.
The unending stories of sleaze and skulduggery in burial societies always make me cringe.
I also often ask myself why elections for church parish councils' and guilds degenerate into Stone Age existential battles, where the primate that can wield the biggest stick or stone becomes the most dominant specie of the group.
Well, of course, it is because of that craving to be served, and not to serve.
This is the same disease that affected the "all-knowing" noble clergy that called themselves the Pharisees.
They were sticklers of the law; in fact, laws, rules and regulations were their fetish.
In essence, they served the law, and not God.
If you read Matthew 23 verses 1-39, you will get the extent to which God was thoroughly displeased by the hypocritical and haughty clergy that were obsessed with nothing but their social standing.
"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them."
He added: "Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries[a] wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi' by others." (Matthew 23: 1-7)
Dear reader, these were powerful people that Jesus was berating.
But he was not finished.
To add salt and paprika to injury, he called them "snakes" and a "brood of vipers" who were like "whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean."
Kikiki.
Upheaval
Jesus preached about an ideal that was disruptive to the status quo.
History has proven, and continues to prove, that any attempt to reshape or re-arrange any social order often results in upheaval.
Inferences about reforming the status quo – and with it the various leeches that fed off it – which was the centre of Jesus' message, naturally attracted the wrath of the leeches – from the Roman Empire, the Pharisees and petty criminals who had found a lucrative way around the system.
So Jesus had to die. Jesus died. And - thank God! – Jesus resurrected.
But much more importantly, ideals never die.
They are like a seed.
This is why the world now boasts of Bishop Lazi and 2,1 billion other Christians.
The Greeks – borrowing from their mythology – equate any difficult task to cleaning the Augean stables.
Well, according to Greek forklore, Hercules – a character that we can describe today to be similar to the Hollywood versions of Hulk and Superman – was tasked to clean King Augeas's stable, which reportedly had more than 3000 oxen and had remained unattended for more than 30 years.
Legend has it that the wily Hercules accomplished the seemingly onerous task by diverting a river through them.
The Bishop also thinks that our stables have been gathering dirt since the turn of the millennium, and cleaning them will not be an easy task.
There is a whole generation that has grown up in the filth and created an ecosystem around it.
What used to be abnormal has now become normal.
Corruption, misgovernance, nepotism, incompetence, maladministration had seemingly become a normal staircase to success.
It is a mess.
If it were practical, Bishop Lazi would propose that we evacuate the whole country and invite applications for all those willing to return, a process that would necessarily involve strict vetting.
We will have to invite the Pope if need be.
For those gremlins who don't qualify – well, tough luck! – we will have to ship them to Siberia, or any other remote isle where they don't have any prospect of returning.
What is worse is that these gremlins are embedded deep within our own system, which makes for a huge problem.
You see, returning the country to normalcy, where the dignity of hard work is valued and meritocracy is the only gateway to aristocracy, would mean upending the status quo and pulling the rug from beneath the feat of tenderprenuers, influence peddlers and other miscreants within the system.
It is daring the devil.
It is, therefore, unsurprising that this self-serving clique is militating against efforts to put the country on an even keel.
Of course, they will tirelessly work to scupper any well-meaning reforms that work against their interests.
The enemy always lives within.
This is why ED concedes that corruption is deep-rooted in most State institutions.
And this is why I always say the journey to success will not be easy.
It is now a monumental fight between good and evil; an epic finale, where the collective will of the people is now pitted against the interests of a greedy few.
But bit-by-bit - from the police, who used to cream off motorists at roadblocks, the prosecutors and judges who used to hawk justice, and civil servants who used to slothful serve the people to induce bribes - the taps are being closed, albeit gradually.
A grandmaster who is skilled in Statecraft knows how and when to move the pieces.
Like a crocodile, he knows that patience is a virtue.
Rome, as they say, was not built in a day.
It was built brick by brick.
The skeletal foundations of any building are not easy to the eye, but only after the building takes shapes can the aesthetics be fully appreciated.
But it will all be revealed in good time.
You just have to be patient.
Bishop is out!
Source - sundaymail
All articles and letters published on Bulawayo24 have been independently written by members of Bulawayo24's community. The views of users published on Bulawayo24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Bulawayo24. Bulawayo24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
