Persecution Trails My Switch Of Religion

Dear Agatha,

You are my last hope. I was a Muslim until I met a lady who is a Christian. She started by giving me a Bible and some passages from it to read.

When I declared my change of religion to my family members, they instantly threaten to disown me should I go ahead with my decision.

I shared the challenge I was facing with my family with this friend of mine. She in turn told me not to worry that the God I now serve is greater than he who is in the world and that He would finish what He has started in my life.

When I went home my family locked me up. They say I was under some evil influences and made me to go without food or water for two days.

Thereafter, I was rendered incommunicado as my phone was seized and damaged. I was therefore unable to communicate with my friend for a while.

After a long time of battling with my parents, I was eventually sent packing and told never to come back into the family.

I went looking for my Christian friend but was told she has relocated to Lagos. In fairness to her, she told me she will be relocating but I didn't think it would be so soon. She couldn't tell me because there was no way she could get me since my phone had been damaged.

Right now I live with a friend who treat me like a slave because I have no-where to go. Also, I can't afford schooling any longer because of lack of money. I don't have a home, no future and she kept insisting on me having faith but now, this burden is too much for me and she is nowhere to be found, and not even a forwarding address for me to reach her. All my friends, cousins, relations don't want to see or have anything to do with me. Please I want to know if this hardship is what it takes to be a Christian? Nobody wants to listen to me at all. Her abandonment of me makes me feel she lured me into needless suffering.

I want to go back to my former religion but things are getting tighter and worse everyday.

I am alone with nobody to support me. Do you think what I am going through is a true test of my willingness to serve the God I now pledge loyalty to?

Whatever, I think, Kate Igwe, if she is reading, owes me some explanations. I really want to know she really needs to talk to me because I can't seem to go back or forward. I am transfixed. I really need her help. This is my new number, 07056834424.

Idris.

---

Dear Idris,

Change is the most difficult battle in life. It is one that you do with a lot of determination because like overcoming addiction, slips would occur, depression would come, regrets are often, and anger against yourself for not staying to your own ways in the first place.

Often, the challenge and pains of change are excruciating to the point of despair. Eventually though they all frizzle away for the beauty embedded in the change. What you are going through is the dark and very bleak period where the expected light at the end of the tunnel seems not to be appearing at all.

The fact that your life seems to be hanging on the cliff and that even the person, who dragged you into it all isn't anywhere in sight, makes the burden of your change very challenging and lonesome. There is no way you can withstand this battle without the help and support of friends who understand what you are going through; to give you encouragement, to help you stand up when the journey is most slippery and unfriendly. You are troubled because it has become something like a solitary journey into a strange and unknown world.

Conversion into a new religion or ways isn't without some difficulties. It takes more than mere declaration to real faith as well as thirst for the unknown to make the attendant resistance to the decision to the change bearable.

She should have told you from the beginning that the cross you are about to carry is indeed a very heavy one, one that would witness your entire family, friends as well as neighbours abandoning you.

Any change in life is usually met with so much oppositions as well as resentments.

It is most difficult for you because it is religion. Leaving the religion of your family and friends for one they consider strange is bound to elicit this type of hard-line measures as well as rejections from everyone who is familiar.

What you can do to make this journey more approachable is to look at the story of Bible characters that went through such transformation. One of such persons is Moses who left the comfort of the palace, familiar customs, family and friends to embrace and put His faith in a God He didn't know existed for the first 40 years of his life. Like you, He went through a period of desert experience, when nobody understood what he was all or talking about.

There is no way your family would understand your new passion or your motivation. In their shoes, you too would do precisely what they are doing. You would think what they are thinking and probably take the same rash decisions you have taken.

In their shoes, how would you react later in life if your child comes to inform you that he or she has decided to go back to your former religion or one you are completely ignorant of? Chances are you would do the same thing your parents are doing.

They are not doing it because they don't love you but they don't understand why you have to do what you are doing. They feel pained as well as disappointed that you are rejecting everything they represent hence their decision too to reject you for the purpose of making you come back to your senses.

God may be using this period to really test your suitability as well willingness to sustain your new faith, and carry out the assignment He has for you.

Your friend wasn't the one who called you. You were called by God to do an assignment for Him. You are all alone and going through all these pains because you are putting your faith and trust in the wrong places. Because you are still a neo-natal in His hands, if you open your mouth to ask of Him anything now, He would instantly grant your request. He is only waiting for you to display your trust in Him by spreading out your hands wide for Him to lift you up.

There is no way a father or mother can carry a child without the indication or willingness of the child to be carried.

He is right there watching over you and ready to help you make all these easy if only you ask Him personally and not a friend who may have introduced you but who doesn't care enough to leave you with a manual.

There is no religious change without pains. It has nothing to do with Christianity but with all the fears of change wired into the human system. It is this fear that has made your family and friends reject you completely. They are very afraid of the effect it would have on them all as well as the implication for the family.

If it is any consolation, you don't have the copyright for this challenge. There are several people like you who went through more excruciating experiences when they decided to make a U-turn from their family traditions.

It is the concomitant sacrifices that go with the package of change. From nothing, you will rise to something before you know it.

But for now, you have to endure the harsh treatment from this friend, while you attach yourself to a church. By asking God for help, would direct you to a church where you would get all the help you need to smile again.

It is well. Determination and trust will make this journey of change more endurable.

Good luck.