I could see his sneering look as he shopped for who had the guts to take on a law professor. There was silence for a while as it sank in; then a foray of hands shot into the air. He expected it. He knew that he had touched a subject tender to some of the students in the class. He pointed to one of the students
"Yes young lady…what is you name?"
"Fiona Wambui sir! And I want to vehemently oppose your line of thought. Though scientists cannot prove that God exist but perhaps God is without boundaries so nothing exits outside of him to border him. Perhaps he cannot be investigated because nothing exists to investigate him or maybe scientists cannot measure him because nothing exists to measure him. Perhaps it is more than God and yet we humans, limited by language, can only find the word ‘God’ appropriate in this case. So maybe it is indescribable, incomprehensible and above what we think or see."
The professor hesitated for a while. Her brilliance was evident to him yet he dared not hang his gloves too early. There was silence for a while before he started.
"If God does exist let him show himself, otherwise he is not God and so we need not worry. It is not the business of scientists to prove he is what he claims to be. It is him to furnish us with evidence that he is God and we as scientists will be more than willing to verify this claim. For example he should start by telling us where he has been for thousands of years as the human race suffered and continues to suffer from death, disease and war. Perhaps he should tell us why he would send a rabid maniac like Satan or Lucifer to torment this world after he could not deal with him himself and worse still how does he expect hapless beings like humans to deal with that demon King. He then goes ahead and slaughters his supposedly innocent and holy son to suffer for sins he did not commit to fulfill his bloodthirsty lust to punish humans for sins which many at times is brought about by factors they had no control over. No one chose to be born in a world full of sin or did any one of you choose to be born? To make it worse, he is so cruel that he punishes the whole human race for eating an apple. I stole sugar when I was young but I was punished with death for my disobedience."
The class roared into laughter as he continued, "One thing you must remember in law school and perhaps later should you choose to continue this line of career is that you must learn to distinguish between the real and the unreal, the physical from the metaphysical. Law is based upon reality and unfortunately at times on unreality. It would be unfortunate for the law of evidence to be based upon fabrications yet today because of human nature it still does. Facts are stubborn things upon which a good judge and lawyer should base their decisions. God is not a fact.’"
"Don’t get me wrong my students God does exist but in the mind of billions of people in the world. This candidly begs the question of what constitutes a mind. Mind is but a system of thoughts and belief systems, which more often than not are distorted and based on unqualified assumptions and myths handed from generation to generation. Take for example my mother who every time I bring her some shopping usually, to my chagrin, insists that we must whisper a prayer of thanks to God. For what! It is I who broke my back working tirelessly for the wages I receive every month. It is I who takes the money to the supermarket and buy her everything, which she thanks God for. Such belief is based on a fallacy much like centuries ago when people believed with everything they got that the earth was the center of the universe, that the earth was created in August 4004BC and that the earth was flat. What has changed since then- the facts or the people?"
Fiona raised her right hand. She looked confident which made the lecturer look a bit puzzled. She stood up as she talked.
"Scientist are so quick to discredit, to banish religion as a delusion or like Karl Marx would say, an opium of the poor. You are like the kettle that calls the kettle black or like the baboon that laughs at the exposed backside of his neighbor. Scientists are notorious for formulating hypotheses only to later discredit them in line of new thought. They are not held accountable for their mistakes provided they followed the different well-recognized methodologies."
I could see that my lecturer was pleased with her. It was clear he was impressed by her brilliance. But he had to have the final say in the matter. So he answered.
"Religion has failed to give us a clear picture of God. It has presented him or her as a fetish or as some kind of idol. We scientists cannot be blamed for the problems of such an institution. We do not oppose religion. Socially speaking, and in light of empirical evidence, we cannot understate the role that religion has played in terms of unifying human beings, creating social order and establishing moral principles. Without religion I tell you, human beings would have until now been in the Hobbesian state of nasty, rough and brutish. However times have changed and religion must be banished from our minds. If we don’t do this then religion becomes a hindrance. Religion then destroys what it has sought through much blood, sweat and hard-work to build. Why do you think man is going back to become a savage. Religion needs to die. Science then becomes the dawn of a new era."
Truly if God did exist then what is he? Where is he? I asked myself the night after the lecture. Is he human or alien? Is there heaven and hell? My Sunday school teacher used to say heaven is up and hell is down yet man has traveled as far a Pluto and perceived as far away as the stars and there they have found nothing. Just an endless, boundless and cruel space. It dawned on me that maybe we are alone after all. Or maybe space is God or like Einstein observed that space is hiding God. Possibly, we are just matter blindly and desperately clutching on an illusion yet so clearly from dust we came and there we return, and that sadly there is no world other than our own. No God, no hope; just blind animals groping in the dark. Like the biblical King David, in the depth of my despair, I cried out for light.
Next morning I was in the library drowning myself in volumes of law journals when Fiona came sauntering languidly and slowly took a seat opposite to mine. The point where inner beauty meets outer beauty, to me, was this girl sitting in front of me. Her face and heart shone in one accord. Her smile caused sharp little ripples within me. I skipped a beat when her eyes locked on mine and I realized that my whole life had skipped several beats ahead. Whether awake or in dreamland I was, in the coming days, to see her angel-face so much that if I were an artist I would draw her picture and I swear it would come to life. She was sexy too; silky thighs, rosy cheeks, pink and juicy lips, a sturdy behind and firm breasts. One week later I found her fresh from taking a bath and that day has been carefully and preciously stored in a sacred vault in my mind, guarded jealously like the Biblical Tree of life with flaming cherubim.
Such beauty, my dear reader, came with a large price tag. She was, and still is, a staunch, stubborn and unflinching believer of the hard and raw gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. When I say ‘hard and raw’ I mean she had concrete laws engraved in the tablets of her heart, which like Moses followed them faithfully. Sex was unquestionably before marriage, courtship should take at least take four to three years…. and some bizarre like her dream prince charming should own all the albums of Don Moen and Casting crowns. Her Sundays were wholly- from dawn to dusk- dedicated to her one and only dear-personal-and married to him in body and spirit- savior and Christ Our Lord. She read the bible reverently, prayed thoroughly, and was part of a group that called themselves ‘prayer warriors.’ She attended fellowships- class fellowships, youth fellowships, women fellowships, ladies fellowships and many other ‘fellowships’ that popped up conveniently when I tried to ask her for a date. She attended all prayer meetings, never missed all night prayers and was a member of everything and anything Christian under the sun. Her bible, she once told me, was the gauge to measure which man was her Mr. Right. I wondered whether the gauge would read a negative on me.
I on the other hand was quite the opposite. I had made quite a habit of visiting Nairobi’s best topless clubs, flirted flagrantly with K-street’s finest, stole cigarette lighters from supermarkets, had my fair share of brushing shoulders the wrong way with the boys in blue, got drunk and got laid with females I don’t remember their names. I had a demon that roared in my pants like a lion looking left and right for which lucky or unlucky female to devour. One twilight lady for 250shs a night once wondered which college I had gone to for such vigor uncommonly found among the Kenyan male.
We were white and black, yin and yang, light and darkness, beauty and ugliness, water and fire- the eternal opposites. At first there was nothing to bring us together, no spark to blend the opposites. Soon, very soon, light would shine in the darkness and the darkness would depart.
However let me take you through the spark that happened the day after that lecture that made me doubt my Sunday school teacher.
"Fiona why God?" I asked.
"I want to ask you a question, David, which has a straightforward answer. Two monkeys- one well fed and the other thin and impoverished, should they fight, which between the two would win the fight?"
"I guess the well fed one, right?"
"Correct. So it goes also when you feed yourself with Godly stuff. It makes you God-fed and God- fat so that you are stronger."
"I think I love you very much already," I said so honestly.
"You cannot have me. A square box cannot fit in a round hole. Oil and water do not mix." She answered
"I still want you."
"Ask my Daddy in heaven," with that she stood up and walked away.
I watched her exit the building and I felt helpless.
July came along with its terrible cold. For two years I spent my time looking for this God who became to me even more elusive. I looked for this God in church and I never found him. I even asked my pastor to ask him if he heard the prayer I had made to him many sleepless nights. I kept on asking him permission to marry this girl Fiona. Fiona whom I had practically lost contact with had made it very clear that I must have permission from her ‘daddy’ before I could even set eyes on her. I was coming close to a state of exhaustion. By then I had already graduated from law school and Fiona was interned in some law firm in Nairobi.
That July I received an invitation to a wedding between a guy named Charles and guess who? Fiona. Yes none other than Fiona. some man I had never known now took the very girl that I had spent many years praying over.
The wedding was glamorous. They exchanged wedding vows in Nairobi’s Catholic church. I could see tears of joy in her eyes. She was ecstatic. At the after party she saw me and she came over to talk to me. I wanted to ask her whether this dude she was marrying had asked permission from ‘her daddy.’ I wanted to tell her how much I prayed that her ‘daddy’ would give me permission to love her so that she would love me the way she seemingly loved this new man in her life. I wanted her to tell me the secret of approaching this God she believed in. but I was disappointed. She never remembered the incident at the library. She was probably too happy to remember such a drop in the vast ocean of her life. As for me I remembered that incident that turned my life around which was to her the shell of the sugarcane- useless. She saw my eyes turn glossy and when she asked me how I was feeling. I candidly answered that I was happy for her. She never noticed that I lied.
I said goodbye to her and to the God she believed in.
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