Marrying a believer from a different tribe…

Q:  As a Believer why can I not marry another Believer though from an “osu” background? [First published on 8 March 2009]

Firstly, salvation has provided a way of escape from such a background. Paul describes every non-Jew (that includes osu and non-osu) before salvation as being without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world, stuck in old sin-dead life and incapable of responding to God. (Ephesians 2:12).  But the moment one believes in his heart and confesses with his mouth that Jesus Christ is Saviour and Lord, all sins are forgiven, he is TRANSlated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, the slate is wiped clean, that old arrest warrant cancelled and nailed to Christ’s Cross. (Colossians 2:13-14 MSG). In another place, the Scripture declares if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV.) The dedication to an idol is gone and salvation has come.

Secondly, idols are nothing. When Paul was asked whether it was acceptable or not to eat meat dedicated to idols, his response was clear: Well, we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God. There may be so-called gods both in heaven and on earth, and some people actually worship many gods and many lords. But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we live for him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given life. However, not all believers know this. Some are accustomed to thinking of idols as being real. (1Corinthians 8:4-7 NLT)

Thirdly, a foremost Nigerian storyteller, Chinua Achebe expressed my sentiments when he, in his No Longer at Ease, addressed this self-same issue. In his words, “Osu is like leprosy in the minds of our people…our fathers in their darkness and ignorance called an innocent man osu, a thing given to idols, and thereafter he became an outcast, and his children, and his children’s children for ever. But have we not seen the light of the Gospel?’  He went on “What made an osu different from other men and women? Nothing but the ignorance of their forefathers. Why should they, who had seen the light of the Gospel, remain in that ignorance?”