True Story: Chanel’s House and Chanel Boateng: Surviving Marriage to a Nigerian ‘Pastor’.. Our Wife: (My Story)- Part 1.. [3 min read]

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Surviving Marriage to a Nigerian ‘Pastor’.. Our Wife: (My Story)- Part 1..

Surviving Marriage to a Nigerian Pastor (Part Two) No Hate like Christian LOVE!

So I recently came across this lady’s account of her disastrous marriage on YouTube. Watching it was horribly compelling. The worst thing about it was that her husband was supposedly an unofficial Pastor. As someone who has grown up in the Nigerian Christian “scene”, I totally get it, that some people are so committed to the church, and well-respected in the church, that they like to be thought of as “Pastors” even though they have not been officially ordained. Their lack of ordination is often treated as a technicality.
The first thing I want to say about her is to just comment on how beautiful she is. Secondly I could relate with so many of the things she was saying, not just about her marriage, but about the whole church environment, how her husband was so committed to the church that he was essentially married to the lead pastor.  She also spoke about the various financial offerings that are often requested or even demanded in these churches, and I was nodding my head in agreement. Many of these financial requests are ridiculous, frankly, and go far beyond any biblical requirements. Some of the offerings twist Old Testament ordinances in a way which simply does not make sense in the modern context.

Talking specifically about her marriage, a few things I would like to draw out are these:
Firstly she rushed into this marriage. She did not truly know who this man was before marriage.  As I have said previously, the best thing that you can do for yourself before getting married, after knowing your own self and why you want to get married, is to truly know the real character of the person you are marrying, and make sure it is excellent.
Secondly, the fact that this man was supposedly a “Pastor”, albeit unordained, did not stop him from treating her horribly in ways that included domestic violence and financial abuse. Ironically, it was because he was a Pastor that she was so keen on marrying him in the first place, because she thought it indicated a serious individual. Now follows a point I have made so many times on this blog:  What you are looking for in an individual is genuine Christ-like character. To any fellow Christians reading this, please, please, please, please, please believe me that being deeply involved in church, being highly respected in a church, holding a high office in a church are not, any of them, even being a top pastor, even a global overseer of a church denomination,  a true indication of Christ-like character. So please do not think that you can bypass a critical evaluation of the individual just because they are deeply active in church.  Unfortunately the church has been greatly overrun by ungodly values, and what you will often find in different churches is a reflection of the world outside, ie many churches subscribe to exactly the same ungodly values, the same social hierarchies, the same squabbling over power, money and prestige, as the world outside. Furthermore, we’ve all heard of cases where even the highest levels of Pastor have acted in ways which indicate not just momentary lapses, but even fundamental lack of any real commitment to truly being like Jesus.