James, there are many lessons I have learnt from a play "Macbeth"by the father of English, William Shakespeare. One is that I learnt how a good man is made evil. Macbeth's contacts with his wife, the three witches, his friends and personal ambitions 'subterfuged' him to be so. However, I have also learnt how an evil man is made good by his contacts. In this, I take a leaf from Biblical Paul, the Apostle. His contact with an angel of the Lord on his way to Damascus, his own will to be good and his own retrospection into his life made him good ultimately. I have always wondered, save for the story of life of Jesus Christ Himself, who else was good and lived as such. And here you come with such a story, a fairly-tale genre piece. It is amazing that this Lady in the story as exemplified by the application of John 3:16 has also provided such an epitome of a good person being made good by her contacts. What else could I say. Suffice it to say God is great great. He manifested Himself also through the philanthropic deeds of this Lady on the Gypsy boy. Keep up the evangellism, James. God loves you and every one abundantly. Give us more of such testimonies, although this one was a little more hypothetical. You are just another harbinger of the Good Tidings of the Lord Jesus. Inu mukhale abusa basi. God bless you, James and every one who reads this chain email.
My esteemed readers, I got a few comments form the Netters on the blog but in the spirit of ethical conundra, they will reamin nameless. But here is what one said on my comment:
So Vynn too can go into the Bible. Blessed.
Another one followed when I had replied in this manner:
****,
When you truly love another without conditions,you will always know what to say or how to treat them, just as I have done to James..
He finally gave up the argument with these compliments:
happy to you my bro[ther]....
But ealier another Netter had commented:
Vynn am amazed by your knowledge of things spiritual. If James becomes abusa, I think we will all be blessed having you as our deacon.
****
I was not surprised in the least by the comments from such Netters. But one thing kept hanging on my mind. Why did they doubt about my mastery of the Bible? I never wanted to advance an argument based on personalities of the debatants including myself, who probably controversy has been ostensibly inseparable with my personality. I am aware in logic, or more precisely in the art of debating, you do not attack the personality of your opponent. Logicians say that tantamounts to committing a fallacy of namecalling. Now to cut the long story short, I have to state here categorically that I am God-fearing man and intrinsically pious. Many people that know me think, I am a drunk. I am not. I do not remember the time when drink became a problem with me, except to say that maybe naivety coupled with bashfulness in my frustrations in having to cope with life having landed, rather accidentally in a career which I was told in black and white in college as well as from textbooks that I had read never to expect to be rich so soon or at all from the craft of journalism. Maybe in such fits of monomania on the predicament I had to live for the rest of my life, I might have had one too many in attempts to ward off the boredom, which only daparted me for as long as the alcohol was in me. Many thanks to Jika Nkolokosa, my mentor, who inculcated in me, in his daily holimilies, the virtues of objectivity--factual accuracy, truth-telling and and balance in professinalism of having to live by the pen. I was not surprised when I took took to drinking from an age of 17. When I was a young man my father who was a teetotaller used to tell me that he never touched alcohol not by design but that every time he tried to drink the alcohol made him terribly sick and decided that alcohol was not the thing for him. But he used to warn us that one of you--meaning any one of the kids--would have taste buds for alcohol--and I happened to have been one. But for the past two years, a sudden realisation dawned on me when I used to experience similar effects my father used to have. My body slowly rejects alcohol. I am not surprised at all. It still makes me sick in the same way it made him. I wish he had liveda a little longer so I could testify on his experience. He passed on in on April 1, 1999 aged 70. In short, alcohol is no longer my thing. In his time, my dad loved reading the Bible, a hobby I have taken up lately. It now has become an effective substitute for alcohol. I think it is OK with me after all Dad hit the 70-year mark as the Bible sort of prescribed that man will live seven times 10 after the Destruction that saw Noah and his family survice in what has become to be called the Noah's Ark, to tell it all to us about the wrath of God at one point in history of tis universe. It is enriching, in fact very enriching to read the Bible.
