THE AFRICAN EXPERIENCE OF GOD THROUGH THE EYES OF AN AKAN WOMAN

 

The Living God

"The fool says in his heart 'There is no God.' " In traditional Africa there are no such "fools." In his inaugural lecture delivered at Ibadan in 1974, Professor Bolaji Idowu discussed "the reality and unreality of God" under the title "Obituary: God's or man's?," bringing to that university the "God is dead" debate of the 1960s. Idowu believes that "man's estimate of himself and his destiny, his interpretation of the phenomena of the universe and his philosophy of history depend upon this one central point: belief in God, because He is; or unbelief. . ." Elsewhere Idowu asserts that "God is universal and so is revelation." Here he agrees with the Tanzanian who said that as people everywhere see the one sun, so they all have the one God.(1) On the other hand, Betty Goviden, in her article "In search of our own wells," quotes Malusi Mpumlwanas, a South African poet, who asks "What do I mean when I say I believe in God?. . . . Is God of the 'Die Stem' and 'Nkosi Sikelela' one and the same God?"(2)

In traditional Africa, that is, Africa when people are being themselves, discounting Christianity, Islam, and Western norms, God is experienced as an all-pervading reality. God is a constant participant in the affairs of human beings, judging by the everyday language of West Africans of my experience. A Muslim never projects into the future nor talks about the past without the qualifying phrase insha Allah, "by the will of Allah." Yoruba Christians will say "DV" ("God willing"), though few can tell you its Latin equivalent, and the Akan will convince you that all is "by the grace of God." Nothing and no situation is without God. The Akan of Ghana say Nsem nyina ne Onyame ("all things/affairs pertain to God"). That Africans maintain an integrated view of the world has been expressed by many. In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela writes:

My father was an unofficial priest and presided over ritual. . . . and local rites. . . ., he did not need to be ordained, for traditional religion of the Xhosa is characterized by a cosmic wholeness so that there is little distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the natural and the supernatural.(3)

The Yoruba respond to prayer with Ase, the divine and highly potent power with which Olodumare (God) created the universe and maintains its physical laws.(4) The belief in the all-pervading power and presence of God endows the universe with a sacramental nature.(5) The African view of the world is nourished by a cosmology that is founded on a Source Being, the Supreme God, and other divine beings that are associated with God. As God is the foundation of life, so nothing happens without God. God lives, God does not die, and so indeed humans do not die. Even when we do not occupy a touchable body, we still live on.

The way we experience God is portrayed in the language we use about God, especially the names by which God is known. Early researchers into AR like G. Parrinder, E. B. Idowu, and J. S. Mbiti have recorded for us several African names of God with copious annotations, which it is not necessary to rehearse at this stage.(6) What needs to be said is that these names are still current and that more names descriptive of people's experience of God are available in proverbs, songs, and prayers. These names, says Idowu, are not mere labels: "They are descriptive of character and depict people's experience of God."

When words fail, symbols take over. For the Akan of Ghana the Adinkra symbols, the minuscule figures for gold weights and those on royal maces, include many that are theophorous. The star in Adinkra is a symbol that says "Like the star, I depend on God and not on myself." The symbol of hope says, "God, there is something in the heavens, let it reach my hands." The dependence of the existence of the human spirit on the spirit of God is expressed in another symbol; and the more well known Gye Nyame is the Akan expression of the belief that without God nothing holds together, and is variously interpreted as "except God" or "unless God" -- God is experienced as the very foundation of existence.(7) All these examples demonstrate the difficulty of translation and the inadequacy of words to express our experience of God.

People believe that all the good and well-being they enjoy come from God, and that if one is not yet enjoying well-being it is because one's time has not yet come. "AR holds that the world and nature are good gifts that God entrusted to human beings: they provide nourishment for life, security and home for our bodies" (Lutheran World Federation [LWF] document on AR). The experience of God as beneficent is not only Muslim or Christian, but a living faith of Africans that has been reinforced by these "missionary" religions.