Holy

“Our mission is to depopulate the kingdom of the devil, to save souls bound for hell” 

He’s pacing the length of the stage, his hands waving in an unworldly rhythm, he means those words, the force of his sincerity touches you even through a television screen. He’s talking about soul winning, the great commission of evangelism. The noise from the congregation would drown the voice of a less gifted speaker, but this man can’t be overwhelmed by this frenzy of adoration, this crowd was small potatoes.

   You can see the young men and women swaying in the same unworldly rhythm, their lips moving in disjointed manner, some of them are crying. The only word you can make out is “Pastor”, it’s almost like a chant, almost like a mantra. They’re looking at him with worship reflected in their eyes, he’s not the channel for the frenzy; he’s the source, the epicentre. There was a time you were one of them, you were one of the ladies in front row. By this time you’d be lying on the ground in your designer threads, not like you’d notice, not like you’d care. You’d be speaking in languages no one could understand, that you couldn’t understand even though you pretended to.

   You’d still be there now if things hadn’t changed, you’d echo “yes pastor” like everyone else to any word he spoke, wherever he said it. You thought his every word was truth and light, you even thought his sweat was blessed. You spoke about him with awe tinging your voice, with respect, with reverence, with love. You loved the man, by God! You loved him

   You were once the girl in the front row who was waving her bible and jumping, claiming the promises that rolled off his tongue like marble balls on a marble floor. You’d be the one who got his juice and toast after the service, the one who put in the vodka that came in a clear plastic water bottle. You’d put two fingers of the stuff in the juice, you’d be the one he snatches the bottle from and drinks a third of the bottle in one gulp.

  You lived on his compound just in case he needed anything, you weren’t just a personal assistant; you were in charge of his life. You'd been made his PA immediately you graduated, you'd been doing the job already. His wife deferred to you, she didn’t mind because she knew she hadn’t married a man, she’d married one of the sons of God. You planned his meals, selected his clothes and allocated time to his various activities.

 You were the one who stoked his spiritual fire, he’d come to you at midnight, the witching hour he called it. The first time he came, you were afraid, you were only eighteen and had come to help his wife with a few chores. When you woke up to see him kissing your neck, your heart rhythm wobbled. You were sure it was wrong, but he said it was right, it was your destiny he said. It became more than meeting of bodies, it was a melding of minds, a fusion of souls.

You became a permanent fixture in his home, only leaving him to go to the university and running to him the minute the semester ended. You soon became his confidante and partner, his shield from all the harshness of the world, you were everything.

  One evening, you are reading your bible and saw a little verse in Hebrews “follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God”. You’re startled by it, what is this holiness? You’ve never heard of it before’. You google holiness and see masses of information, you see all the things you’ve been doing wrong, all the things you’d both been doing wrong.

 You run to his office and confront him, you show him the evidence from the book he quoted from so glibly. You show him it’s the same bible he says supports the renewing of his mind by joining with your body that says “a man shall not lie with a woman who’s not his wife”. You show him the other things he’d distorted, you want to show him more but his sneer stops you. You realise that he knows these things, it hits you that he’s always known these things.

 He calls you back as you run from his office, you do not answer him even when he comes to your room and watches you pack. He tells you things that would have made sense the day before, they don’t anymore, you know too much now. His voice rises, the menace in it doesn’t even scare you. It is then you remember “the righteous are as bold as a lion”, he even said it all the time. When you turn to face him, he exhales and leaves. You carry your bags out and get a taxi to take you to your brother’s house, the brother you cut off because he’d said bad things about Pastor.

  You heard all the things he’d said about you, how you’d tried to be Delilah to his Samson, how his God had exposed you. You do not feel anger at the people that shunned you, the friends who wouldn’t talk to you. Weren’t you once like them? Blocking everything that opposed what he said. Compassion is what you feel for them and you pray daily for their freedom.

 You reach for your remote and change the channel.