Christianity – which took its precursor system of faith, Judaism, to a whole new definitive level – is in a class all by itself as the only faith without any injunction whatsoever to adherents to undergo pilgrimage, or any journey of faith, to any ‘holy land,’ so-called, anywhere.
The practice is at best unchristian and may even be anti-Christian. Believers in the Judeo-Christian faith tradition have most unwittingly weakened their own witness by being high-strung on inanities that are no more than tripping around on excuses.
It promotes corruption, cronyism, and misguided spirituality for the Christian. Now a multimillion-dollar business, it has survived only because it preys on Christian sensibilities and ignorance of their Scriptures and historic faith. It is a shame that Church leadership, not just in Nigeria but all over the world, has anything to do with it.
Many ‘Christian pilgrims’ have been known to abscond while on their excuse of a religious jamboree to travel to another country where the grass seems to be greener, thus further degrading the good name of Nigeria.
It is high time government hands off pilgrimage affairs, what is properly a private business best left to tour operators and travel agents, for people with the means and intent on undertaking such trips, for whatever private reasons.
The president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) are hereby called upon to lead the way in doing truth in this regard: to put a stop to government patronage of Christian sensibilities and begin a campaign of turning down the political incentivisation of spiritual matters and of faith.
In Christianity, according to the word of its Lord, Jesus Christ, and His holy apostles, who followed directly in His steps, pilgrimage isn’t just not a necessity, its pursuit under any guise whatever amounts to gross inanity, a frivolous abuse of God-given resources.
Some adherents of the Christian faith have, like their ancestors of faith, often succumbed to the human penchant to be seen to ‘belong’, by clamouring to be allowed to carry on “as the other nations” – a weakness to be purged from the Body, not pandered to.
National Geographic Editor in Chief, Chris Johns, whose world-renowned magazine has a recent Special Edition issue on “Sacred Journeys”, or pilgrimages, wrote in the foreword to that edition that he related to a Canadian Christian “how exhilarating [his] experience” had been journeying up the summit of the Ol Doinyo (“Mountain of God”) in northern Tanzania, East Africa, and now “[he] understood why the Maasai venerated the peak”; he reported the candid Christian response he got: ‘[The Christian] replied that he had no need for a sacred mountain. All he needed for his journey, he said, was the Bible and Jesus Christ.’
According to the great Roman Catholic theologian St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – 394), an early Father of the Church (born in present-day Niksar, Turkey), sent in 381 by the Church to reorganize the churches of Arabia, in his essay, “On Pilgrimages”: “When the Lord invites the blest to their inheritance...He does not include a pilgrimage to Jerusalem [the principal ‘Christian pilgrimage site’] among their good deeds; when He announces the Beatitudes, He does not name among them that sort of devotion....there is no gain for the godly pilgrim in return for having been there [hence no] reason [to] undergo the toil of so long a journey...”
The newly enlightened National Geographic journalist later in his write-up conceded that “spiritual journeys...can be...simply to a quiet place in our hearts.” Indeed it should. (Emphases added.) It is to this simplicity of faith that the Lord Jesus Christ calls his own as he explained, at the beginning of the Christian era, to the Samaritan woman he met at Jacob’s Well (a pre-Christ pilgrimage site for a sect of Judaism).
In response to her challenge of “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship,” Jesus replied: “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what...But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” True (i.e. conscientious) Christians believe Him--and not human religious traditions that seek to venerate mere places as, properly speaking, objects worthy of adoration, or worship.
National Geographic fittingly focused on an incongruity “in Syria [where] Muslims and Christians worship together at ancient Christian shrines thought to cure infertility...” The magazine reports how “...full of hope, supplicants travel great distances to touch a holy rock or a brass plate.”
Every year, best estimates state there are 300 million faith-tourism travellers around the world, generating USD 18 billion in revenue. The Christian per cent of the number are represented in Thomas, one of Jesus’ 12 Disciples who doubted the word of the Lord and insisted rather on something palpable and got--from a saddened but understanding Lord--a stinging rebuke, instead of a blessing in return.
The abuse is pointedly poignant in Nigeria, with church leadership playing a game of ‘what’s-good-for-the-goose-is-also-good-for-the-gander’ in seeking government sponsorship to go on purported pilgrimages, to balance out scores and settlements being kept with ‘the people of the other religion’, a shameful scenario they don’t consider to be unworthy of the honour of the Christian God and His Christ.
The Scriptures have been abused in trying to justify the pretentious practice by quoting, right out of context, from the Resurrection passage in the earliest Gospel account by Mark: “The angels said unto them...he is risen ... Come see the place where they laid him...” while conveniently leaving out the fact that there’s no agreement among the various Christian communities of faith where the tomb in reference was situated – a powerful pointer to the tomb’s instructive irrelevance as a focus of devotion of any worth.
Among the ranks of ‘pilgrims to the Holy land’, stretching over many centuries, starting in the 9th, have come the Crusaders –the most inimical witness against the Christian witness today – who turned renegade to their faith because of their self-prescribed quest of reclaiming pieces of ‘Holy Land’ real estate bounty from its latest occupiers.
For the Christian pilgrimage on earth, the following passage from Micah represents the sane and binding Christian injunction to follow. It is devoid of the smell of an idolatrous past or a foolish future: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” – What any Christian both can and is actually expected to do anywhere they may be located on earth.
Any Christian that feels like going to Israel to see Biblical tourist destinations is free to do so using his personal resources. But we ask that we stop calling such trips ‘pilgrimages’ and government should hands off sponsoring such ‘Christian pilgrimages.’ The argument of ‘what’s-good-for-the-goose-is-also-good-for-the-gander’ while politically correct is morally and spiritually wrong.
