SIKANKU: “Why all this madness over dust, dung and dross”

By Etse Sikanku

One day, while waiting for class to begin at the University of Ghana I found a Christian leaflet on the lecture floor. It was at a popular lecture hall called Tingi Tingi and I was probably in my junior year or level 300 as we say in Ghana.

You could tell it had been there for a while as it had footwear markings all over and some parts were hardly legible. A voice told me to pick it up. I was a bit hesitant but once I started reading I couldn’t stop. I thought; “wow, everyone should see this.” Back at Sarbah Hall—which for the records is the best hall at the University of Ghana (*wink*)—I copied the contents into my diary. The title of that piece was, “Others may, I cannot.”

So far, my college days at the University of Ghana were the best four years of my life. Legon—as the University is affectionately called—was a blast though it was also a time of great academic, spiritual, and social challenges. In the hallways, we often talked about issues such as democracy, continental unity, imperialism, globalization and other issues of national and global interest.

But in the privacy of our rooms we struggled with other personal issues. Here the debates were often about relationships and sex, whether it was permissible for Christians to tell ‘little’ lies and our anxieties about the future that lay ahead of us. My friends and I were often perplexed by the contradictions between our academic training and our Christian backgrounds. How seriously should we take renaissance men such as Niccolo Machiavelli who said things like “the end justifies the means”? Is it really ok to use a bad means to achieve a good end and so forth? What was permissible in relationships and what was not?

At the time I found “Others may, I cannot” very useful since I was having my own battles with Christianity and peer pressure. I’m thankful to God and whoever wrote that piece (I just found out it came from Deeper Life Church) because what I read helped to settle some of the issues I was wrestling with.

However, till date, I still grapple with similar things. Today was one of those days I began re-considering my now shameful if existent Christian life and life after earth. Gosh, it’s so hard to be Christian in America. Although I previously searched extensively, I couldn’t find a version of the piece I read six years ago anywhere. There were a couple of phrases that stood out to me “…I cannot serve God and mammon” “why all this madness over dust, dung and dross” “…I must not, I will not, I cannot”.

Today the voice that spoke to me more than half a decade ago came back. It told me to google “why all this madness over dust, dung and” …and hey presto I found the document! I read it with the enthusiasm of a candy eating child. This is one of my happiest days in America and I wanted to share the article with you all: Others May, I Cannot.