Reactions to confessions of a juju priest

People asked questions like:

What did Balaam suggest to the King of Moab that made him eventually overcome the Israelites?
Where in the Bible is that recorded?
Why did you refer to God as Nalsa?
Why did you give your post such a weird title?

I’ll attempt to answer all these question and probably more to the best of my ability, because you have to bear in mind that I’m also learning as progress in life.

In other words my understanding and knowledge on any subject matter might evolve or change all together because I’m constantly experiencing new things every single day.

Let’s start with the first two questions.

This event is actually recorded first in Numbers 31:16 and in Revelations 2:14.

Balaam after pronouncing blessing on the Israelites obviously had a change of heart.

I believe that Balaam, through the course of his interactions with God, obviously saw God as very tolerant and somewhat weak, especially after the encounter of his conversation with his donkey.

He must have wondered why God spared his life, and further concluded that for such a powerful God to spare his life and even use him as a medium to bless His people, God surely would not be upset if he made a few suggestions to Balak.

You also have to remember that the king sent Balaam away in anger without a single dime, not even transport fare.

This must have served as extra motivation for Balaam to come up with this suggestion. So what did Balaam actually suggest to the king?

His suggestion was that the only way to lure the Israelites would be through some kind of false friendship. This friendship would allow the Israeli men to mingle with the Moabite women, attend their parties, eat their scrumptious meals and eventually partake in the grievous worship of the Moabite gods.

Balaam reasoned that the only thing that would make God turn His face (albeit temporarily) from His beloved people would be if they abandoned Him and served other gods. And as recorded in Numbers 25, the plan worked.

Now some people may wonder why the Israelites allowed themselves to be swayed by flimsy temptations such as friendship and food.

Firstly you have to remember that the Moabites are descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, and so they never saw the Moabites as enemies.

On the contrary they saw them as distant relatives. In fact, there’s no record (before Balak made the suggestion to Balaam) that God had instructed the Israelites to fight against the Moabites in claiming the land of Canaan.

This makes me wonder why Balak instigated Balaam to place a curse on this people.

Secondly why was “ordinary” food such a temptation?

Place yourself in their shoes. These were a people that even as slaves to the Egyptians, they still managed somehow to enjoy decent meals. Then they go through the wilderness and are fed with only manna and water. They found this unbearable so much so that they complained to Moses at one time that it would have been better if they were back in Egypt.

Any wonder why it would be easy to lure these people with food different from the precious manna they had been eating for decades.

Now unto the question of why I referred to God as Nalsa. My sister was one of those who asked this question.

Inspiration for this came from C.S. Lewis in his book series, “Chronicles of Narnia”.

In the first book of the series, “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”, the lion was portrayed as God and was named Aslan. Aslan is the Turkish word for lion. Through a bit of diligent research I found out that the Moabites and Midianites were located in present day Turkey. So Aslan is simply Nalsa spelt backwards.

Unto the final question of the title, “confessions of a juju priest”. Please indulge me as I tell you a true life story.

One of my dearest friends had called accusing me of not informing her as to whether I had put up any posts in the last two weeks. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if I’d put up any, because according to her, she had been frequenting pulse.ng/bloggers looking for my post and hadn’t seen anything.

I interrupted her and assured her she had certainly seen my posts, she interrupted and insisted she had definitely looked and not seen anything from me. I interrupted her yet again assuring her that she had definitely seen my post, and without allowing her to interrupt me again, I continued by asking her if she had seen any posts titled, “Confessions of a juju priest”.

Her shocked reaction was all I needed to burst into helpless laughter.

“No!?” she said, “That wasn’t you!”

“Yup, that was most definitely me.” I replied.

She went further to explain that she had certainly seen the title and was wondering to herself why everyone was suddenly confessing.

First it was “Confessions of a call girl” now it is “Confessions of a juju priest”. What are they kuku confessing sef?

I’m guessing she decided to stay focused (and my friend is honestly one of the most focused people I know) on the things of God and refused to even click the said links. She then ended by asking, “You sef...Why did you pick such a title?”

My reason is as simple as it gets. We all know that Nigerians and Africans in general (actually, oyibo sef dey follow do voodoo… side eye to all ye halloween enthusiasts) are as superstitious as they are religious.

The average Nigerian has no qualms seeking the help of a juju man on Friday or Saturday and beefing up their powers by going to church on Sunday.

The mindset is that “power na power, one must to work”. The Bible clearly says that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways, James 1:8. I basically put this story together to let all the double minded folk know that in the end, the juju man always loses…always.

It may take a while but his downfall is inevitable. Please my people try your best not to allow the pressures of life push you to the temporal solutions of any juju priest.

It’s never worth it in the end, because even the juju man knows that his “powers” are limited.

Trust me they all know this.

Finally to the "all stories must end well" fanatics out there, fret not; the story certainly ends well. It’s all recorded in Numbers 25.