There is Nothing Like Gender Equality, Says Pastor Tope
Adeniyi Tope, a pastor RCCG, Sanctuary of Transformation in this interview says there is nothing like gender equality. Excerpts.
As we are celebrating International Women’s Day, what will be your charge to women today
We should appreciate them, women are like salt, they are the salt of the world, wherever you find them, you see joy and they are the key to every home, they are gate keepers.
When they are at their gates, doing what they are supposed to do, you see the husband making it in life, the children doing well and they also have joy. Women are gatekeepers, we should celebrate them.
You mentioned, ‘women that are sleeping’, what does it mean for a woman to be sleeping?
In the Holy Bible, According to I Kings Chapter 3:20, we see two women that Solomon used as a proverb. The two women that got pregnant and delivered their children. The Bible says one of them slept on the son, she was actually sleeping and she killed her son, the other woman too was sleeping because if she wasn’t sleeping, how would the other woman exchange the dead child for the living, both of them were sleeping.
In the family, when children are having characters that are not good and the women cannot detect, they are already sleeping. For example, a child is into prostitution or stealing or drugs and the mother does not know, that mother is already sleeping. A mother that is not sleeping will know everything about her children and when she needs to shout, flog or report, she will do something about it , if she knows and does nothing about it, those negative characters will eventually take the children away from her, this shows that the mother has been sleeping, so mothers need to wake up to their responsibilities.
How has this impacted negatively on the society?
It has affected everything, a good family will make a good community, a good state, a good nation, will make a good world.
Everyone today that are armed robbers, prostitutes, doing drugs, embezzling money, stealing money in any position they occupy either in the House of Assembly or in Government anywhere, they all came from a family , they didn’t just start it, they have been doing it while in they were in their homes.
When there is a good moral standard in the family, there’s no way you can get to a place and change. It means that from their roots and foundation, they did not have good morals because the mother was sleeping.
Today, instead of correcting them, we are celebrating them, that is why nobody wants to work, everybody believes that once you can make money anyhow, you will be celebrated.
This is part of the negative impact of women sleeping when they are supposed to wake up and train their children.
Are we going to blame only the women for the rot in the society, if the women are sleeping, how about the men are you exonerating them?
I am not entirely exonerating the men, being a father, is not just about going to look for money to provide food, fatherhood is being a role model to the children but how many fathers are true fathers, looking at the society today, many fathers are just fathers by nature, they have nothing to contribute, it is the mothers that are training the children in the schools, providing for the children, many fathers are already useless.
They will tell us that the child that is good is for the father, the one that is not good is for the mother, what I am saying is that women are the bonafide owner of children, fathers can behave anyhow but children are usually closer to their mothers, I am not exonerating them, fathers are also part of the system.
What is your view on gender equality?
There is nothing like gender equality, it can never be. The Bible says a woman should be helpmeet, what it means is that a man needs something to be stable, the woman is the holder a man needs to be stable , when the woman is not there, the man cannot be stable. There is nothing like gender equality.
