Christianity And Critical Thinking: How The Church Has Suppressed Critical Thinking In Ghana

We should ask ourselves, what is critical thinking? Can one say critical thinking imply detail scepticism toward all knowledge or established truth? Or it means to be inquisitive. To me, I believe critical thinking is reflected in the general universal knowledge applied to all areas of life.

According to Richard Nordquist, he tries to explain critical thinking as the process of independently analysing, synthesizing and evaluating as a guide to behaviour or belief.He further assert that, critical thinking skills include the ability to interpret, verify and reason, all which involve the principle of logic. It is quite obvious that critical thinkers try to think diligently to develop the intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and the confidence in reason.

People who undergo critical thinking realize that no matter how skilful they might be, they can always improve their ability of reasoning and will sometimes fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortion, uncritically accepted social values and self-interest.

The interesting aspect of critical thinkers is that, they strive to improve the circumstances in the world in whatever way they can and contribute to a more rational highly civilized society. At the same time, they also recognize the complexities which are often inherent in engaging in critical thinking.

A critical thinker is someone who does not think simplistically about complicated issues and also consider the right needs of others. From my perspective, I believe, critical thinkers are the symbol of the Socratic symbol ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ this is to the fact that, they realise that many unexamined lives together results in an uncritical, unjust and dangerous world.

The State of Christianity in Ghana and How It has affected the Reasoning of The People

Historically, the arrival of the Europeans in the 15^th century into the Gold Coast brought Christianity to the land. According to Historians, a little success was achieved before it was firmly established in the 15^th century. It is accepted that before the arrival of the Europeans there were different cultural groups across the West African region that were practicing different forms of religion.

However, some African Scholars and theologians like Mbiti have argued that Christianity is indigenous to Africans. He based his argument on the existence of some Africans in the Bible narrations like the Ethiopian Eunuch and Simeon from the Northern part of Africa.

The intrusion of Christianity into the territories that became Ghana had very far reaching influence on the daily activities of Ghanaians. It is an undeniable fact that the coming of Christianity into the country has not yielded any positive results on the lives of the people. The ruthless human sacrifice was abandoned by the aborigines of the land after the coming of the Europeans and Christianity as a whole. Going further, there are several feasibly evidence that shows immense contribution of Christianity to Ghana.

For example, Christian groups aided in the establishment of schools, hospitals, libraries and provided some significant social amenities to the Ghanaian society. Ghana is constitutionally a secular state. Religious Liberty is guaranteed and all the citizens are free to believe and manifest any religious faith. The national populations and housing census in 2012 placed Christianity as the dominant faith at 71% percent of the population. The rise of Christianity in the country can be attributed to the emergence of several prophetic and spiritual pastors who have established the numerous independent churches in the country which are popular known as "One Man" churches.

It is unfortunate that, some people who call themselves men of God in recent times, have imposed such high tittles as Bishops, Prophets, Elders, Deacons, Angel among others, without understanding the role such men of God play. It is pertinent to note that, most of the self-acclaimed men of God have very low educational backgrounds. They do not understand the Bible, which have resulted in the situation where they misinterpret the Holy Bible according to their shallow understanding.

Some of the preachers are charlatans conning the gullible with messages of impending doom. As in 2014, it was disclosed that the number of churches was about 10,000 in the country. This refers not to the number of consecrated buildings, but to the number of faith–based groups that claims allegiance to Christianity. Most of these churches currently can be described as commercial entities and it has led a strong competition among the churches.

Christianity and Its Influence on the Reasoning of Ghanaians

The great increase in the number of Christian churches has affected the spiritual, physical and the psychological lives of some adherent of Christianity. In Ghana, many Christians balk at the mention of critical thinking whenever it is associated with the church. Usually Christians connect the phrase critical thinking with scepticism and criticism of the Bible in general.

In Ghana for example, the Pentecostals, Charismatics and the Independent churches want nothing to do with critical thinking because they perceived it as an earthly knowledge or worldly philosophy which tries to challenge the Bible. The following paragraphs with the help of examples will show how Christianity has affected the rational ability, the sense of judgement and the opinions of Christians in Ghanaians.

Contemporary Christians ascribe everything in their life to the making of the Supernatural Being. According to the Christian concept of God, he is seen as eternal being who has the power to create and preserve all things. God is known as both transcendent and immanent. This means that, God in the Christian context is someone who is independent from the universe and at the same time involved in the world.

However, Christians in Ghana holds the assertion that good situations come from God and bad circumstances comes from devil. Most Christians have the notion that being a true Christian who prays and go to church regularly is the antidote to his or her problems. This has developed laziness among some Christians toward their work.

The lackadaisical attitude of Christians has made them very poor. Instead of a Christian paying a lot of attention to his work for the betterment his or her life, the person will sought to prayers which they believe to be a divine intervention from God that will liberate them from their wretchedness. Christianity in contemporary Ghana is so neck deep in the type of unethical seeking of wealth that Jesus himself preached in Luke 18:24-25.

It is becoming an occurrence that the church in Ghana today is turning into a controversial institution which is busy promoting illegitimate and illegal seeking of wealth and affluence. Also, whenever a bad omen befalls someone in the Christian fraternity due to his or her own negligence, the person will seek prophetic assistance from a pastor instead of assessing and making amendments in his life.

Upon consulting the pastor, they are compel to pay huge sums of money as consultation fee. The so called consultation which are paid to the pastors increase their coffers, in contrast their members continue to remain in their poor conditions. The gap between pastors and their members continue to widen, whereby every head pastor of these independent churches is always getting richer while their members continue to stay in their devastating wretchedness. These self-acclaimed men of God are able to buy big cars and house and do not even care about the well-being of their followers.

The reliance on God for everything by Christians in Ghana has also placed pastor in a position which has enabled them to control and engineer the thinking ability of some people. In recent times, the prophetic and the charismatic pastors have proven to solve almost all the hitches and the snag situation of their members. These actions of pastors make people to hold them in a high esteem in the detriment of their self.

They tend to listen to the directions of these pastors instead of following their own sense of purpose and critical thinking. In a situation whereby someone is suffering from a sickness, this individual will choose to take the ailment to the church house instead of taking it to the hospital for a proper health care.

It is becoming obvious that, the church in Ghana these days have become the second if not the first health care agency in the country. People with high academic excellence has also fall victim to this whereby they tend to seek quality health care in the house of God instead of the hospital. Taking the people of Jehovah Witness and blood transfusion as a scenario, it seems the adherents of the Jehovah Witness would rather allow their ward to die instead of donating blood to save him or her.

They back their actions against blood transfusion with the doctrines of their church and Bible which do not allow them to donate blood. We can testify that the mind of these people have been blinded by their church doctrine which does not give them any option to think for themselves. As citizen of a country, they refuse to vote during general elections in the country and claims the teachings of their do not support such actions. What baffles me sometimes is that these people claim to be the citizen of the country but fails to exercise their franchise but whenever something is not going on well with the government system they try to voice out.

Going further, one peculiar way in which one can observe how Christianity has affected the logical thinking of Ghanaians is how they have enculturated Christian and Europeans culture whiles aborting their own customs and traditions. On this particular note, Christians in Ghana have adopted Christianise culture and frown upon some of the African culture and way of life.

The sad aspect of this is that, most Christians think their own beliefs, values, customs and social behaviour seen as devilish and mischievous when they go contrary to the teaching in the bible. Some contemporary Christian’s claims to be a chief disqualify someone to be a true Christian. They justify their actions by saying chieftaincy is associated with indigenous practices as sacrifice and libation which is seen as devilish and therefore go contrary to the teaching of the Christian community.

Also some Christians find it atrocious to give their children indigenous names which are associated with the indigenous belief. Some Christians find it abominable to name their offspring after names like Antoa, Pra, Ankobra and other indiginous names which is be associated with the indigenous religion. They rather opt for strange names which they don’t even understand since they classify these names as ‘’Abosom din’’.

WRTTEN BY ANANE BISMARK AMOFAH
CONTACT NUMBER: 0245371277
Richard Nordquist, Grammer.about.com, November, 2, 2015. Retrieved on 3^rd August, 2016.

Ibid.
Interview with Agyemang Samuel, Political science graduate of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, 1 August 2016.

D.E.K., Amenumey, Ghana: A Concise History from Pre-Colonial Times to the Twentieth Century, Accra: Woeli

Publishing Services, 2008, p.168-169.
www.ghanaembassy.com , retrieved on 3^rd August 2016.