Two Face… When The Church Fails To Inspire As Role Model

The church is a source of good that impacts the world positively’ is often the admonition men of God give to their members to deepen the gospel of Jesus Christ. But a disturbing trend would seem to have overtaken this golden advice. So, rather than model, inspiring behaviour emanating from the church to permeate the world, the church is fast assimilating behaviour unbecoming from the world.

Indeed, the distance between the church and the world has become so slim, in fact, has become so diffused that there’s little or no difference between the two to the disturbing extent that the world has overwhelmed the church and has whittled down its moral conscience. Some blame prosperity of gospel currently the norm for it.
 
A play Two Face staged over the weekend by The Rose of Sharon, the theatre arm of The Patters Heritage, at PEFTI auditorium, Joy Avenue, Ajao Estate, Isolo, Lagos, provided insight to this dilemma assailing the church of Christ. Written and directed by Mr. Ben Chiadika, Two Face portrays how idolatrous the church has become in modern times, with members who ought to be examples to society leading double lives. The result and cost of living such double lives is that they want to impress and even oppress other church members.

A romantic dinner outing to rekindle their love by Babatunde (Iheanyi Okoro) and his wife Ejiro (Irene Chiadika) opens a can of worms, as the couple battles each other over their lifestyles. The restaurant is upscale and the wife is shocked that her husband would choose it over her homemade cooking. By the look of it, it is way beyond his means, but he insists while the wife protests the waste. The man accuse his wife of being fake for fixing extra hips and breasts just to look beautiful for which the wife asserts that it was at his prodding; she is ready to remove them to be her normal self.
 
Just before they leave, they see a couple tables away and recognition dawns on all parties. Meanwhile, the other couple had been playing out their own duplicitous part. Chinedu (Frank Konwea) had met Okiemute (Edna Konwea) in church and invited her out to dinner. Although a graduate, self-styled ‘Ned’ for Chinedu, is a driver and Personal Assistant to Ejiro’s boss, but he’d passed himself off as a big boy and promises to give his new catch the good life, including buying her a house in East London. Not wanting to be beaten to the game of deception, Okiemute, self-styled ‘Florentina’ for Florence, elevates her retired Railway worker father to a ‘General’ who ousted Buhari from power 30 years ago, but lost everything on account of that coup.
 
When Ejiro and Babatunde hear how gloriously they had elevated themselves just to impress each other, they are astounded by the antics of these young ones. But Babatunde is not surprised; it has become the norm among Christians to engage in needless competition and self-hyping just to impress. He knows because he is one such dupe. He is living above his means and is in debt just to finance his lavish lifestyle. He is shocked that his wife knows, but decides not to confront him just so he can come to his senses.
 
Babatunde has the last word. He deplores the rivalry and competition among Christians: they want to drive the best cars to church, have their children in the best schools, live in the best part of town, make the most donation and so on, not because they can afford these luxuries, but just to impress fellow church members that they had arrived!
 
Chiadika’s Two Face is an impressive evangelical piece of theatre delivered with just the right punch: the church needs to purge itself of competing with the world; the world ultimately claims back those the church snatched from it through the worldliness and idolatry insidiously imported into the church!