In this reflection by Don Kenobi, we explore The Absurdity of the Inverted Gospel— a thought experiment that asks: What happens when holiness is turned upside down?
By examining Scripture in reverse, we uncover what I call Holiness by Contrast—a method that forces us to see the truth more clearly by imagining its counter-image.
The Inversion That Makes the Truth Obvious
The Question
If the One who called us were profane, then surely we would be called to be profane. So let me ask you plainly: Are you called to holiness… or to profanity?
The Text
The Bible in 1 Peter 1:15 says: “Just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.”
The Contrast
A major antonym of holy is unsanctified. And among the synonyms for unsanctified are: Profane, Unhallowed, Secular, Unconsecrated, Cursed, Damned, Doomed.
The Inversion
Shall We Invert 1 Peter 1:15—Just to See What We Learn?
The original text reads: “Just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.”
Now let us invert the logic, not to teach falsehood, but to reveal truth by its opposite.
If inverted: “Just as He who called you is profane, so be profane in all you do.”
By implication: “Just as He who called you is unconsecrated, so be unconsecrated in all you do.”
By implication: “Just as He who called you is cursed, damned, and doomed, so be cursed, damned, and doomed in all you do.”
The Point
You get the point, we see immediately how absurd, unthinkable, and theologically impossible this inversion becomes. And that is precisely the point:
Your life must never imply what God Himself cannot be.
Conclusion
As He who has called you is holy, blessed, and consecrated, so be ye yourselves sacred, holy, blessed, and consecrated in all that ye do.
Gaza: Oppression, and the Blindness of Selective Morality
A reflective monologue exposing the roots of Gaza’s rage, questioning selective morality, and challenging Christian complicity in injustice
Eustace Shokpeka, first: it was not UNPROVOKED.
Imagine a Nazi German concentration camp that somehow continues to exist 80 years after the end of WWII. Get the picture? Now modify it with the facts.
Gaza is not quite a Nazi concentration camp, but the people are treated like scum.
Back to the Nazi concentration camps - At the end of the war, with Germany defeated, the inmates set upon the SS guards they could lay hands on and beat them to death.
It is normal to hate the one who treated you like a dog, no, far less than a dog. The one who killed your family, starved you for only one crime: Your religion.
Israel did not just “face an attack.” Decades of cruelty turned Gazans into the monsters who launched those raids on October 6/7, or whatever the exact date was.
And even saying “Israel” is not correct. Netanyahu is the architect of the continued repression of Palestinian Muslims.
Here is the part we do not like to admit: when people are denied dignity for generations, they eventually express their humanity in the ugliest possible ways. Not because they were born evil, but because oppression rots the soul. The one who wields the whip always pretends to be shocked when the whipped finally turns and bites. That is the old story of empire, from Rome to Britain to apartheid South Africa. Gaza is simply the latest chapter in a very old book.
And let us not deceive ourselves with selective morality. If your own community had been blockaded for 17 years, denied clean water, denied movement, bombed in cycles, and forced to raise children on rubble and grief, you would not be quoting scripture at me. You would be praying that your rage does not consume your last shred of sanity. We judge Palestinians from the comfort of dry homes and stable electricity. They judge life from funerals. Yet somehow we expect them to behave like saints while their oppressors behave like Pharaoh.
On Taxation: Why Tinubu’s Tax Obsession Misses the Real Path to Prosperity.
24.11.2023
Listening to a certain gentleman from the tax off e on Arise TV, I jotted down my thoughts.
Since then, (November 2023), I’ve written two or three more essays on taxation for taxation’s sake. (Links are at the bottom).
Why do I keep writing? Because, In the absence of real debate, all one can do is post — and hope that someone, someday, will add or detract from it in a constructive way.
Nigerians, it would seem, prefer to hold on to and nurse their grievances — even to the point of recruiting foreign powers to share in that grievance — yet do NOT a darn thing about it.
But let’s not digress.
I write also becayuse, I love tis country, and time is of the essence. Perhaps this nation has already crossed that threshold of deformity — what, in physics, is called Young’s Modulus.I've also written abut this somewhere in my blogs. Perhaps not... And that slim chance — that faint possibility that we haven’t — is the very reason we must never give up.
The reason I put myself out here...
Personally? I believe we have crossed that threshold — not the nation per se, but the people - For in their hearts, they have settled for less — across the board, both the well-educated and the not-so-educated alike.
Yet the hope that one day the status quo will be questioned — that is the reason all who care about this nation must keep trying. for as Nelson Mandela once said:
“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made, and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
Eloquent Guy — But That’s the Problem!
Listening to this gentleman on Channels TV (face blurred), I jotted down my thoughts - this is what I wrote:
Eloquent guy — but that’s a huge problem here in Nigeria.
We are drowning in a sea of half-baked, half-conceived ideas — headed the wrong way but expressed with such eloquence that they sway all but the most thoughtful among us.
I call those thoughtful ones the “Champion-Noticers” — borrowing a phrase from Obama when he described one of his brilliant Supreme Court nominees.
We all should be Champion-Noticers.
The fact is, politicians exploit a basic truth: only a few people in any society think deeply about anything.
So do yourself a favor — Wake up. Observe. THINK. Wake up!
Whatever it takes, Be present!
just be present.
Tinubu’s Problem
Tinubu has a huge problem: He simply cannot think of ways to increase government revenue without increasing the tax burden on the already overburdened.
If we are to believe the gentleman speaking on Channels TV, the government has now dreamt up ways to weaponize data from telecommunications companies in its drive for revenue.
They’ve figured out who spends ₦10,000 monthly on phone bills and who spends just ₦150.
This is like checking the pulse of a dying man — not to give him medicine, but to measure just how much distress is needed to stifle his recovery.
Think About This:
Nigerians build their own roads.
Pay for the evacuation of their own sewage.
Generate their own electricity.
Pay for their own armed security.
And now, they pay 300% more for petrol since he came into office in May 2023.
So I ask the Federal Government:
“What exactly do you want to tax?”
Aren’t we miserable enough? Aren’t we already the most taxed people on earth?
Tax for what? To pay the bizarre salaries of our legislators? To maintain a civil service that fails the people time and again? To fuel the President’s 200-car convoy?
Tax for what?
We cannot protect our pipelines, build or maintain our roads (have yu seen videos of the state pf nroads leading ut of the Midwest to L9koja or from the Midwest to Rivers State?)
Tax for what? We cannot educate our children - give them the education they need to compete in tomnorrow's world! We cannot protect our farmers — or even the genuine herdsmen — from harm.
Tax for what? To pay the bizarre salaries of our legislators or maintain a civil service that fails the people time and again or to buy petrol for the President’s 200-car convoy?
#DeepSigh!
The Bigger Picture
Despite the race against time, we have failed to mobilize and exploit our oil and gas resources in a way that will benefit us before their shelf life expires — before renewables devalue fossil fuels.
And yet, at every seminar or forum, we hear the same eloquent nonsense about the “need for foreign investment.”
We haven’t put up a kobo of our own to develop gas infrastructure... yet we are very coy about providing sovereign guarantees to investors and still?
Still we expect poor little ol' Smith, Davenport & Sons Ltd, London to bring their money. They should develop our resources and make us wealthy? And until they do — nothing happens - except endless seminars where we roll out how much DFID we meed to build one thing or the other...
For real. That's how it is... So much disjointedness...
You may want to check out this post: "Electricity without Vision: The 'Funding Gap' Fallacy"
https://donkenobi.wordpress.com/2025/09/04/392/
A Better Way
How about using our tax money to:
Develop export capacity
Offer sovereign guarantees
Increase food production
To fund human capital Development
How about setting up the biggest industrial parks known to mankind?
Example: Measure 5 km eastwards from the Seme border. Extend it up to our border with Niger Republic. Feed it with gas. Make it a Free Trade Zone - and invite the companies of the world to come stake a claim:
“Free land. Cheap electricity. Come build your plants, warehouses, Data Centres R&D centers, or farms. Just come.”
Caveat: Employ Nigerians.
Then pass a law stipulating that the country buys only products manufactured within these zones.
Do the same at our eastern borders. Move 5 km eastwards from Bakassi. Extend up to Chad - another Free Trade Zone.
Simple? Too simple? They said the same thing when we started work on the concept of Virtual Gas Pipelines.
Digression: I still remember walking through Central Park, New York. It was in May 2010. I was discussing the concept animatedly with my old friend Peter U.
I was living in Houston at the time and had come down to renew my passport.
I recall that President Yar’Adua had just died, and his picture hung at the Nigerian Consulate. What struck me — and still does — was the plastic wreath around his portrait. (It was most embarrassing. Truly, most embarrassing.)
Fast forward to today: Gas-powered electricity plants are being planned in places far from pipelines — with no second thoughts.
(Sometimes we overlook the simplest solutions precisely because they are simple.)
Final Thought
Asiwaju Tinubu needs to rethink this philosophy of taxation for taxation’s sake. It didn’t help Lagos — certainly not in human capital development, nor in creating sustainable businesses and services.
For example: Lagos should have the biggest fishing company in West Africa — it does not. It should have a long chain of beachfront five-star hotels — it does not.
Taxation for taxation’s sake only encouraged waste — grandiose projects with massive cost overruns and uncertain completion dates.I’m pressed for time, so I’ll rest it here.
Timotheus rose when called. “Peter,” he said, smiling, “was impulsive, inattentive, and sometimes incompetent. The only time Scripture records he caught fish, Jesus was the one telling him where to cast his net!”
The crowd roared with laughter.
“But Peter loved Jesus,” Timotheus said, voice breaking. “A love between two men never better documented.”
He paused, struggling to speak. “The only creature that would try to walk on water to reach me—if it saw me walking—would be my dog. That was Peter: affectionate, loyal, courageous.”
He began to cry openly.
“That eagerness to please, that courage, that love—what does the Lord see when He gazes upon you?” he asked, voice trembling. “Ask yourself that question in your quietest moments.”
“Word! Word!” the crowd shouted.
Timotheus sat, weeping into his hands.
Then Ed Ricketts—our Old Professor—stood abruptly. “That’s a great question, Brother Timotheus,” he boomed. “But remember—being a sweet-smelling incense to the Lord makes you a prime target for Satan, the accuser!”
The euphoria quieted. Timotheus nodded. “God is here,” he whispered.
“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith will not fail.”
Then, louder: “After Pentecost, Peter saw himself as incense—pleasing to the Lord. He became a prisoner of Christ, spreading everywhere the fragrance of His knowledge!”
As he spoke, a strange electricity filled the air. People convulsed, cried, shouted “Jesus!” The harmattan wind picked up again. Dust shimmered in the moonlight.
Ed Ricketts concluded, voice shaking:
“Whatever the Lord sees you as, all creation will see you as that thing. Every physical law will recognize you to be what the Lord has declared!”
“Amen!”
“If God calls you a rock,” he thundered, “then unbelief in your rock-ness becomes unrighteousness! Let your faith be credited to you as righteousness. Therefore—be a rock!”
“Amen!”
“Otherwise—you oppose God!”
“Do not oppose God!”
The crowd erupted. People ran in circles, weeping, laughing, shaking. Timotheus sat still, eyes closed, smiling peacefully.
Faith, Sight, and the Cripple
Ed Ricketts finally sat, exhausted. The Oldman turned to me. “Finish it up.”
I stepped forward. “When Peter said, ‘Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee…’—was that not a dare?” I asked. “How could he have known the cripple would rise and walk?”
Silence.
“When Peter lifted the man by the hand, the laws of biology had two choices: back Peter up, or put the universe in a double bind. The Bible says, ‘Immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.’”
“Amen!” Ed Ricketts shouted.
The air was thick again with prayer and tongues. The Oldman’s voice broke through the din:
“Trust God! Think about it: how could a man who failed to walk on water say to a cripple, without a shadow of doubt, ‘Rise up and walk!’? See yourself as God sees you! Trust God!”
“Amen!”
“At the moment when human history hung on Peter’s faith, he came through. God honoured him. God will come through for you when you take your eyes off your limitations and see yourself as He sees you.”
The people shouted “Amen!” again and again.
“Peter’s ‘Rise up and walk’ did not return void. Neither will yours,” the Oldman declared. “So—let’s go do our final vows! Let’s be like Peter. Let’s go change the world. Our frailties don’t matter. God will equip us.”
And as we walked toward the showers, the singing began:
You’re our tower of strength, Our holy mountain. In You and You alone, We place our every hope.
I want my Jesus… I want my Jesus… I want my Jesus—and Jesus alone.
“Woe to You Who Are Rich”: The Sermon We Treat as Just Another Opinion from Just Another Holy Man
I was stunned by the reaction of a Catholic Reverend Father to the election of a socialist mayor by New Yorkers. It’s hard to put this into words, but here it is:
Jesus was a socialist.
The problem isn’t socialism. The real problem is what we’ve been conditioned to believe socialism means. (Too many people have a Pavlovian reaction to the word.)
Sure the greatest socialists in history were atheists; they didn’t believe in God. Perhaps it was because the Church of their time was the biggest exploiter of human labor, or because it was in cahoots with the paramount feudal lords of the age....
Interesting....
Why is this hard to say? Because if I have to point to a white Bentley and tell you it is a white Bentley, then I am clearly not dealing with a normal situation.
For Jesus, capitalism as practiced in many nations today would be anathema.
There is nothing inherently godly about capitalism — if anything, it tends toward evil. Nothing could be clearer than the human propensity to fall into diverse temptations when money is involved.
My TPD 501 professor — a young Ghanaian PhD, some forty-one years ago — defined capitalism simply as “the profit motivation.” Simple.
Then again, there’s nothing inherently evil about being motivated by profit; Scripture recognizes this.
But capitalism is hardly self-regulating. No one clamors for regulation of a system that keeps making them more and more money… except perhaps Warren Buffet and one or two others.
Anyway — I found this item stored in one of my manuscripts. Fortunately, I saved the link I copied it from.
Here’s some food for thought (Enjoy it)
In metaphors, parables, and direct assertions, Jesus issued denunciations of inequitable treatment and the traditions and structural barriers that stood in the way of people’s material well-being.
He said, “Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who are full now” (Luke 6:24–25) and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).
He commended a rich tax collector who pledged to give half his fortune to the poor and repay fourfold anyone he had defrauded (Luke 19:1–10). There is also the poignant parable of the haughty rich man who ignored the desperation of a beggar “covered with sores” and ends up in hell (Luke 16:19–26).
And again, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus declared that people who do not respond to the hunger, thirst, and nakedness of those in need “will go away into eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:31–46).
Jesus railed against the rich without compromise or qualification. But because his social-justice pronouncements concerning poverty and wealth are so extreme, they are often ignored or dismissed as quaint and unrealistic.
Yet when understood in the context of Jesus’s historical setting, what may appear quaint or unrealistic is, in fact, valuable ethical guidance.
No! He just coasts along with every issue. Adds no value given his advantage as a highly placed Northerner, a Christian, a highly placed Catholic Bishop. To me, he’s been ineffective as far as this project — Project Nigeria — is concerned. He prefers, it would seem, to launder the image of and be photographed with discredited politicians, rather than bring clarity to the two sides of the conflicting civilizations and cultures he straddles and understands.
General Digression
I’ve observed a growing malaise amongst many of the self-styled educated elites: their interests, physiological and psychological, always come first.
The psychological need for people to be seen as and thought of by the general Nigerian public as “leaders of thought.” A need which intoxicates, I now believe, and leads those under its influence to want to be seen everywhere — at every peace conference, at every confab (where they talk issues to death with the same talking points you find at the better barbershops), at every TV talk show where they advertise themselves...
A little introspection might have more conscionable or scrupulous folks sit back and ask themselves:
“Why am I doing all THIS every week, every month, every year, or every decade?”
To which I add:
“With the same talking points, same interviewers, same TV stations, same conferences, same expletive venues?”
They lack the ability to judge themselves objectively. Because you need a certain level of shamelessness to engage in the craft (and craftiness) they’ve made their sole preserve.
Try to engage some of them in honest debate — they’ll ignore you. Why? Because having advertised their ‘greatness’ for so long, they think they have all the answers — all the solutions. And the reason we fail, according to their conceit, is that we do not listen to what they have so painstakingly laid down!
As an Example of Their Mindset
Such people might talk about a concept ad nauseam. If you succumb and actually go along, and the implementation fails to yield desired results, they will have a suite of ready explanations:
It either failed because we did not implement it quickly enough —
“We wasted so many years doubting their sagacity, and what do you expect? Time waits for no one!”
Or,
It failed because we failed to implement it “to the letter” as they instructed us —
“I told you! Now see!!”
You see, they never own failure.
I have come to a conclusion that they never own failure because they have never really fixed anything: Not an electric iron, not a simple plug. They don’t understand troubleshooting and, as a result, have never made any process more efficient. Logic simply isn’t their forte.
In addition, they do not understand that real lasting solutions — like hard steel or gold — are forged in a furnace, not in air-conditioned auditoriums far removed in distance and reality from the issues they purport to want to solve!
They are just populists who prefer to sit on the fence and be here when the tide goes here, be there when it goes there, and be everywhere when the tide appears to be everywhere.
Back to Bishop K
All this isn’t about Bishop K, but necessarily he certainly has triggered my anguish about a guild of professional Nigerians who engage in this business of cheap populism disguised as deep patriotism.
What did K do wrong this time? Nothing. Actually, he’s done the right thing. The call against blanket demonization of the Fulani is the right call. I’m just angry it has taken him this long to get there.
I hope he works selflessly to bring clarity to the vexing issues surrounding this hydra-headed crisis. If not him, who?
Kudos to Bishop Onaiyekan, who has done a great job saying there is no Islamization — and that even if there were, Muslims are perfectly within their rights to do so. Proselytizing and converting others to one’s religion is a two-way street.
That is clarity.
With this, I rest. Don Kenobi Passenger in the #Molue The one by the window seat in the rickety Molue, watching quietly with one hand underneath his chin.
