TOPIC: CHRISTMAS
MEDIA HOUSE: 3FM
DATE: 25-12-2016
Fred: Grateful for your time Rev. Dr. Opuni-Frimpong
Rev. Dr. Opuni-Frimpong: Good evening and let me use your platform also to wish your cherished listeners and all Ghanaians merry Christmas.
Fred: Thank you very much. The death of Christ signifies one key thing love but on the back of a very heated political season, tell me how can the entire country use this day to unite?
Rev. Dr. Opuni-Frimpong: Yeah thank you for this opportunity. Christmas is one of the key significant festivals in Christianity and it has a lot to do with the fact that God had given a gift, a precious gift to humanity and to the world. Now we must also keep in mind that it’s not God’s gift to the churches, Christians but God gave to the world. For God so love the world and given this gift to anybody – Muslims, Rastafarians, Hindus, Buddhists, everybody including Christians and the challenge is how do we receive this God’s gift of love , God’s gift of truth, God’s gift of salvation, unity and harmony and I think that brings us into the issue you have just raised. As a country we have come up to a very heated challenge, electoral process. Now moving forward, how do weallow the message of Christmas, how do we allow the fact that our sufficiency is in God- the source of life and the gift he has given to us, how do we accept our weakness the fact that we’ve made mistakes. We’ve hurt ourselves and get ready for reconciliation, get ready and move towards national cohesion that is the way we must journey on that there’s a need for national cohesion, we need to heal the wounds in our hearts.
Fred:Rev. Dr. Opuni-Frimpong I know there are some who will say that in modern times the real significance of Christmas is love and many people forget that Christ is the reason for the season and how does this assertion separate you?
Rev. Dr. Opuni-Frimpong: But Fred you know there are several components of the festival. There is a commercial side of it you know during this season businesses are good. You are selling children and women wear and you can make money and you have transport owners this season are able to make a lot of money because people are moving from one point to another and that is the commercial side of it. There’s a social side of it where family, friends who have travelled get back home come together, and there is time for young people and some will fix their weddings during this period so you have so you have the social side. You have the developmental side where in some communities this season they are mobilizing resources to embark on community projects, health, education and all that and many more and of course we have the spiritual side of it that is what you just touched on. Unfortunately there are those who instead of making the secondary secondary and making the primary primary, we make the primary secondary and we make the secondary primary. What it means is even though there is commercial side of Christmas, there is a developmental, spiritual and other fate the real essence of Christmas is spiritual that God has in this world we darkness but God has given us light, God has made provision for our peace, our sustenance for us to heal the pain in our history for us to work towards reconciliation. There are lessons in there so in this moment people must focus more on the spiritual but the unfortunate thing is where people pay greater attention to the fun side, the entertainment side and the commercial side and I think that is where we get platforms also to draw attention that even though this aspect of the festival the primary objective should remain the spiritual side of it and we need God and our sufficiency is in Him.
Fred: Thank you very much and we will leave you here. We are grateful for your time on the news. That was the General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, the Rev. Dr. Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong.
Rev. Dr. Opuni-Frimpong: Thank you.