Editorial

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World without End

Amatoritsero Ede

End-time predictions have become an industry. The Mayan example is only the recent variation of a millennial disease. There exists a long demented line of prophets, teachers, gurus, visionaries, clairvoyants and ‘wisemen’ or plain con artists who all equally have the jobless ears of an impassive God. So they invoke and are awarded apocalyptic contracts of floods, earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, rivers of liquid fire till the sky implodes and earth caves in. We are then either ‘raptured’ into heaven or we rupture here in a hell-on-earth – if left behind.

Of all the violent agitation for an end-of-the-world, the Pentecostal variation is one of the most frightening. One reason is that it reads the Christian scripture literally, missing the deep metaphysical import of an esoteric-cum-philosophical book, and apportions celestial origins to a material – even if inspired – object. Another reason is that the sellers of nightmares rate their poisonous wares higher than any competing delusion. I am thinking of rival myopia found amongst another “lunatic fringe,” which equally believes in a physical heaven. But in this case, it is a cosmic realm with alluring virgins waiting to satisfy the suicide bomber’s holy lust as recompense for his having criminally detonated innocent lives here on earth.

Those competing delusions derive from a lack of spiritual or metaphysical knowledge and sheer ignorance. They are based on the confusing of an abstract, imaginary realm with an impossibly physical, palpable and solid existence. This is just the proof and symptom of a face-value understanding of those books that ought to be read esoterically rather than as literal magical texts. Or how do we explain the inscrutable and ‘rapturous’ Harold Camping, one of the main protagonists of the American Bible belt. He has severally predicted the end of the world and publicly gone to extremes to prepare himself and his flock of sheep, over whose collective eyes he manages to repeatedly pull the wool. After each failed prediction he folds into himself like a collapsed ‘camping’ chair and enters a deep, embarrassed silence for a while, only to erupt like a persistent boil on the skin of yet another time, another cursed prediction, another impending apocalypse.

We find the exaggerated instance of an already hyperbolic misreading of scriptures in the example of that expatriate American pastor from hell, Jim Jones of Jonestown, Guyana. This megalomaniac assumed the aspect of God and made up his mind that the world must end on November 18, 1978. But like Dylan Thomas’s poet persona, he would “not go gently into that good night… [His young] old age would burn and rage at the close of day.” He took 914 lives, 200 of them children, by legislating mass suicide through cyanide poisoning. And his ‘Peoples Temple’ drank till “the mug slipped from grip.”

Does the Bible itself not philosophise: “world without end”? That proposition is repeated in the old and new testaments of the King James Version – in Ephesians 3:21 and in Isaiah 45:17. While, and because, they read the “second coming” literally, doomsayers are forced to wax lyrical when confronted with simple, plain prose: “world without end.” Those who go ‘camping’ with the hysterical and neurotic probably do so because of the usual fear of death – even though it is a natural enough transition – and because of the silence and darkness that follows. Hence the pentecostal insistence that life will go on after death in the usual earthly manner we experience daily, in the same physical body after resurrection, with a plethora of the ills and emotions that wrack that imperfect body, and with our usual worries, woes and earthly desires. Our suicide bomber is in for a shock when he transitions from a palpable three-dimensional world of length, breadth and solid into a transparent, paper-thin ghostly two dimension – because “once you are dead you are dead.” That is the unchristian but level headed rethought of that long-suffering cuckold and most persecuted Jew and therefore cynical of fictional characters, James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom in Ulysses.

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10 Responses to “Editorial”

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  1. Mat Nashed says:

    “The future is always a present.” – It’s like being trapped in another persons nightmare! This is a great piece Ama. An alarming prognosis of the progressive operations of the inequity in South Africa.

  2. A. Katawala says:

    This is a passionate piece – and a sad one too. If only Zuma could be so self-reflective.

    “To a Louse, on Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church”

    And would some Power the small gift give us

    To see ourselves as others see us! (Robert Burns)

  3. Hope Eghagha says:

    Was thoroughly shamed by the role-reversal. And I remembered Ayi Kwei Armah saying something about love for the white man and the expulsion of colonialists…

  4. Abigail George says:

    Contagion. I was so moved by our conversation that we had months ago so I wrote a poem about it because I am a poet. I wrote about blood being spilled, innocent blood, mother’s milk (our blood rushing through our veins is the same color it is just that we have different faiths. The color of our skin if you cut deep enough is the same color. We bleed the same.

    People do terrible things and what does the world do around them, always circling and circling like vultures above carrion. They respond with silence. Of course there are voices who demand answers, elegant solutions to poverty. Ignorance is bliss. ‘White’ ignorance. ‘Black middle class’ ignorance. Brutality was ignored once again.

    The world is a cold place for Indians, Muslims, coloreds, blacks, the Chinese, every racial group on this planet who do not have money. Money makes the world go round.

    I’m going to leave it there for now. I will post my poetry on the Lonmin incident/Marakana Inquiry on my Facebook wall. Will we ever live in bliss one day or will the divided between the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich grow and grow and grow. There’s too much history between all of us in South Africa and instead of the introverted diplomat coming out, intellectual, bright, engaging us with how we can make this country work, the extrovert has come out in all of us standing in line with our credit cards, handing them over to tellers.

    The Rainbow Nation, the African Renaissance, what will this generation be called, what will be our clarion call, our legacy.

  5. Tom Howell says:

    This is a beautiful piece of writing, and sad, and enraging. Thanks so much, Amatoritsero.

  6. Iquo Eke says:

    Intriguing editorial here.
    I do agree that there is an afterlife; though the word metaphysical may not be my choice word to describe life in the ethereal. It is a shame how certain religions choose to comprehend the afterlife as a physical existence.
    Now I’m really interested in reading the rest of this issue!

  7. Speaking in 666 Tongues

    Madness is an old man’s art,
    Dear brood in the throes of second birth,
    Possession becomes miracle-mongers
    Acting out the booming babel
    Beneath the august realm of the mad:
    Madness is not an affair of youth.

    Armed with stagy child’s play of mimic maniacs,
    Blood-and-thunder prophets ham the art
    Up the painted shrine of pentecostal expo,
    And thereabouts city slickers profess madness,
    Kicking and clashing over one ball
    Even as the sage pro scores with two balls.

    In number as ancient as sin
    The unhinged tongue of tongues stakes out
    The adjacency of heaven and hell
    And the advent of the beast of doomsday
    Touting magic amid chic glossolalia:
    The genius of madness takes more than forked tongues.

    – Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

  8. I have many things to say with regard to this unique edition and its philosophical/theological editorial, but I would choose to hold my peace until I consume the whole piece buried in this edition. You never can tell. Let’s see….

  9. Emmanuel Elem Chucks says:

    I have many things to say about this philosophical and theological editorial. However, I would, rather, prefer to remain calm until I gulp the whole content to know the real taste, but that doesn’t mean I’m in between the road. No! I’m not. Precaution is the reason. You never can tell. Anyway, the editorial denotes something far from inferiority. Hence, I wish to hold my peace at the moment. The editor pushed me to do so. Thanks!

  10. Nice poem by Amatoritsero Ede

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