Can you cast your mind back to your teenage and youthful days? Just try! How recognizable are these days?

Being a community teenage boy in year 2000, I can cast my mind back to the value systems of those years. It is perplexing to submit that what currently exists is a staggering shadow of what used to be the social ideals.

Yes, people have been delving into adultery long before I was born and across both gender divides. As a community boy, I can recall that there are 2 neighbourhoods/streets in the town that were made popular by their commercial sex workers, infamously known as “asewo” (prostitutes). Most parents emphasized enough to keep their teenagers and young adults away from these streets, and we dare not visit our high school friends who originally resided around there.

Those days, one of the worst insults that a person (or a family) can suffer is to be labelled “asewo” in a serious sense of the word.

In the late 1990s, there were large communal crusades against fraudulent youths and the highlight of that was a man who called the crusaders and hinted them on how they nabbed his daughter. His daughter being a girlfriend of a 419 (scammer) guy was considered a family shame and the man took it upon himself to help rid the society of filths, by exposing his daughter.

People have always delved into illicit use of substances and drugs. We tagged them “amugbo” (hemp smoker) and nobody wants that infamous tag to be connected to their family members; you would be ashamed. The people who use such leafy substances were not highly regarded or associated with by many. Parents lapsed into psychotic depression upon discovering that their children were into drugs or illicit substances.

Those days, the components of marriages were as the Creator intended and Sodomy wasn't a way of life that anyone would be proud to publicly associate with. Ladies found it difficult to accept financial or expensive gifts from their boyfriends or fiancés, and to make such demands was near taboo. They were mostly an industrious and enterprising generation. Men in relationships wouldn't condescend to demand things from their girlfriends or fiancées. They wouldn't venture into relationships if they weren't economically viable. And, although premarital sex had always been in existence, even the heathens were ashamed to publicly admit to it.

However, those days are now history....

The soft culture of any people is perhaps the most decisive as to who the people are. In our hard culture, my forefathers had tribal marks but the soft culture says “do no harm whatsoever to anyone”. Our soft ‘unwritten’ culture determined the society’s rejection of some vices and ignoble ways of life. Our history tells of how kings and highly rated community leaders were dethroned and disrobed for delving into some wrong ways of life.

Let us get something clear, we have not been saved in order to be judgmental and condemn folks who are involved in some ways of life that are not consistent with the scriptures. None of us have come this far via a totally perfect path. Not me anyway. So, condemnation of individuals is not the behaviour or approach sought. But, while Jesus Christ showed us example by not condemning the woman caught in the midst of adultery, He was very specific in instructing the woman to “go and sin no more”. So, we have the duty to publicly discourage some patterns, ways of life and disintegrating value systems. If we fail to do so, we are only putting structures in place to adopt these wrongs as the new normal soft culture for the coming generation to follow. And, we are there already.

Apprentices are now reducing as early gratification has become the order of the day. 419ers were formerly chased away but we have now industrialised Yahoo-yahoo. The reality of their wide base and societal acceptance should bother anyone who understands the word “value”.

The new term “oloso” no longer carry as weighty shame as “asewo” even though the former is now deadlier and more virulent than the outlived former. We are losing our young women into civilized prostitution and we don’t appear to be losing sleep.

I can recall that the first 3 editions of this Selah Series featured a topic “LOVE IS NOT A CONTRACT” and I only wish that we could still popularly posit same. God (Love) hasn’t changed His nature but our perspectives and understanding of Love (God) have. The other version of “Oloso” (Prostitutes) apply to people who venture into courtships and marriages based on material, economic, or depth of personal benefits they intend to get. Love can’t be reduced to contractual transactions in which each person seeks his/her interests.

Drug and substance usage are now the lifestyles of many young people – male and female; yet we are not as concerned or overwhelmed as those days when just few recalcitrant boys were the ones involved.

The Lord is counting on us to be His image and presence, as well as to raise remnants for Him, in this dying world and in these perilous days. We should please bear in mind that we are a minority, living “the now” unpopular ethos in a world where Christianity is fast becoming a vogue rather than a way of life.

Selah.

© SELAH SERIES 2021.