Must I go to church since I have a Bible and I can study on my own?
A few years ago, someone asked me a direct question.
“Must you go to church since you have a bible and you can read and understand it? Do you need a pastor to teach you? These people can be mischievous.”
I thought about it and I replied the person in my mind: “As a law student, can’t I just sit in my room with my Kodilinye & Aluko (Law of Torts), Itse Sagay(Law of Contract), Dias(Jurisprudence) and read without attending class and just appear on the day of the exam. I must be a joker preparing for first-class failure.”
First, I won’t even be allowed to write the exam. As a graduate student at the prestigious University of Ibadan, I know that without 75% of class attendance, you would not sit for any exam.
Second, only unwise students plan to evade( in UI lingo, we say ‘stab’) classes. What your lecturer that has years of teaching and marking experience would say to you if you were in class cannot be captured by what you think you can read on your own. By the way, you are a student, not an expert. And you know, the AOC language is only spoken in the classroom.
Third, when you don’t attend classes regularly, you are being untrue to the people who are investing in your training and to Nigeria as a whole. It is people that evade classes that would take a bribe, they are the ones that would faint when they are questioning them.
Check students that ace their courses, they are die-hard class attenders. I don’t know any colleague of mine that made first class during my set that was a member of the ‘House of Lords’ let alone being class evaders.
It was clear that the person who questioned me was unaware of:
Hebrews 10:25 NKJV
“not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
If we consider class attendance to be important for proper formal education, then church attendance is equally vital for proper spiritual education. The local church is God’s will for every believer to grow and be established. I must also say that personal study is equally vital. Just as a student would draw out a schedule to be at the library or reading room perusing his notes and textbooks is the same way a believer must learn to sit down to study God’s word.
Don’t joke with your church attendance as much as you won’t joke with your class attendance.
COVID 19 is not an excuse not to be in church, whether online or onsite.
*Members of the house Lords as used in a classroom setting are students that always sit at the back of the class and sometimes make noise.
