Fifty years a Christian, by God’s grace.

Photo: St. Francis Chapel, Makerere University, Kampala. (© Muniini K. Mulera)

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I was baptized into the Anglican Church at the age of ten, not by my choice but in fulfillment of my parents’ wishes. Upon entering senior secondary school, I was confirmed by the Bishop of Namirembe, at the age of fourteen. Now I was officially a Christian. Yet I was not. None of the rituals I had passively undergone had made me a Christian.

Though I took mandatory classes in Bible Knowledge, I did not spare a moment to think about Jesus Christ’s message, or about His life and death or what any of that meant to me. I could recite the Lord’s Prayer and other liturgical texts with ease. I loved to sing many of the great hymns by Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, John Newton, Fanny Jane Crosby and other famous hymnodists.

I attended Sunday Night at Eight, a weekly fellowship at our school chaplain’s house, and I regularly attended Sunday worship. I attended Christian camps at Nabugabo and Lweza but walked away unmoved. My parents’ home was a place of daily Christian worship and fellowship, hosting numerous leaders of the East African Revival Movement, and strict observance of the rituals of the Anglican Church. It was an enjoyable but meaningless exercise for me.

By the time I joined Makerere University, I had completely abandoned all emotional contact with the church. My Bible was safely tacked away among my academic books. However, I soon resumed reading the Bible, this time intentionally so. The Apostle Paul’s letters became my favourite literature. But I resisted the message and declined invitations to join the University Christian Union fellowship.

All that changed on the afternoon of Sunday January 26, 1975. Two Christian students – Florence Odonga and Manuel Muranga, an old friend from primary and junior high school – dropped by my Room 179 in Northcote Hall. They found me in a state of deep reflection, which I had been doing for several months. After a few hours of fellowship and prayer, they left me to continue with my thoughts.

That evening, I made up my mind. I would join them at the Sunday Fellowship of the University Christian Union. It was held in the sanctuary of St. Francis Chapel. After listening to Dr. Zacharias Tanee Fomum, a Cameroonian chemistry lecturer, who was the patron of the Christian Union, I decided to commit my life to Jesus Christ and accept Him as my Lord and Saviour.

Now, mine was not a special conversion. There was no blinding light from above. No loud voice calling from heaven. It was a conviction within, and a personal choice to accept the gift of salvation that came to those who surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ.

It was not an easy experience at first. Unlike many of the brethren, who assured me that Jesus was talking to them and visiting them at night, I found that I had to seek Him out instead – through Bible study; through fellowship with others; and through prayer. Perhaps the Lord did not have my address in his book. I mean, how come he visited the rooms of others but not mine? Or maybe he dropped by when I was not in my room. Joking aside, I have never seen Jesus in person. I do not know what he looks like. I have never seen the Holy Spirit or experienced any visions. I certainly have never spoken in tongues.

But I know the work of the Holy Spirit in me. I know Jesus Christ. I live with Him, for He lives in me. I depend on Him. Over the past 50 years, the two of us have established a very loving relationship that has seen me through some of my most challenging years. For all those years, he has been my most powerful and faithful anchor. I have been blest way beyond my entitlement.

However, it was inevitable that Jesus and I would have our differences. We quarreled more times than I care to count. I nearly fired Him after a few years in Canada, utterly convinced that my faith was misplaced given the pain, the suffering, the injustice and the hypocrisy of his “servants” that I had repeatedly witnessed in my homeland and other countries where I had lived. There were many years when I wandered in a spiritual vacuum, one that I filled with science and reason and argument against the Scriptures. I read philosophical literature, and marvellously written arguments against that which I had believed on January 26, 1975.

Mercifully Jesus never fired me. I remember many times when I expressed my loss of faith and spoke with passion about my doubts. Yet I kept finding that the most dependable and most powerful moral guide and source of peace and joy for me was the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I was aided in this by observing one woman whose life and words challenged me to explain the source of her peace, her strength, and her love. Florence Ntambi Tabaaro, whom I first met in the Christian Union at Makerere University, has been and remains a most faithful friend, partner and companion on my rollercoaster ride with Jesus Christ. We have been buddies for 50 years. We have been married for 47 of those years, bound together, not by our strength or any special qualities, but by a shared faith and bond of love that was tied when we were young witnesses for Christ at Makerere.

During my years of doubt and struggle with my faith, Ntambi did not judge me or dismiss me at all. She did not even argue with me. All she would simply say was: “I know you are searching.” How annoying! At least argue with me or quarrel with me about it. Instead, she encouraged me as I delved deeper and deeper into scientific thought and enquiry, and as I studied some of the best writings about the historical Jesus and the history of the early Church. “I know you are seeking.” Oh, how annoying! Perhaps she knew that after my doubts and my journey through the maze of science, and philosophy, and history, I would emerge face to face with the truth of our God and the unchanged reality of our savior Jesus Christ. That is precisely what happened. It has been twenty years since I finally got it. Really got it.

The Word of the Lord became clear and manifest in our lives. My personal relationship with the Lord became stronger than ever. And the emptiness and helplessness of life without Him became very evident to me. Fifty years after becoming a Christian, I remain with far too many weaknesses to qualify for membership in the hall of perfection. If there was a competition for the position of chief sinner on Earth, I would be a strong contender. That is why I am saved by the Grace of God, precisely because it was for my type that He was born and died. It was for me that he cried on the Cross at Calvary: “It is finished!” So, I walk my final years on Earth with a joyful heart and confident assurance that my death will mark the beginning of an eternal life in the presence of God.