African Scholar Joshua Maponga Reveals why AFRICAN SPIRITUALITY Is SUPERIOR to CHRISTIANITY

hello guys I hope wherever you're watching us from you're having a great time this is AF post and welcome to today's video problem we Face initially as um academic students is to use um our understanding of religion and education to interpret African spirituality if there is anything called African spirituality let's just call it spirituality because you go to the Mongolians you go to the red Indians you go into the depths of the Karu you go into Australia the abor regions and even the sacred you know people in the islands they all have their own way indigenous ways of speaking to their environment harvesting their Foods treating each other conduct their marriages secret ceremonies around animals the sacredness of plants the rivers which might got secred spaces so spirituality for me is not an institutionalized form of belief system where there is one man sitting in the front particularly this male chauvinistic patriarchal Christianity which is all a male dominated environment basically that's where they write the Theology and using the Bible women have found themselves on the periphery of the whole conversation because the male dominated patriarchal s but when it come to African spirituality it's it's a lifestyle when we eat it's a spiritual event when we marry it's a spiritual event when we bury it's a spiritual event when rights of Passage basically it is human Humanity living in Awareness Consciousness constantly being aware that they are not alone as human beings to be going to the forest with chainsaws cutting trees you know digging gold pouring cyanide into the into the rivers and you don't even know what you have done what is the impact of your cyanide DS as they are impacting the ants the worms the fish ultimately even the human beings themselves so for me spirituality it could be highest form of Consciousness where a person is aware of themselves from inside who am I how am I related to those on my left and those on my right how do I respond to the air that I breathe do I pollute it do I cleanse it how do I live with the water that I drink do I pollute it do I cleanse it how do I walk up to the soil that gives me food do I pollute it or do I cleanse it therefore the human being being aware that these three elements which is the real Trinity of African spirituality which is our air our water and our land which is the substance of which the AFC African is aware is made out of these three elements are revealed when you access them when you approaching Waters you're not just approaching a a river or a lake or a dam or a fountain or a false you literally have to submit yourself to the space and be aware that you are with the mother the water through which you become so you don't just jump in a pool and do whatever you want to do there and put some spaces are quite secret and the energy levels are higher you may not come back so there's a way of approaching these places when our fathers used to go hunting you don't just get there with your guns and dogs and start chasing animals in the bush you have to seek for permission to ask for even Those Animals by the time you are supposed to be eating them you have to talk to them and the way it's for food and Etc and similarly so with their hair so the African spirituality is is is quite simple simple but complex because it would only not combine awareness in terms of your food consumption your relationships and dealing with your environment but it's actually this Unity of the human life with all other lives that around it hence when colonialism came and they found an African putting his hands on a cow they say they're worshiping a cow they found us know kneeling in front of a tree say no they're worshiping trees no you don't know we're not worshiping trees we are talking to the trees we are aware that we are connected to them we are connected to them as such we constantly are seeking for this connectivity hence it is Humanity living in harmony with nature that is the best definition I can give you for particular when I speak about African spirituality it is constant awareness of environment space and the intricate in interconnected relationship between my life and the environment that is around me Christianity is an adulterated form of uh religion which has multiplied itself into 37,000 churches one Bible one devil one Jesus and 37,000 div divided perspectives of how to interpret that uh Christianity needs spirituality spirituality does not need Christianity simply put you can be a Christian but in your Christian experience you have going to eat you're going to drink you're going to need the soil the question is what is your relationship as a Christian with these elements and if you think that African spirituality is demonic then even the food you're eating is demonic the air you're breathing is demonic the water you're drinking is demonic because intrinsically for life to happen we understand cosmologically as Africans that you are not an island you are part of the nature which is around you therefore you nurture nature so for Christianity to come around and say we don't believe in all this we believe in God then okay let's go to God then what did God do God created what did he create he created elements he created a homestead which we may call a sanctuary which you may call an altar which you may call a temple in which the human being must survive in and for Christianity to undermine the environment in which she finds herself and train her children that these things are not important then you end up actually becoming a parasite to your own environment you end up becoming a nance and actually you end up becom a polluter of your own environment therefore being Christian does not mean that you're Are Spiritual being Christian simply means that you're institutionalized into Bel living the colonial form of religion which has to do with church leadership and your allegiance to a system gives you access to God whereas in spirituality you don't need anything between you and the soil you don't need anything between you and the water you don't need anything between you and the air you are as directly connected to your Divine space being and expression as an individual you a Cosmos on your own you you are and even the Bible ad I wish I could start theology from scratch because the same Bible who then go on to say your bodies are the Temple of the of of the Holy Spirit the temples of God and if your body is the temple then why are you going to church because you're already in church is it way the very thing you're going to be looking for in a building the Bible didn't says it is in you the Kingdom of Heaven is in you and then it says seek you first the kingdom of heaven and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you what does that mean the first definition the kingdom is in you the second one seek you first the kingdom of heaven where is the kingdom if the kingdom is in me and I am the kingdom then I must seek first the kingdom of heaven with in me and its righteousness rightful living living in harmony with everything else and then everything else that you're seeking for will be added unto you so this whole external view of divinity being in the skies and being in the heavens is totally a confused concept of Christian Christianity trying to interpret spirituality because then spirituality says everything is intern it's within and when you go from inside yourself you will find everything that is inside is also outside so it's the everything will be added unto you you will finally be in harmony with everything else that you're looking for so therefore for me the highest form of spirituality are the Bushmen and the aborigin who be nothing own nothing but have everything the bush is their pharmaceutical the trees are their friends the animals are their relatives and they just walk and live in the abundance of everything and no one can claim that I own this land is mine this this whole selfish thing this this this is mine then you must put a boundary there you can't cross here you can't cross there and and then you end up this all these borders which becomes a pol of spirituality where we now begin to restrict natural living so Christianity has a short leg which does not touch the ground as it is actually planning to run to Heaven instead of living on Earth it's barbaric because the windows and the lenses through which they are looking at us from through the window I mean you you need to understand also the people who are defining this they are the colonial missionaries and mercenaries who come to a space where one the culture is different the language is different the expressions are different you totally you don't you simply don't know these people you don't understand them and whatever you are saying it is through the way in which you interpret what is happening from where you are coming from so it's almost like a third window you're not from inside you're coming from outside so you would walk up to people doing their circumcisions for example if you don't know what they're doing why they are doing doing it you find people bearing each other wrapping each other in skins and what and you don't know why and how they doing that you find a woman putting her hands on top of a pregnant woman and child is dancing and it's a bridge then the child must start facing in the right direction and don't understand exactly the science of what is happening I mean look at as Africans conducting brain surgeries way before Cambridge and Oxford and Massachusetts even knew where the brain was the Africans were already conducting brain surgeres teeth extractions cesarian sections and stuff like that using indigenous stuff and medicines and so when you when you look at that because he does not put on the white gloves and put on a mask and a swab and some clean things we don't worry just take a knife put it into the fire and from the fire it is sanitized start doing the cutting only military people will understand that boom boom boom people are shooting each other at War and you have a gunshot what do you do take your knife put it into the fire sanitize it burn up the wound all of a sudden what is barbaric has become a science so barbaric barbaric language is not part of our dictionary let's use more gentle words such as organic such as indigenous such as um you know culturally is done within the space of our own understanding so you cannot find me putting on cang on the floor and say that is barbaric only now do you understand that this is a therad when it's hot it is cool when it is cool it is warm this is actually our sanitization Center this is our immunization Center the cow is eating all the HS in the bush and when you put this thing on the floor and I sleep on the floor I'm smelling everything that is in the bush and all the bacterias that are good for the body are already Part of Me by the time I eat this cow meat will not get me sick because me and this cow have been living together from cow dang to Kettle to milk to what so to me it is the unification and the purest of understanding of being adaptable to the environment uh and and this cannot be barbaric this is actually the highest form of science which has not been studied and had people taken enough time to study the science of how ends make their end Hills and when a storm comes an Anil still stands but a building buil by human beings is falling apart then the question is who is more intelligent who is more intelligent than the other and the African science as it were which you might call barbaric and primitive has already started these small elements so when they build their houses there these round Hearts aerodynamics when the wind blows it's made out of mud and clay and Etc and it it's it cannot be barbaric it is the weakest link is actually our academic institutions because they've not been able to walk to these indigenous knowledge systems and then translate them into technology so that we could begin building cities that look like Villages using materials that look like Villages and in that we will have been able to translate the knowledge of our ancestors into modernity and create a more sustainable environment for two reasons or three if not more initially the dominant culture always undermines the culture that it overcomes and and uh you want your God your way of doing things to become the way the people are doing things because otherwise I'm going to end up with tension for example must go to church on Sunday so if we must go to church everybody must go there what if I must be going to my Shrine and you are a church and Etc then it creates all that number one is for control basically to create the community control that you need number two the the African spirituality gave the colonial system headache because it connected the African to other forms of power and functions that were outside of their common psych that men could chant in the night and what they were doing they don't know but when they come out of that chant they are animals and they'll take pangas and face a gun and will not what happened last night it's because they did some incantations they did some psyching they did some heral B and Etc they literally super boded themselves into other forms of humanity and as such even when they come back to war again they wash it off so they normalize we had all these sciences that are lying around the way people take their Oaths you know the O of the white man put your hand on the Bible or put it on the K on the on the Quran and after that start lying but if you should take the traditional off where you're holding that rhino on and you swear on your mother's grave you swear on your sister you you what you would not find it easy even to open up your mouth and say something and you you would then begin to understand that the environment and the background in which the colonial system is approaching the African is a complex species he's quite deep in his own ways and he seems like he he will snap off and you don't know what exactly he is thinking so religion becomes a very interesting academic institution that turns down their anger if a man Clips on One Cheek you know give him the other cheek if a man takes your jacket give him the wa coat also don't worry about what they doing to you God will deal with them we're going to go to heaven one day they're going to live together happily ever after the angels will be singing for us so don't worry about these Earthly things there is another home somewhere in heaven and while we are looking forward to be going to heaven we are satisfied with a cottage below a little silver and a little gold don't worry about poverty when Jesus comes again you equalize things and the theology then begins to do the brainwashing of the Mind removes the African from his land removes him from the sources of power makes him a servant and a slave instead of a master and an owner so Christianity actually is a is is a brainwashing institution Legion rather it's a brainwashing institution that unplugs the African away from his sources and centers of power and then plugs them in into the colonial God and the colonial God allows the African to become a slave of the one who has colonized him and the god of the master becomes the god of the servant but you you just look at it carefully the god of the master and the god of the slave are never the same for what their concept of God is and what our concept as African of God is it cannot be that your God comes to my house and tells you to kill me rap my wife and children and take my land and I must be looking over to God and say please God can you help me do this the whole Bible is full of War fighting over land from Genesis to Revelation Gardens Wars so if the Israelites are allowed to fight for their land quote unquote that is if they really Israelites conversation for another day but if they allowed to fight for their land what makes you think that the Messi the shaas the Kangas the Vos the Russians they cannot fight for their land also no it's only the British that must expand their Kingdom it's only the French that must expand their Kingdom and all of you you don't have a kingdom you must report to us and this this is a kind of colonialism we're talking about but from a spiritual perspective that once you remove the religious uh blanket on our faces and we Face the spirituality in its truest sense to practice it you need land to practice it you need Waters to practice it you need mountains and when you remove these things away from the African the question is where does he go to practice the very Ence of his own spirituality and it was convenient to move the mind of the African away from centers of power to a church and when they get to church they find a bishop or Pastor a priest who be feeding them some stuff open your mouth and put some things and give them some wine there and then people can walk around and this is the representative of God on Earth and it's um it's it's rather sad that for 500 years we've had to eat this garbage and rubbish to to this extent that we end up worshiping two bags of cement and a bucket of paint this is Mary the mother of Jesus must come there and kneel down and worship an idol you were saying it's barbaric now let's talk what is barbaric you are kneeling in front of a a bag of cement and kissing it and and the African is kneeling in front of a tree and kissing it what is the difference you are eating the blood of Jesus and eating his flesh and drinking his blood it's barbaric I'm eating my chicken it is barbaric what what am I missing here what which part of this is confusing to anybody here you are with your Rosary counting your H Mary the Mother of God you know here is a woman with her beads on her waist counting her monthly cycles and periods what is the difference what is barbaric and what is so ultimately we want to measure barbaric attitudes in terms of what do people do I think those that are barbaric are those that disrespect other people they find them in their own cultures and you bring your guns and you shoot them that's being barar you shoot animals in the bush 10 15 20,000 animals what for I want the horns she go then you cut the horn and leave the animals you're not even eating them now now that's barbaric you take cide and put it in into the rivers and then says three bars of gold now the British government get so much gold in their warehouse gold that economy is strong now that's barbaric because where this gold is coming from and you sit around putting decks of gold and diamonds Etc and you go back to the places where these diamonds have been dug and the whole Forest have been destroyed just to pick up a piece of stone now that's barbaric to wake up in the morning and create atomic bombs nuclear bombs and drop them on each other Hiroshima Nagasaki and Etc now that's barbaric and when you look at a nation that does not understand the environment when you look at a people that don't understand nature when you look at academic institutions that produce destroyers of environment now those people that are doing those things I think they deserve that title of being called barbaric but the African cannot be barbaric you can take a coin coin and drop it into the toilet you can take a coin and drop it into the bush or put it in the dust bin or put it in the mud but when you pick it up and you clean it up his value has not changed because of where you placed it the African in our Bloodlines in our systems does not matter where you have placed us the melanin within us remains pure and good all it takes for the young people is to know first of all identity who are you and after knowing yourself we need to do what we call walking the ancestral spaces like just take the young people to the ma Mau battles let them walk around those spaces take them back to the forests let them land sit in front of the elders have those downloads something mysterious happens when you get to a place where you have never been but your forefathers were everything that they saw is in you and when you see it you will re member and the remembering is not just of memory you rem you rejoin you reconnect so the issue of eating indigenous Foods it's not just for eating indigenous Foods is to make sure that our test birds become motherboards of collecting information that again resurrect our mindsets goinging places and dressing in this way singing in this way chants and drums and all these things are not just for entertainment they actually intended to be the connecting cables so that the African mindset can begin to get the signal which it used to get again and it's a beautiful beautiful space the Young People of Our Generation find themselves in lucky if I should say that the old people like ourselves have come out from the pul pits where we've been hiding for all these years and for the first time we have begun to Rally a campaign towards self-actualization indigenization and self-determination whereas Africans were saying you don't need to go there to Mecca to find God he don't need to go to Jerusalem to find the grave where Jesus was bu maybe this thing is not there or over there this thing is right over here and how do they help themselves to find their truth they need find themselves it starts off right here in their hands who are the two grandmothers who are the two grandfathers who gave birth to your mother who are the two grandmothers or the two grandfathers that give birth to your father so there is your mother there is your father when these two families come together there you have your ancestral lines and there is the first diamond you find the birth canal through which all of us have come into existence putting your hands together become the first form of understanding literally who am I and why am I coming from this becomes my identity both maternal and P look at genetics you're already teaching science of how families are formed and how children are born and Etc it's all right here within our hands and by the time we are telling people now you're going to get married also you want to go through there as a young man but are you aware of what is hiding behind this person this individual we begin to teach this knowledge system the simp simplest of form which is the natural form and this whole thing of going to school and you're teaching children in departments you're going for English no English is finished go to history history is finished got this this compartment kind of education is not is not real it is fake you end up being called a professor or a doctor because you have stayed too long in one class but look at this this is mathematics and inside mathematics this is biology this is sociology this is cosmology and all of it in one sentence that you would actually allow your mind to run between here and there and this is this this this for me is chemistry in in the highest form how do you combine and what chemicals am I made out of I made out of these ones I made out of this on so when I talk the way I talk the question is amongst these that make this who amongst these had these qualities and how are they manifesting themselves and if you go behind these four here you find a whole bunch of 16 that is behind and you expand it so for you to understand the funnel of information and data that has been funneled through ceaseless ages of time to me who is sitting in front of you today you're not looking at me in the present but you're looking at me in the past for everything that I am was before and I think only doctors have come to understand that with you go to them and they ask you do you have a history of diabetes in your family do you have a history of cancer in your family or did your mother also have fibroids you know why are they asking that because they know that the diseases of your parents can be will be uted transmitted from one generation to another generation so is biology only good for diseases so only thing that can be transmitted are diseases what about brains what about intelligence what about spirituality what about skills and so biology has taught us only a tip of an iceb but the creation of the human being the birth of a child has much more in it than what meets the eye literally the DNA is the biggest microchip that the world has ever seen gazillions and trillions of data from shaps of teeth to color of beard to body marks symmetry on the head shape of the nose how big must his cheeks go and the body structure how must it look how will the brains function what kind of memories are we sending forth ever wondered as a mother you have a child hardly 2 3 years old and they're scared of snakes and yet they've never seen a snake and others are not scared of snakes they'll actually go and hold it why because in their ancestral memory they could be carried Trauma from one generation to another generation this is why we are scared politically speaking when we talk to the Western World particularly the colonizers you abuse one generation you kill them you slaughter them you butcher them you indoctrinate a few of them to follow your way and they follow but the trauma that you have already sent into the bloodstream of this generation it will come out another year Another Place Another space and what will happen then becomes disaster we need to live in harmony with each other and not cause trauma to each other because trauma even also has a way of being transmitted from one generation to another how did the youth work with this work with your trauma issues work with your environment understand where you're coming from study yourself knowledge yourself is the highest form of spirituality the path of growth happens at various levels at um it's a spiritual encounter where I worked in the religious space for almost 33 years plus as a Bop there I climbed the ladder of religious hierarchy very swiftly and fast and you get to the top and my mind never stopped searching in as much as my career was doing fine my salary was fine but this men they had told me about this Jesus I was still looking for him and I could not find him so when I was young I was told that he loves me and he cares for me and many times I was looking for him underneath the church pull pits to find out this they say come to Jesus come to Jesus people go to Jesus and go they want to find out after church where is he hiding behind the pulit here and I never found him you grow up and then you are taught to read no he's in the Bible he's in the Bible so this God is actually hiding in a book so I went on I read that book more than 18 times from this to that side and even the other day I read it from the back to the front bit of Hebrew there a bit of Greek there still could not find this fell and then you start you're being told no when you at in theology school now you need Faith to believe you needed Faith then you start trying to find out how do you believe in what you have not seen and you look for that and by the time I graduated and I started working I was still asking where is he and then I was told no you can't ask us where is he you must not be telling us where is he because you you have been to school to study this thing so I just I finally you know had to stop a little bit and um go back into myself I had my own Visions I had my own dreams I had my own Encounters in various spaces with uh things of uh Supernatural order that then moved my mindset from the common things that I thought never existed and now to come face to face with them it changed everything the the whole file of uh religion went into the dust beIN and all of a sudden I decided I need to start looking after myself I need to start learning AR fresh I need to start questioning things and those of you have been following on my Facebook page are around 20 11 2012 then I started asking these complicated questions and and people saying know he's backsliding now he's becoming a hiden he's been becoming Antichrist but for me it was my journey so it is a both for me being an academic Journey but most especially also it has been a spiritual awakening of uh learning and knowing who I am where I'm coming from and where I am going and above all the satisfaction of of of Life the reduction of anxiety and beginning to have a purpose and the reason for being uh it CH it changed quite a lot in my own spirit and I should say I don't know everything I'm just a student of life but it's a journey that I'm prepared that we walk with other young people and be an example because each journey is different so I don't know want to become prescriptive say do this like they do in church no believe in Jesus no get baptized then you a Christian I can't say that all I can say is that Find Your Truth walk your path some will end up in engineering some will end up in Midwifery some will end up in cosmology some will end up in indigenous healings some will end up as teachers some will end up as presid but when you find the reason for being and you connect with the purpose to which you've come into existence who is who is channeling what energies are you channeling what are you bringing to the table when it arrives at the table you the happiest person in life for for me that is the real purpose of life so how did I get to where I am when I started looking for the reason why am I alive after baptizing all these thousands and open all these churches so what is this all no they're going to go to heaven and then they're going to come back again then if God wants us in heaven then why did he put us on earth now it's a big logistical nightmare to kill us move us to heaven and bring us back here again some of these things stopped making sense altogether and as I am right now I should say I don't even know how my life will end but I will not stop learning I don't want to impose my opinion on the video Let's really watch it and have a better discussion down in the comment section if you're watching us for the first time don't forget to subscribe to our Channel like this video and also share thank you and may the good Lord bless you goodbye

Channel: Afripost

Views: 41,215

Keywords: african spirituality, black jesus revealed, joshua maponga calls for respect of african spirituality, pope francis worships black jesus, purin exposes black jesus, whites respond to questions of black jesus

Id: Bo4Yb4h41l8

Length: 37min 44sec (2264 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024