Heart Burning or Consumed? Confronting disparity between faith & practice
Doctor George Kwadwo Amofah is a worried man. A gifted Christian who devotes more than a fair share of a medical doctor’s time to matters dealing with his faith, he is worried that many Christians are “making a mockery of our faith and the Jesus Christ we profess to serve”. In this concern, however, he is not alone: there is hardly any discussion on religion anywhere in which this worrying trend in Christianity does not feature.
That is why Dr Amofah has written this book. As one who seems to spend a lot of his time doing the work of God — indeed, he is described as a pioneer of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Ghana — the author is more or less a participant-observer. For a man who performs diagnoses all his life, one-half of his book is devoted to diagnosing the root of this problem.
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Each of the 11 chapters deals, in detail, with one cause or the other of the errors and the fallacies multiplying in the body of Christ with the frightening speed of agitated cancer cells.
His theme is taken from page nine of the book, based on his thesis that the Christian’s heart, after encountering scripture, should start burning, “leading to a transformation of their lives”. For many, however, the heart is “consumed through false interpretation, inappropriate motivation and wrong application for self-serving purposes”.
Reasons
There are other reasons for writing this book. Chief among them are doctrinal issues that have divided and still divide Christians. For example, is it true that once saved, forever saved? Can a Christian fall sick? In other words, is falling sick an indication of lack of faith? Should we blame the devil for every misfortune or accident in life?
Part of the problem, he concludes, is “inadequate Christian initiation and foundation”. He is here writing about people who are Christians because they were born into the religion. There are also those who got converted through an emotional one-time event and have, after that, not had the benefit of holistic teachings to establish them.
No wonder he says with a pain in his heart that it is not uncommon to see Christians busily chewing gum in church and “they may remove the gum just before receiving Holy Communion!” (This is in obvious reference to the author’s fellow Catholics).
One by one, Amofah takes on these issues with the incisiveness of one who is used to cutting through delicate human parts with scalpels and forceps.
Next he identifies “Excesses due to Emotional Exuberance and Immaturity”, a symptom which can be found in the noisy prayers at night and the almost abnormal, purely emotional behaviour evidenced by wild gesticulations and shouting during group prayer sessions, “with a mistaken belief that they are filled with the Holy Spirit”.
What are the causes? His conclusion is that life’s challenges, such as childlessness and poverty and a seeming lack of personal progress in life, push desperate people, mostly women, into the hands of so-called men of God itching for fame, power and wealth.
Bizarre
The author speaks for the majority of Ghanaians in his merciless condemnation of the bizarre situation where prophets now fondle the breasts and private parts of married women with anointing oil!
Another cause of the very troubling situation is the inordinate ambition of so-called men of God to outshine and outdo each other, leading to some of them dabbling in magic, occult and demonic practices.
These excesses, notwithstanding, the author is confident that there is hope for the future. The solution, he concludes, lies in the human being experiencing real life-transforming salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, followed by intentional discipleship.
Chapter eight, which deals with the divinity of Jesus (is He God?) and Chapter nine, which examines the role of the Virgin Mary in Christianity, qualify to be included in the Book of Christian Apologetics.
Dr Amofah is evidently a well-read writer who has done his home-work so well that the only way to defeat his arguments is to put aside the Bible. Arguing with the bible as the point of reference, however, Dr Amofah disarms the intellectual and religious debaters of his age.
Fallacious doctrines
The book takes on people whose view is that the born-again Christian can go on sinning and still expect to go to heaven. Quoting copiously from scripture, he tears down such fallacious doctrines, contending that it is such beliefs that are contributing to so much immorality in Christianity.
To every person who calls himself or herself a Christian – Orthodox, Pentecostals or Charismatics - this book is food: food for thought. It does what the bible does best: it rebukes, corrects and is profitable for instruction in righteousness.
Don’t be fooled by its size. ‘Heart Burning or Consumed’ is a dynamite. It is packed with enough nitroglycerin to explode myths, pull down strongholds in people’s minds and shatter misconceptions.
However, unlike so many other people these days who are majoring on the faults of Christians with the ulterior motive to discredit the religion, this author undertakes his diagnoses with one purpose in mind: to heal and strengthen the body.
For the work of a scientist, the proofreading is commendable. There is, however, a challenge with the binding: the leaves come apart too easily.
