Author: Deji Okegbile

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction….The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” – Martin Luther King Jr.   War has not just been history but a part of many peoples lives. The two World Wars of the 20th Century were not a consequence of great movements or tides,...

Today is All Souls Day. On 31 October 1517, a monk named Martin Luther walked to a church in the German town of Wittenberg and nailed a document – his 95 theses – to its wooden doors, lighting the fuse of the Reformation. The Reformers emerged to correct the decay in the church as the pillar and foundation of truth, hence some scholars argued that it was a challenge to the Papacy centuries of compromise and abuse. Luther’s theses and protest against the official teaching and practice of the Church in Germany was a call to the church to...

In an age when the church and the world continue to invest in a carefully crafted identities and social structures, the Gospel reading today calls us to arise by becoming true followers of Jesus and participate in radical transformation in people’s relationship and identities. The truth is that our identities in Jesus Christ are so opposite of what the world expects hence, it is time for the world to ‘listen to the cry of God coming from the mouths of modern Bartimaeuses willing to challenge the identities we’ve assigned them.’ There is a famous and the last healing story...

In our Hebrew scripture and Gospel reading today there is a theme of authority and submission as against our culture of egos, discrimination and competition. In the Gospel, Jesus articulates for us the model of spirituality and politics of ministry, leadership, and greatness in service. Shaped by harsh ideological discrimination and servitude, the Gentile’s cultural frameworks resonates with our secular ideology. The notion of cultural frameworks of rule, greatness, mastery, and pre-eminence over others within Mark 10 also resonates with the prevailing global ideas of building borders and calling for making a particular nation ‘Great Again.’ Leadership framework is...