Healing and coping with life within challenges of spiritual insecurity: Juxtaposed consideration of Christ’s sinlessness and African ancestors in pastoral guidance

Vhumani Magezi,Christopher Magezi

doi:10.4102/hts.v73i3.4333

Vhumani Magezi, Christopher Magezi

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4333

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Abstract

Spiritual insecurity among African Christians is a huge challenge. The insecurity among other things arises from African people’s former traditional African ancestral world view of ancestral veneration. The ancestors promote or hinder African Christians’ reliance on Christ because they have presupposedly acquired the supernatural power that enables them to provide diagnoses and solutions to life challenges. The inherent problem in the ancestral world view, however, is that the ancestors are both respected and feared by their descendants because they can either bless or harm depending on the state of the relationship between the surviving human beings and the ancestors. The basis of the unpredictable influence of ancestors lies in the fact that they (ancestors) are considered as human beings who carry their human qualities to the spiritual world. In light of this situation, one constructive approach that can be advanced to address the challenges of African Christians’ spiritual insecurity is a proper understanding of Christ as a sinless representative of humanity. This approach maintains that healing and coping with life within the challenge of African spirituality in the context of threatening life issues can be addressed by an appropriate understanding of Christ’s sinlessness. The article argues for the foundational status of Christ as a sinless representative of humanity as the controlling framework. In doing so, Christ’s sinlessness and the sinfulness of natural ancestors are juxtaposed to compare the two ontologies in order to draw some pastoral guidelines for African Christians. This approach pays close attention to the factors and mindset that sustain people who adhere to ancestral worship and assess them through a lens of Christology focusing on Christ’s sinlessness as an exemplary doctrine.

Highlights

In contrast to the view of natural ancestors as the mediators between God and man in traditional African religion, we argue that the sinlessness of the God-man, Jesus Christ should be taken by African Christians as a guarantee that they can fully trust him (Jesus Christ) as their flawless mediator and saviour who supersedes the natural ancestral mediators that people may claim for their clans, families, tribes and nations (Heb 2; Bediako 2004:28)
The discussion above brings one to the conclusion that many African people are living in spiritual insecurity, derived from their fundamental, traditional belief in the interrelationship between the physical and metaphysical worlds
Africans believe that the metaphysical world is populated by various spiritual powers (i.e. Supreme Being, lesser spiritual divinities, spirits and ancestors) that exert negative and positive influence to their lives

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and backgroundThere is perceived spiritual insecurity in traditional African religion that arises from the traditional African world view of spiritual powers such as the Supreme Being, Lesser divinities and angry ancestral spirits (Banda 2005:2–6; Kok 2005:95–101; Kunhiyop 2012:59; Michael 2013:99; Nurnberger 2007:8–42). The theology of many African scholars in this regard does not demonstrate to us how the various tenets of the Christian doctrine of Christ’s incarnation, as well as Christ as the sinless representative of humanity, relate to their theological endeavours.

Results

Conclusion