Today is the first day of the year.

This time last year, you sowed all your seeds in church with the firm belief that, just as the pastor had promised, as divinely revealed to him, this year would be your year. It wasn’t, and quite frankly, it wasn’t really anyone’s year — not even your pastor’s, who assuredly proclaimed it would be your year, not just your year, but the year of every child of God who believes and sowed a heavy seed to that effect.

How do I know it wasn’t your pastor’s year either? Because his many lies, once hailed as the verbatim wordings of God, are now being regularly exposed. He no longer holds a mind-numbing, almost zombie-like influence over the congregation. In fact, these days, when he dares to open his mouth and prophesy, people — including you, surprisingly — now have the courage to order him to keep shut because his prophecies from the previous year, from all years actually, have never tallied or come to pass. And when he dares to wield the “Touch not my anointed” card, you, again surprisingly, boldly remind him that you are also God’s anointed, so that wicked ideological dribble he wants to pull will not work on you.

You are amazed at your audacity, stunned by your courage to challenge your revered man of God, whom you have always held in the highest esteem, until you sadly and most disappointingly realized all his prophecies were for one reason and one reason only: to fleece you of your hard-earned money.

How did you realize this? Because, when you had a small challenge with accommodation, you, diligent and laborious in God’s service — like Boxer in Animal Farm — rejected all the crumpled, dejected, kwashiorkor-looking, weather-beaten 100 and 200 naira notes — never 500 and 1000 notes, because who will give a worker in God’s temple such a high amount for just doing his job? — generously given to you in the course of the dispensation of your sacred responsibilities by those appreciative of your selfless service.

Your honest rejections caught your Daddy’s eagle eyes; thus, he urged you to start collecting and dropping them at the altar. Because if you continuously reject what someone offered in good faith, then you are disrespecting the person and, by extension, disrespecting God, because it was God who sent such a person to bless you.

So you complied, servile and malleable as you are — but only to God, not to your wife, who has to subject herself daily to going on bended knees to plead with you to drop some money for food and for Junior’s diapers before you’d be willing to do so, who also has endured multiple beatings from you, the last of which nearly cost her the use of her left eye — a “holy correction,” you called it, just like it is in the Quran, but the writers of the Bible, perhaps Matthew, yes, it has to be Matthew, got so drunk at Cana and forgot to add that vital piece of information. You wish you could go back in time and correct Matthew’s grave mistake, but regardless, you will continue to correct that unholy mistake with your righteous right hand, with your wife’s body serving as the perfect sandbox for these relentless holy corrections.

Back at church, you smile effervescently as you work. The people at church cue on your smile and now reoffer those orphaned naira notes you had once rejected. You remember your holy father’s injunction and then rapidly accept their generous offers. It is God who placed them in your path, after all. Upon accepting them all, and at the close of your duties at the church, you gather all the money given to you, arranging it neatly for God. For your Papa’s God, your God as it is, is a God of order. Then you proceed to drop it at the altar without taking a dime. God watches in secret — the timeless words of your Papa — so you are careful not to offend this fiery God who watches in secret.

It matters not that it is the same God, who watches in secret, that has allowed your Papa to approach your wife multiple times for a ‘holy’ relationship — one that will ‘help’ her spiritually and financially. Remember, he is God. To you, he is fiery and quick to punish. But to your Papa, he is slow to anger and ever-forgiving. Why wouldn’t he be? How much do you give him?

Regarding the relationship offer from your most holy Papa to your wife, she outrightly rejected it and will continue to do so, for she is poor only in riches, not in morals or character. She cannot tell you this, of course, for it is better to say, “Papa Emma, I am pregnant. But it is not your child. It belongs to Akachukwu, yes, the DJ who lives downstairs,” and face the inevitable bludgeoning that will follow, than to lay a ‘false allegation’ on the most holy, most pious, and most incapable of such failings of the flesh, Papa. For that, there is no forgiveness, no reconciliation; it is the end — the end of her life, in the most brutal manner.

One day — the very day you lost interest in everything related to God — while carrying out your duties at church as usual, you’re troubled. You’re not smiling as usual. You’re accepting the money offered, but without your customary smile that reveals your browned set of teeth, a stark reminder of your past entanglements with Chelsea and Arizona — the epitome of your life before the intervention of Christ, before the arrival of your holy savior, Papa, who ‘rescued’ you from the depths of sin and certain Hell.

Now, for the first time since those sinful days, you’re contemplating keeping the money you’ve been ‘dashed’ all to yourself. Then, you suddenly remember that God — yes, your Papa’s God — sees even in secret. This prophetic watchword causes an internal turmoil that overwhelms you, but only for a moment, before you reach deep into your tattered pockets for your phone and start playing your Papa’s holy and righteous message for divine and spiritual clarity. And then it appears, like an abundance of water flowing in a desert to one journeying across the Sahara: you will approach your Papa to discuss your challenges.

You have been a good servant, serving faithfully for years, no bad record, no case of theft — except for that one time when you stole a white fowl a parishioner brought for thanksgiving. And then that other time when you stole a parishioner’s phone while it was charging and swore you knew not what happened. And then there was that time you nearly sodomized a parishioner’s daughter because your wife had refused to try out such an unholy style with you. You quaver at these recollections and ask God for forgiveness for the umpteenth time. He ignores you. You are not significant enough to be forgiven.

The conversation with your pastor ends quicker than the first time you climbed your wife. It was a hot night in your dingy room in 2009; you remember it vividly, but you do not want to talk about it. It was a scathing ‘No’ from him. The church — as in him, for he is the church, and the church is him — cannot help you because it does not have the means to. And even if it did, there are more kingdom-prioritized projects that are more urgent: like buying Papa a new car (the old one has been consuming too much fuel), sending Papa’s children on vacation, and sponsoring the birthday soirée of Papa’s wife. All these, and more, are the divinely urgent tasks that the church has at hand, and thus, sadly, cannot help you.

And after his admonition to work harder — which, in truth, feels more like a mockery of your condition, as that’s how you interpret it — he tells you to believe in God more, for there’s nothing God cannot do. He then asks you to sow a seed, a giant seed, like Solomon did, one that will somehow force your landlord’s hand into offering you a lifetime rent contract, which, upon his death, will ensure the house automatically becomes yours.

You pause, think through all the unholy rubbish he has uttered, and for the first time since you started laboring for ‘God’ in Papa’s vineyard, you truly see him for what he is: a conman who is solely interested in lining his own pockets. You draw a long hiss, shake your head vigorously for being wrapped, for so long, in the bubble of righteous deceit, then storm out of his office. You head straight to your former drinking joint, which you had always passed for twelve years without uttering a word to Iya Rainbow and her loyal patrons — who used to be your best mates in those good old days when you were in the world.

They understand your sullen look and don’t utter a word as you recline into the armless wooden bench. Almost instantly, they offer you a sachet of your favorite Chelsea — they still remember, such retentive friends — which you accept willingly, tear open gradually, and slowly begin sipping. You have now been rebaptized into the world. Devil be praised.