Write to DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER. Your question may help you understand your own journey. It may help another family avoid unnecessary pain.It may help our community rediscover the difference between spirituality and fear.
There are moments in life when a person does not need another political argument, another accusation, or another voice telling him whom to fear. He simply needs somewhere safe to ask a question troubling his heart.
Many Ambazonians carry private struggles that rarely appear in public discussions about our people. There are marriages under strain, parents worried about their children, young people uncertain about relationships and identity, widows and widowers facing loneliness, families divided by migration, communities wrestling with cultural expectations, and men and women trying to reconcile faith, education, work, tradition, and the realities of modern life.
There are also deeper spiritual questions.
Why does fear sometimes occupy more space in our lives than faith? Why have some families become divided by accusations of witchcraft, curses, prophecy, jealousy, or hidden enemies? Why do some people become so dependent upon religious personalities that they lose confidence in their own relationship with God? How do we preserve what is valuable in our African spiritual and cultural inheritance without becoming prisoners of superstition, manipulation, or fear? These are difficult questions, but they should not be forbidden questions.
The Independentist News is therefore introducing DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER, a personal, family, and spiritual guidance forum for Ambazonians at home and throughout the diaspora. The purpose is simple: to create a humane place where people can ask difficult questions without ridicule, intimidation, tribal prejudice, spiritual condemnation, or fear.
Reconnecting the Human Being With God
For generations, African societies have experienced enormous religious, political, economic, and cultural disruption. Colonialism did not extract only land, labor, minerals, crops, and wealth. It also changed the way many Africans were taught to think about themselves, their ancestors, their languages, their institutions, and even their relationship with God.
Over many centuries, systems of domination often presented African culture as something primitive to be abandoned while portraying outside interpretations as the only legitimate path toward civilization, knowledge, or spirituality. The result has sometimes been confusion. Some people became ashamed of their heritage. Others responded by accepting every traditional claim without examination. Still others became vulnerable to modern forms of religious exploitation in which fear is used to control families, extract money, create dependence, or turn relatives against one another.
DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER takes a different path.
The purpose is not to replace God with another human authority. The purpose is to help people reconnect with God without fear. A spiritual leader should not stand between a human being and God as though God can be reached only through that leader. A spiritual leader should help a person develop wisdom, conscience, discernment, responsibility, compassion, courage, and a deeper understanding of the divine presence within everyday life. True spiritual growth should make a person stronger in love, clearer in judgment, more responsible toward family, more compassionate toward others, and less controlled by fear. It should not make a person terrified of neighbors, suspicious of relatives, dependent upon endless prophecy, or convinced that every setback must have been caused by an invisible enemy.
When Spirituality Divides the Family
One of the most painful realities in many African families occurs when spiritual claims begin destroying human relationships. A mother is called a witch. A father is accused of blocking a child’s destiny. A sister is blamed for another sister’s unsuccessful marriage. An uncle becomes the alleged cause of unemployment. A grandmother is feared because someone claims she possesses hidden spiritual powers. A marriage collapses because a religious personality declares that one spouse is spiritually dangerous. Families that once ate from the same table stop speaking. Sometimes enormous decisions are made because somebody said, “God told me.”
DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER will encourage a different question: How do we know? Faith does not require abandoning reason. Spirituality does not require abandoning compassion. And belief in God does not give anyone permission to destroy another person’s reputation without evidence.
Before accusing a parent, spouse, child, relative, neighbor, or colleague of spiritual wrongdoing, we must understand the human cost of that accusation. Words can destroy families just as surely as physical actions. A spiritual life grounded in God should move people toward truth, reconciliation, accountability, forgiveness where possible, and protection where necessary. It should never make cruelty sacred.
The Questions People Are Afraid to Ask
Readers may write about marriage, courtship, parenting, divorce, widowhood, friendship, loneliness, migration, cultural conflict, financial pressure, faith, spirituality, relationships across tribes and races, generational differences, or personal decisions that are difficult to discuss elsewhere.
A husband may ask how to respond when relatives interfere constantly in his marriage. A wife may struggle with expectations that professional success should make her smaller at home. Parents may wonder how to respond when their child chooses a partner from another tribe, race, nationality, or religious tradition. An immigrant couple may find that changing employment opportunities have transformed traditional expectations about gender and family responsibility.
Others may have more explicitly spiritual questions. How should I respond when someone tells me a relative is responsible for my problems? Is every dream a message from God? How do I distinguish faith from fear? Is suffering evidence of a curse? How should I respond when a pastor, prophet, spiritual adviser, or traditional authority asks me to do something that violates my conscience? Can I respect my African heritage without believing every traditional claim? Can Christianity, African identity, reason, and personal conscience coexist? These questions deserve thoughtful answers rather than ridicule. No concern is too ordinary to matter. The question that appears small to an outsider may be the very question keeping another human being awake at night.
God Should Not Become an Instrument of Fear One of the principles behind Dear Spiritual Leader is that God should not be used to frighten people into obedience to another human being. Whenever someone claims divine authority, the claim should never exempt that person from accountability. A genuine spiritual guide should not need to terrify followers. He or she should not create dependence by repeatedly announcing invisible dangers that only the leader supposedly knows how to remove.
Spiritual authority should never become a business model built upon fear.
People should be encouraged to pray, reflect, seek wisdom, examine evidence, listen to conscience, learn from scripture and tradition, consult trustworthy people, and take responsibility for their decisions. The goal is spiritual maturity. A mature person can listen to advice without surrendering judgment. A mature person can respect tradition without becoming imprisoned by it. A mature person can have faith without abandoning reason. A mature person can disagree without hatred. Most importantly, a mature spiritual life should produce love rather than fear.
Restoring What Extraction Has Weakened
Ambazonia cannot rebuild only roads, schools, institutions, businesses, and political structures. A people must also rebuild confidence in themselves. For centuries, different extractive systems have taught Africans what they supposedly lacked while taking enormous value from what Africans possessed. Land was valuable. Minerals were valuable. Labor was valuable. Agricultural resources were valuable. Strategic territory was valuable. Yet the people themselves were repeatedly told that their culture, institutions, knowledge, and spiritual understanding were inferior. That contradiction deserves examination.
Restoring African dignity does not mean pretending that every traditional practice was wise. Every culture contains wisdom and error. Every religious institution can serve or exploit. Every generation must examine what it inherited. The responsibility is to preserve what strengthens human dignity, family, community, responsibility, creativity, stewardship, and our relationship with God while having the courage to reject whatever promotes fear, exploitation, abuse, exclusion, or ignorance. African heritage should give our children roots. It should not give them chains.
Family, Marriage, and Human Dignity
DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER will also address the changing reality of Ambazonian families. Migration has transformed households. Women increasingly possess professional and financial independence. Men may experience pressures very different from those faced by their fathers. Children raised abroad may understand culture differently from their parents. Interracial and intertribal relationships are increasingly common. Technology has changed courtship. Long-distance marriages create new pressures. Economic insecurity affects intimacy and family stability. We cannot solve twenty-first-century family problems simply by repeating every rule from the past. Neither should we assume that everything modern is automatically better. Wisdom requires discernment.
Healthy family life should preserve respect without requiring submission to abuse. It should value commitment without making suffering compulsory. It should honor elders without teaching elders that age makes every decision correct. It should respect men without diminishing women. It should empower women without treating men as unnecessary. It should protect children without teaching them to despise their heritage. Family should be a place where human beings grow.
A Safe Place to Ask
Readers are invited to write honestly about marriage, family, relationships, spiritual questions, cultural adjustment, personal choices, and situations they may feel unable to discuss elsewhere. You may use your real name, initials, or a pseudonym. Identifying details may be changed or withheld to protect privacy. When writing, explain the situation as clearly as possible: what happened, who is involved, what you have already tried, and what guidance you are seeking. Submissions may be edited for clarity and length before publication, but their essential meaning will be preserved.
DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER will respond without ridicule, racial judgment, tribal prejudice, or automatic spiritual condemnation. The purpose is not to dictate how people must live. It is to help readers think. To help them distinguish fear from faith. To help them understand consequences. To help them protect dignity. To help families communicate. And whenever possible, to help people find their way back to God without surrendering their minds to another human being.
When Professional Help Is Necessary
Spiritual guidance has limits. Advice provided through DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER is general, educational, and spiritual in nature. It is not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, psychiatric, legal, immigration, financial, or emergency assistance. Where a situation involves domestic violence, threats, child abuse, serious mental or physical illness, suicide risk, criminal activity, or immediate danger, readers should seek appropriate qualified assistance in their locality. Prayer and professional help are not enemies. A person can pray and see a doctor. A couple can have faith and seek counseling. A family can believe in God and consult a lawyer. Seeking competent help does not demonstrate weak faith. Sometimes wisdom consists precisely in recognizing when another kind of knowledge is needed.
Write to the Spiritual LeaderAll correspondence should be sent to:
DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER
The Independentist News
Email: theindependentistnews@gmail.com
Please indicate whether you would like your name published, replaced with initials, replaced with a pseudonym, or withheld completely.
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Behind every family disagreement is a human being trying to be heard. Behind many spiritual fears is someone searching for certainty. Behind every troubled relationship are people whose decisions may affect several generations. And behind one person’s private question may be hundreds of others silently asking the same thing.
Write to DEAR SPIRITUAL LEADER. Your question may help you understand your own journey. It may help another family avoid unnecessary pain.It may help our community rediscover the difference between spirituality and fear.
And perhaps, one question at a time, it can help restore something that centuries of extraction, displacement, doubt, and spiritual confusion have weakened: the confidence of a people to approach God with faith, reason, dignity, and without fear.
Your spiritual leader The Independentist News
