Even after Pastor Enoch Adeboye had distanced himself from the arrest of a tictoker that did not respected him Olumide Ogunsanwo (Seaking), the Church’s PR unit still released a message that breached him. The church claimed that Pastor Adeboye weighed in before the video was reviewed. After seeing it, they think: “It has become necessary to let the law take their course.” I will not pretend to know how the Church’s PR unit runs, but this is one of the cases where wisdom would have been profitable to control them about their public communication.

From the clumsy wording of their statement is an unsure of which video they said had not been reviewed when their pastor commented on it. Was it the original of Ogunsanwo or the Christian Youth Forum concerned who stated why they got him arrested? Either way, to say that their go spoke out of turn is uncomfortable. But it was not the only part of their statement that was poorly thought out. To say that the law should take its course on a false question like this is just behind a needle. It is actually how moral cowardice looks.

Even a child in Nigeria knows that no law completely defines our lives completely. What we call the law is mostly a bunch of proposals that are enforced based on the willing circumstances. The “law” can easily be put aside if certain characters with money and influence want it. Recently, a legal Luminary announced that he – and unilaterally also instructed his lawyers to instruct the police to withdraw a criminal criminal case. This is how the police are remotely controlled by small men with large egos who will conduct a random user of social media over comments that they should be too important to notice.

Sometimes you wonder why the countries that invented these social media networks do not have incidents of billionaires, pastors, CEOs, politicians, public officials, lawyers, religious organizations, etc., who cramp over insults online. How will their police not be unemployed enough to run over several state lines to seize people over online comments and imprison them until any large man instructs otherwise?

Nigeria’s adopted elites can afford to be petty because of the nature of our laws and the defective police system. The Nigeria police are not – and we can claim that they have never been – an autonomous agency that performs their constitutionally prescribed obligation with independent professionalism. They are mostly honorable for the rich and powerful, and therefore largely shaken by principle competence. Things have gotten worse with the current IG Kayode Egbetokun, under whose clock a record number of abuse is committed by the police. They have always been abusive and oppressive, but under Egbetokun they have raised subsequent social media commentators to a crucial agenda. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that Egbetokun is overcompensate for the uncertainty to be labeled as an “illegal IG” and cannot stretch the sadistic officers under his watch. His illegitimacy causes him to cover his appearance of weakness with unnecessary brutality. His heritage will be that he monitored an era where the police took his institutionalization of injustice to stratospheric levels.

The only reason why Ogunsanwo was arrested and arrested was because some people who could affect the police decided to bow their power. What law did RCCG refer to which had become necessary to be enforced? No law anywhere prevents us from not respecting our elderly. Respect is a cultural norm, an ethical requirement required for a society to function, but there are no legal obligations to give them anyone as standard. Even Jesus Christ called Herod a “fox”. If it was a current society, some people would have shouted that Jesus should have respected constituted authority. Jesus routinely criticized the Pharisees and the Sadduches, the religious leaders, intellectuals and elders in their time. If someone does the same thing on Tiktok today, people like VDM would jump out and criticize them. What exactly has not seen eyes before?

I hope that RCCG learns a lesson of this and, in the future, knows what it can afford to do or not as a doubt the largest Pinse whale in Nigeria. As a church, it is guilty of the public to always project higher ethical standards in their behavior and public communication. If the worldly standard is for those with social efforts to submit critics to an unfair system of punishment to satisfy their ego, the church must act differently – and better. You are not called to be the same as the world; You should project higher moral standards. It is not for nothing that Jesus imagined that the church would be a city on a hill.

Here is what I think is the problem: too long, Christians have openly rushed how Muslims get away with using violence to solve points when they feel not respected. I suppose copying the same tendency to show power is what drove the Christian Youth Forum concerned to try to execute respect “legally” by exposing a critic to police abuse while promising to hunt more. RCCG’s press release gave them as support for such initiatives to deter the others who have often transformed criticism of its go into content creation. Unfortunately, it is a road that is not only unsustainable but also declining.

They should know that as they grow into a formidable institution, they will of course attract much more anti-establishment. Their response should not be to post their answers to Gbàrànmídelérís in as the Christian Youth Forum concerned who will do the dirty work to look up critics while they, like Pontious Pilate who washed their hands from the crime he was morally guilty, pretend they That it is simply the law that does its thing. If they see themselves as a church’s organization that will still exist in another 100 years, they should think and act in the long term in their approaches to issues like this. They should take clues from the centuries old churches as the Catholic Church that has maintained their institutional dignity for relentless criticism from all sides. Imagine a world where the Pope uses the police to chase their social media critics.

RCCG should act with similar self -consideration and set aside to drive stupid correspondences to the public. They are not the first church that will be criticized, and they will not be the last. Powerful religious organizations routinely encounter review and they absorb some of the serious critics. I am not talking about simple observations lobbied from the corner of a bedroom by a tictoker that practices a techno phone, but critical attacks from formidable cultural organizations that take on churches about aspects of their doctrine. Are these churches fold up and die? No. When they respond, they do not fly into rage. They project the ideals of Christian ethics and intellectualism.

If RCCG cannot handle only one tictoker, which is hope for them that they would know what to do if anyone ever writes a popular book about them as Dan Brown’s The Davinci Code did with the Catholic Church? What happens if someone does a popular show that criticizes their doctrines like Mormon’s book did with the Saints of the Later Day (Mormon Church? The Saint Baulked Baulked and then Turned satire into a advertising tool for their church. Would have been a mess and a miss Opportunity if they had chosen to arrest the artist.

RCCG has a university, a structure where they can build an intellectual agenda to defend what is best with them (and restructure their shortcomings). Instead of shortening the opportunities by taking the shortcut for violence, they should invest in creating their own apologists – people trained in cultural studies/theology that can project the positive side of them to the world to balance the negative stories about them. That strategy will take a view of their people for best education, polish them until they are equipped to push back their critics with intelligence.