Some writers apparently wake up at 5 a.m., meditate, journal, drink something green and then produce 2,000 elegant words before breakfast.

I require divine intervention.

An epiphany. A scandal. A theological emergency.

Something.

Fortunately, life in Kigali remains committed to my literary hobby.

So there I was at 20:40, sitting on the terrace of a beautiful restaurant, running almost entirely on cortisol and what I can only assume were the final surviving molecules of melatonin in my bloodstream.

A glass pane separated the terrace from the restaurant inside.

Then, right beside me, on the other side of the glass, a group of girls appeared and began preparing a table. A few roses were thrown around with the urgency of people who had remembered romance approximately twelve minutes before the target arrived. Champagne, two glasses and a huge bouquet.

Interesting.

Then one of the girls brought out a tiny box.

Ah.

A proposal.

And judging by the frantic, disorganized preparations, a potentially terrible one.

Was I judging?

Oh absolutelyyy.

I had not been invited or consulted, but like the proper Rwandan that I am…I was deeply invested. This was equally my business.

And the timing was magnificent because earlier that very day, Apostle Paul Gitwaza had been circulating all over social media for explaining that men should not kneel before women when proposing marriage. According to the Apostle, kneeling to a woman asking her to marry you is a “Satanic and demonic invention” that degrades male authority.

And across social media, one demographic appeared particularly delighted by this revelation from the throne room of heaven…

Men.

They were in the comments celebrating and glazing this pastor.

Finally!

Christianity had liberated the Rwandan man from the unbearable oppression of briefly bending one knee in front of a woman he supposedly intends to love for the rest of his natural life.

Hallelujah torero ry’Imana!

Back at the restaurant, the cameras were ready and the man arrived. He sat down looking slightly confused while instructions flew from every direction.

“Terura urwo rurabo!”

“Hoya, nabanze arebe photograph bamufotore!”

I couldn’t hear a thing being said, but actions speak louder than words, and by this point I was so deep in their business I should probably have been listed among the organisers.

A few minutes later, she arrived.

Absolutely gorgeous.

Her friends ushered her toward the table, he stood up, gave her a lukewarm hug, and he awkwardly picked up the bouquet and handed it to her. They sat down. The cameraman’s lights were blasting into their faces like this was the Second Coming. Friends surrounded them, the photographer was ready, the champagne was waiting. And then something fascinating happened:

Nothing!

No speech. No visible declaration.

No vulnerable little confession. No “I want to build a life with you.”

and no knee, obviously. Satan had been successfully defeated.

He picked up the ring box that had been marinating on the table, opened it, and put the ring on her finger.

Done.

She lifted her hand, her friends screamed, and she performed the little excited hand movements women have inherited from Instagram proposal reels. Flashlights everywhere, celebration, hugs. The entire production lasted less than fifteen minutes. They even forgot to pop the champagne.

My food had not even arrived; I had just watched a whole romantic climax finish before my starter. If I were an incredible believer, perhaps I would have recognized the divine providence immediately. Maybe God had arranged the entire evening specifically for me. Because only hours after a preacher had warned men against the dangerous, demonic excesses of romantic humility, the Lord had placed before me a live demonstration of what happens when the romantic bar finally reaches the Earth’s core.

I genuinely couldn’t wait to go home and open my laptop because what the heckkk?

See, the issue here isn’t really kneeling. I don’t particularly care whether a man proposes standing, kneeling, sitting, swimming or suspended from a helicopter above Lake Kivu.

A knee is cartilage and ligaments. It has no zero spiritual weight on its own.

The interesting question is why the image of a man lowering himself before a woman, even symbolically and temporarily, creates such anxiety.

Why does tenderness toward women so easily become humiliation?

Why is male vulnerability interpreted as weakness?

Why does showing devotion to a woman apparently threaten the natural order of the entire universe?

That is where the Apostle’s sermon becomes more interesting than one man’s opinion about proposals.

The Divine Authorization of the Low Bar

Long before Instagram invented proposal reels, biblical writers were already trying to determine exactly where women belonged. The answer was remarkably consistent: the property of a man that is to be conquered.

The mythology begins early. Genesis 2 gives us woman fashioned from man's rib. Genesis 3 gives later Christian interpreters something even more useful: Eve, deception, and the Fall. Centuries later, the author of 1 Timothy explicitly weaponizes that story: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man..." Why? Because Adam was formed first, and Eve was deceived. There it is…one ancient creation story transformed into a permanent weapon of mass destruction.

Then Christianity arrived in Africa carrying those exact texts. Colonialism did not invent African patriarchy…we were perfectly capable of producing gender hierarchies without European technical assistance. But colonial rule and missionary Christianity reinforced existing hierarchies and gave them something extraordinarily powerful which is divine authorization.

A cultural expectation could now become God’s immutable design. The man isn’t merely head of the household because society says so; God says so. The woman isn’t merely expected to submit because your grandmother says so; Paul says so. And once inequality acquires God’s signature, arguing against it becomes considerably harder. In fact, nearly impossible.

The Kigali Male Starter Pack and The Myth of a Soft Man

Gentlemen, I think we need a family meeting. Because women are right about us…painfully right. The romantic bar is currently in hell.

We have somehow constructed a culture of masculinity where enormous amounts of perfectly normal human behavior must first pass through the Department of Testosterone Inspection.

Lip balm? Cyabakobwa.

Skincare? Gay.

Being openly affectionate with your girlfriend? Inganzwa.

You’d rather die than be seen putting them in your shopping cart.

Some men will walk around with lips so dry they look like they’ve been wandering the wilderness with Moses for forty years, because apparently a little Vaseline might compromise their heterosexuality but somehow you expect this same man to become curious about a woman’s body. My brother cannot locate his own Vaseline…you want him to locate your clitoris? Be serious.

This is what fascinates me about patriarchal masculinity… it doesn’t merely restrict women, it produces spectacularly underdeveloped men. Men trained to conquer but not communicate. Men taught how to obtain women but not understand them. Men who hear "no" and interpret it as a green light to push further.

Rwandans even have an old saying: "Amarira y’umugabo atemba ajya mu nda"…a man’s tears flow inward. Beautiful poetry, terrible mental health advice. You teach boys that pain must disappear into them, and then act surprised when grown men possess the emotional vocabulary of ticking bombs. Sad? Angry. Lonely? Violent. Violent again?

Men whose romantic decisions are made by an invisible parliamentary committee consisting entirely of their male friends. The male gaze is usually discussed as men looking at women, but there is another gaze men live under constantly… other men looking at men.

"What will they say if I carry her handbag?"

"What if I post her too much?"

"What if I cry?"

"What if I kneel?"

"What if I look like I love this woman more than I love appearing masculine?"

To me, the whole thing is absurd mainly because many performances of masculinity supposedly designed to attract women are actually performed primarily for an audience of other men.

In the end, women eventually inherit the consequences. That is the part these conversations about "traditional masculinity" conveniently omit. Women then frequently become the adults expected to absorb everything those boys were never taught to process…his therapist, his mother, his emotional translator, his domestic manager, his sexual educator, his nurse. And preferably, his submissive wife.

The Takeaway (pun very much intended)

The proposal at the terrace wasn’t really about those two people; I don’t know their relationship. Maybe they’re deeply in love, maybe she hates dramatic proposals, maybe that fifteen-minute ceremony was exactly what she wanted.

It’s about what the scene represented. Everything was technically there…flowers, champagne, ring, photographer, friends. Every prop associated with romance had arrived, and yet romance itself somehow seemed to have missed the reservation.

It reminds me of the way we talk about women more broadly. We celebrate them constantly…our mothers, our wives, our queens, our "strong sisters." We buy flowers on Women’s Day, we post them, we preach about their value, we actually throw hands when the same boys insults them (because what better insults exist than those involving the female gender?).

But then, underneath all the poetry, we maintain systems that ask them to shrink. Be successful, but don’t intimidate him. Be educated, but remember he is the head. Have opinions, but don’t be disrespectful. Be sexually desirable, but never sexually autonomous. Work, but the home remains your responsibility. Speak, but softly. Lead, but nowhere that requires authority over men. Be everything…just never so much that a man has to bend his knee.

Anyway, the Apostle would have been very proud of this man. Everybody looked happy. Eventually, my food arrived, it was equally terrible. But I left thinking about how extraordinarily low the bar becomes when men are taught that lowering themselves for a woman…even symbolically…is beneath them.

Women do not need men permanently on their knees. Again, I genuinely don’t care about the cartilage in a man's joint. They need men comfortable enough in their skin that kneeling, crying, carrying a handbag, buying sanitary pads, saying "I was wrong," learning a woman’s body, or loving somebody loudly does not feel like surrender. None of those things make a man less of a man; they merely require him to stop confusing dominance with strength.

And if a knee on the floor for the woman you love is demonic? Well... for once, the devil may have a point.

For the uninitiated, Umutware is a traditional Kinyarwanda word that loosely translates to "ruler," "chief," or "commander." It is derived from the verb gutwara, which literally means "to take," "to carry," or…more accurately in medieval military terms…"to conquer." Historically, when warriors successfully bashed their neighbors over the head and seized a hill, they would gutwara that land. The man in charge became the Umutware.

Fast forward a few centuries, and my mother uses this exact same term of military conquest to refer to my father while he is sitting on the sofa, looking for the television remote.

And i am deeply allergic to it; fortunately, the symptoms manifest as a cheeky smile, a headshake of disbelief, and a spirited rebuttal.

Whenever she says it, i launch into a passionate, unsolicited lecture on the systemic subjugation of women and the structural violence embedded in our everyday vocabulary. I point out that treating the household like a medieval fiefdom vilifies the partnership of marriage and completely minimizes the immense honor, value, and foundational place she holds in our lives.

She vehemently disagrees.

My mother absolutely sees an umutware in my father. My father looks in the mirror and sees an umutware looking back.

Does it work for them? Absolutely. Are they happy? 100%. So what, you ask, is my problem?

My problem is that my “allergies” are currently pissing everybody off at home, yet I refuse to take a Benadryl.

The Evolutionary Imperative of the ‘Allergy’

My parents think this is a personal quirk. They think my rants are just an annoying phase I’ll grow out of. But i argue that these allergies are a collective social necessity. What worked for them simply does not work anymore for the rest of us…and for very good reason. The economic, social, and psychological odds of the modern world are heavily stacked against the survival of the “benevolent dictator” model of romance.

To put it bluntly: i never want to be an Umutware to my future wife. Furthermore, she better have the exact same mindset, or we aren’t getting past the first date. And if we are being completely honest, the rest of the world needs to catch up to this disease that i have.

The Linguistic Insult of the “Helper”

If the word Umutware is an unearned promotion, the word for women who actually keep the universe spinning is an outright insult. Society looks at a woman of profound substance and labels her an Umufasha…a “helper”???!

What a pathetic reduction of human capability.

To understand why this bothers me, you have to understand who my mother actually is. She is an artist in the truest, most profound sense. My own artistic eye and hands, the way i move through the world, my taste for the finer, beautiful things in this life…stems entirely from her. When I pick up a bottle of perfume and immediately begin dissecting it by its base notes, tracing its narrative arc from top to heart, I am simply channeling her genius.

She is also the one who taught me how to navigate a kitchen, to the point where she now calls me when she needs magic performed over a stove. Now, don't get me wrong: je suis le fils de mon père. I have inherited plenty of incredible, foundational qualities from my father…he is a great man. But this specific artistic wizardry? That is my mother's lineage.

Whenever the magic in the kitchen is successful, my mother will look at me with pride and swear that my future wife is going to be the luckiest woman alive. It’s a beautiful, tender moment. But then, with a dizzying turn of traditional loyalty, she will insist a week later at the table that I must step up and be an Umutware to that very same wife.

I refuse sha!

My father has quite literally never held a kitchen knife. He has never once wept over an onion, or emerged from a kitchen smelling like garlic. My mother, conversely, has never had to stand in the blistering sun for hours, coming home with aching feet only to face the grim reality of doing it all over again the next day.

Good.

My future wife won’t be doing both either. Skin and nails will stay perfect, thank you very much…unless, of course, the kitchen happens to be her specific sanctuary (allow me to have a moment abeg…i”ll go cry after this for being single).

There is a profound comedy of errors in reducing a woman of this caliber, or any mother who anchors a home, to a mere ‘umufasha.’ Meanwhile, we assign the title of ‘commander’ to men who would starve if left alone in a room with raw ingredients.

The Absurdity of the “Natural Order”

I’ve actually, on multiple occasions, had similar conversations far out in the wild. When the linguistic defense fails, defenders of traditional gender hierarchies invariably retreat to the last refuge of a losing argument: the appeal to nature.

“But look at the animals!” they insist, as though the social arrangements of wildlife should dictate human ethics. “The animal kingdom requires male leadership!”

Nonsense.

Nature is not a moral blueprint, and the astonishing diversity of animal behavior offers no universal mandate for male dominance.

If you want to look at nature, look at it properly. Look at the honeybees, where the drone’s entire existence is entirely expendable and the queen dictates the colony. Look at the termites. Look at chimpanzees, where political alliances and female coalitions shape the hierarchy. Even among gorillas, a silverback isn’t truly a leader until the matriarchs give their tacit social permission. All those muscles and all that chest-thumping mean nothing if the matriarch decides you are unfit to lead.

The animal kingdom is a tapestry of matriarchies, partnerships, and pragmatic survival tactics. Using it to justify why a human man shouldn’t have to chop his own onions is a lazy confirmation bias.

We need to have an honest conversation with men about what power actually is. It is profoundly embarrassing to watch grown men swing their anatomy around, expecting their sheer testosterone to communicate authority. Testosterone is a hormone, not a personality, and certainly not a qualification for leadership.

Real power doesn’t need to bellow. It doesn’t need a historical military title. True power is emotional intelligence. It is the ability to co-manage a life with another human being without needing them to bow to you first.

The Rwandan Civil Code: Romance’s Ultimate Wingman

Here is the ultimate irony that i love to throw during this type of conversation, even though it absolutely refuses to register in most people’s brains: The state is literally my romantic wingman.

Under the modern Rwandan Civil Code, the concept of a singular master of the house is legally dead. When a young woman walks into umurenge, she isn’t walking in to sign a vassal treaty or surrender her autonomy. She isn’t walking out as an umufasha to mutware.

The law recognizes a legally binding, 50-50 partnership of co-management. The state looked at our medieval vocabulary and doctrine, and rightly hit shift + delete. Every single woman who signs that registry goes home as an executive co-chair of the household.

Don’t believe me?

Yet, I can recite the civil code until i am blue in the face, and it just bounces off everyone. My dad will just sip his glass of water, completely unfazed by the state’s challenge to his absolute sovereignty, while my mom nods along with him. Beautiful.

A Republic of Two

My parents have a beautiful, thriving marriage that works for them. They built a life together, raised children, and weathered hardships. They have earned every ounce of my admiration.

But how do I tell them that their marriage belongs to their generation… that mine will belong to mine? How do I explain that my rejection of these titles is not a rejection of them?

I genuinely do not want to be a mutware. I do not want a wife who must orbit my decisions, defer to my authority, or measure her freedom against the boundaries of my approval. I do not want the burden of ruling another adult human being, and I refuse to offer that burden to anyone else as love.

I want a republic of two.

Two adults. Two opinions. Two equal stakeholders trying to build one life together.

When I look across the dinner table, i don't see a dictator and a vassal; i see an alchemy of two people who love each other and i don't object to their words because they are unhappy…but rather because their vocabulary is way too small for their devotion.

Maybe that is what I have been trying to say all along.

My parents hear the words umutware and umufasha and think of duty, respect, and love. I hear the same words and think of hierarchy.

Neither of us is really arguing about vocabulary, but about the stories those words carry.

Theirs comes from the world that raised them. Mine comes from the world that raised me.

And yet, from the world that raised them emerged a marriage far too remarkable to be reduced to such titles.

I won’t take the Benadryl.

In fact, I have seen silence, tears, and a hand holding up a chin burdened with heavy thought speak more than any carefully constructed phrase ever could.

And yet, despite this, we still reach for words to make sense of what resists comprehension. Among the few words used use to describe this atrocity, there are phrases that should never have been uttered in the first place. They distort more than they explain…yet somehow, they have escaped scrutiny and continue to be repeated as if they were acceptable.

“Byari umugambi w’Imana.”

“It was part of God’s plan.”

I really don’t know about you, but for me, there is something deeply disturbing, insensitive, and frankly unbearable about hearing such a statement.

Like many of you, I have heard it in conversations, casually sneaked in prayers. It has become an effortless escape to explain away what happened.

So today, I’m here to make a case against what I think is a terrible way to go about this.

The witness: Imana Isinzira

On the 9th of April 2026, at Nyanza Genocide Memorial, during the 32nd commemoration, a theatrical play created by Junior Rumaga in collaboration with Ibyanzu, Ben Benimana, and Malaika Uwamahoro, called “Inzibutso, umukino wo kwibuka ko kwibuka atari umukino”…stirred something in me. Let me just say that the piece was nothing short of genius. But I'm not here to review the play.

What brings me here is what it did that many people are afraid to do…putting God on trial.

It questioned his absence, portrayed him as distant and asleep, while people were being slaughtered. That is not easy to do in a country where faith is deeply woven into identity…and, for that alone, the creators deserve recognition.

The play itself did not claim that the Genocide against the Tutsi was God’s plan. Rather, it awakened those familiar conversations that resurface whenever this history is faced, whether in moments of commemoration or in spaces beyond them.

So, like in the play, I stand to indict that phrase, and the figure it dares to defend…who watched as genocide was conceived, and unleashed, all while bearing limitless power to stop it, yet remained silent, and absent

If God had a plan…what exactly was that plan in 1994?

Many religious responses to suffering rely on the assumption that events unfold according to divine intention. Phrases like “God has a plan” are often offered as reassurance. But this is not a metaphor, nor a loose figure of speech but rather a claim and a serious one for that matter. And claims, especially ones that invoke God, demand to be followed to their full meaning.

A claim that God intended what happened means…the rape of women and little girls was part of that will. The mutilation of bodies was part of that will.
Children being slaughtered was part of that will. People hunted in churches…places they believed would save them….was part of that will.

You cannot say “God had a plan” and then selectively remove the horror from that plan. If it is a plan, then it includes everything. Anything less is simply cherry-picking.

The Argument for the Defense

To be fair, there is a defense often offered for this kind of claim.

When people that make such claim say “byari umugambi w’Imana”, they are not at all trying to justify horror. In fact, they are trying to survive it since the alternative would be to accept that a nation full of believers prayed and were still abandoned by their God. That faith did not intervene or deter killers. That an all-powerful, all-knowing and, most importantly, an all-loving God filled his majestic bowl with popcorn and watched while one of the most horrific Genocides of the 20th century unfolded.

Faced with this contradiction, the believing mind is often pushed to reach for anything that restores order and therefore settles for the easiest conclusion: “God must have had a reason.” Inevitably, this softens the psychological rupture between belief and historical catastrophe.

This same impulse sometimes extends to interpretations of how the Genocide was stopped. It is not uncommon to hear that God acted through the Inkotanyi. This framing raises a difficult but necessary question about how divine agency is being assigned after the fact. If God is understood to be present in the outcome…expressed through human actors who brought the genocide to an end…then on what basis is that same presence excluded from the unfolding of the violence itself?

And still, the questions remain unavoidable:

Where was He in 1959?
Where was He in 1962? In 1973? In 1990?
Where was He during the hundred days when everything collapsed into horror?

The Fact of Human Agency

This shouldn’t even be a debate. The Genocide against the Tutsi was no under supernatural influence or supervision. Whether you have resolved to saying the perpatrators were under Satan’s influence or whatever evil force you believe exist while Inkotanyi were under God’s. None of that is objectively demonstrable.

This was a meticulously planned and systematically executed project of a genocidal government. Real human beings.

And it was stopped…not by divine intervention…but by other real human beings. Brave young men and women of Inkotanyi. Some of whom paid with their lives.

This truth stands on its own and does not need to be diluted with theological shortcuts. Because that is what “umugambi w’Imana” becomes in this context…a shortcut. A way that avoids the full, unbearable weight of human responsibility.

I need to reiterate something. Faith is deeply personal, and it is important to recognize that it is also part of how many people process grief.

At no point is this about why people shouldn’t believe in God or policing how they should heal. One has every right to believe if they wish to. That right is fundamental. It is human. It is in fact, protected by our constitution. However, what is equally true is that personal belief does not place ideas beyond scrutiny.

Because when certain beliefs are expressed publicly (this article included)…especially during Kwibuka…they do more than reflect personal faith. They shape how we remember. They influence how future generations will understand what happened.

And some expressions, however well-intentioned, risk softening or distorting that understanding. It goes without saying that some ideas do not deserve a free pass simply because they are theologically loaded.

To be fair to Inzibutso, it does not end in accusation. It rather resolves differently.

One character concludes:

“At the end of it all, I do not blame God. Some people just weren’t really about what they claimed to stand for. With God and the RPF Inkotanyi, Rwanda came back to life, and it’s been growing ever since. Thank God for that”

But here is where I respectfully disagree with this resolution. God is reintroduced at the end, credited for restoration and all of a sudden exempted from the destruction? I do not see how one can consistently place God at the conclusion while removing Him from the premise.

The Final Verdict

The notion that byose byabaye k’ubwo “umugambi w’Imana” is deeply irresponsible in my book and fails under examination. Not because people who say it are intentionally being malicious but simply because the idea itself cannot withstand its own implications but rather collapses under the weight of what it tries to explain.

And I do not say this lightly. I am fully aware of the role faith has played in this country…in healing, in reconciliation, in rebuilding what was completely destroyed. For many, it has been a source of strength, of meaning, of survival.

That is precisely why this is difficult.

Because on one hand, there is the undeniable place of faith in helping people endure and rebuild, and on the other, phrases that, however well-intentioned, feels like they downplay the gravity of our history. Because when it is placed against the Genocide against the Tutsi, it stops being comfort and becomes something else entirely…it starts to sound like a way of smoothing over what should never be softened.

And that is where I find myself unable to follow it.

Kwibuka is not just about remembering but doing it responsibly. And that means being careful with the words we allow into that space. Not every explanation honors the victim. Some betray them.

So if the only way to make sense of the Genocide against the Tutsi is to call it “God’s plan”…then perhaps this is one those thought that should remain unspoken.

Because Kwibuka si umukino indeed.

#kwibuka32

“You have changed, I rebuke that in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, what??? You believe in Satan now?” That is one of many reactions I have received over the past two years whenever friends and family discover that my beliefs are no longer what they once were. It’s only been something around 3 years…I’m not very sure since this was a gradual shift, and unlike my baptism, which I vividly remember, there was no ceremony marking my exit nor given a membership card into agnosticism or atheism. What does that even mean?

That is precisely why I am writing this article.

What does it mean to be agnostic? What is atheism? Why would a seemingly “sensible” person adopt such labels…and even say them out loud in a country like Rwanda?

Religion and the Birth Lottery

It is highly likely that you subscribe to the religion of your parents…or at least the one in which you were raised. Sociologists call this religious retention.

If you were born in Saudi Arabia, chances are you’re Muslim.
Born in Rome? Catholic. Born in Rwanda? Christian. It has less to do with ‘free will’ like most adherents would want it to be, but far more to do with simple geography.

It wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that the majority of Rwandans grew up in religious families, received some form of religious education, and regularly attended their respective religious services. In a country where religion is not merely a private conviction but an entire system woven into our social fabric to shape our identity, history, morality, and even respectability…to quietly stop attending church may raise eyebrows. But to confidently identify as non-religious can really ruffle some feathers

Alien Concepts

Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, or a rejection of the claim that god(s) exist. The term “agnosticism,” on the other hand, literally means “one who doesn’t know.” It is typically thought that an agnostic is someone who says she/he doesn’t “know” whether or not there is a superior divine power in the universe. As indicated, agnosticism and atheism are in fact dealing with two different things: knowledge (agnosticism) and belief (atheism). An agnostic doesn’t know if there is a god, and an atheist doesn’t believe that there is. And so it is possible to be both at once, depending on whether you are classifying yourself according to what you know or what you believe.

Personally, I do not believe in the traditional Judeo-Christian God. But do I know with certainty that no higher intelligence exists in this vast and incomprehensible universe? No. And that is why I lean toward describing myself as agnostic.

But is there something I can say with some certainty…it would require a hermeneutic commitment that goes beyond the vast body of scientific knowledge available to us from modern cosmology, evolutionary biology, and geology to insist that the universe and this world we live in were created exactly as described in Genesis 1 and 2. The Genesis accounts function far more coherently as ancient myths…serving a theological purpose rather than as a historic event or even worse, a scientific explanation of origins.

And if we dismiss other cultures/religion’s creation narratives as mythological while defending ours as literal history, intellectual consistency demands we explain why.

This leads me to another observation. Belief and disbelief can both become identity shields. Some Christians dismiss historical evidence because it threatens long-held convictions. Some former believers dismiss evidence because it no longer fits the narrative of their deconversion. In both cases, the temptation is to protect identity politics rather than follow evidence wherever it leads.

For example, claiming that “Jesus never existed simply because one no longer identifies as Christian is not supported by mainstream historical scholarship. There is a strong scholarly consensus that Jesus of Nazareth was a first-century Jewish preacher who was crucified under Roman authority.

One may reject his divinity. One may reject the resurrection. But denying his historical existence altogether requires dismissing a wide range of scholarly evidence.

When Reading the Bible Changes Everything

In my case, my deconversion actually came from reading the Bible again. “Again”, because this wasn’t my first time, but it was in a completely different light. I had just been exposed to the fact that there is a whole scholarship field called Biblical Textual Criticism. The criticism here doesn’t mean interpreting the text or “criticising” the Bible in a loose term, but rather a field where scholars who, by the way, don’t necessarily have to be Christians, deal with this problem of trying to figure out what changes were made to a text and what could be the words of the original text.

It turns out we don’t have original manuscripts as they were written by biblical authors. For example, when you are reading the gospel of Mark, you are not really reading exactly, word for word, what Mark wrote because we don’t have the original copy Mark wrote down. What we have instead are copies of copies of copies of copies of copies, and so on…of the original. It’s only natural for mistakes to be introduced by scribes while copying a text. Some of these mistakes were unintentional, while others were intentional. It is the work of a textual critic to ascertain what the author might have originally written down. I will dedicate a few articles to this very topic.

Anyway, this turned into an obsession, and after realising the Bible is not only filled with contradictions, all sorts of errors, gore imagery, and disturbing facts about this deity I was supposed to revere, I made a tough decision that this can’t be a book to morally guide me when its moral gauge is in shambles.

The Moral Problem

There’s a special case of cognitive dissonance that wasn’t hard to notice among believers…especially fundamentalists and professional apologists…ever since I made that 180.

I mean, take the doctrine of hell. Most of us would consider it monstrous to burn another human being alive…to watch them scream, extinguish the flames, and reignite them without end. We instinctively recoil at the thought of such cruelty. Now, introduce the concept of “sin” ( a very subjective concept worldwide) and attribute the punishment to God, and what would be condemned as cruelty in human hands is transformed into justice.

We are told that conscious torment without end is the appropriate response to disbelief, doubt, or even the simple accident of being born into the wrong religious tradition. Infinite punishment for finite wrongdoing.

And we are assured that this is not only just, but perfectly loving.

Slavery presents a similar tension. Most modern Christians rightly condemn it as a moral evil. Yet when biblical texts regulate and permit forms of it (Leviticus 25:44–46; Titus 2:9–10; 1 Peter 2:18–20), the practice is softened and explained away by “context,” “human actions and not God’s” or simply skeptics, “lacking the Holy Spirit for discernment”.

The same pattern appears in passages describing sanctified genocides (1 Samuel 15; Deuteronomy 20; Joshua 6) where God commands the total annihilation of entire populations…men, women, children, infants, and even livestock. Justification? These people were wicked and evil. Yikes!!

So I kept asking myself: if my moral intuition…shaped by empathy and human rights…recoils at certain commands, am I morally flawed? Or is it possible that moral understanding evolves?

Living Without Heavenly CCTVs

Contrary to common assumptions, abandoning belief did not plunge me into moral chaos.

There is a curious reflex that occurs among believers when someone leaves their faith: the suspicion that the skeptic must now desire immorality. Their deconversion is either rebellion, trauma, arrogance, or a hidden appetite for sin.

And yes, of course. The moment I stopped believing, I developed an allergy to virtue. I immediately felt compelled to loot supermarkets, establish a modest crime syndicate, defraud pensioners, and coordinate all sussy operations from my new private jet.

Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorists, none of that happened.

Nothing about my moral compass changed. I still feel guilty when I hurt people. I still prefer kindness to cruelty. I still return borrowed books. What has changed is that I no longer require the idea of divine surveillance to behave ethically. I do not need the threat of eternal punishment to care about other human beings.

If anything, discarding the doctrine of eternal torment has been liberating to say the least. There is something profoundly relieving about no longer fearing that your loved and 8 billion ordinary human beings (obviously excluding the president generals among the nations), will be subjected to unending fire…for doubt, disbelief, or simple geographical accidents. In fact, the closer I read the biblical texts, the more it became apparent that the image of everlasting torment is far less real and serious. The confidence with which it is preached today far outpaces its historical development of the doctrine and how it would have been understood by the biblical authors and their earliest audiences.

A Final Word

My goal here is not to deconvert or convert anyone. I wrote this because belief, especially in a deeply religious country, often arrives before reflection does. For ‘most’, faith begins as something received, not something you examine and choose.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But at some point, each of us must decide whether what we inherited is also what we consciously choose.

The same people also think that anyone who does not “believe the Bible literally, word for word” cannot be a Christian. For others, faith requires reading some passages as if they were physics. I once assumed that was the only serious way to believe. But historically, that is simply not true. If anything, most historical scholars of the Bible today recognize its many problems and yet remain committed believers. The Bible is a library of myths, poetry, apocalyptic imagery…written within specific historical worlds.

Taking it seriously does not always mean taking it literally.

This is also for those who are quietly confused. Those who have questions but feel guilty for asking them. There is nothing wrong with believing. But there is something deeply powerful about knowing why you believe…and being able to defend it with more than fear or tradition. Each of us has to make decisions about what to think, what to believe, and how to live. My view is that these decisions should be made thoughtfully.

In the end, perhaps the real issue is not whether we were born into the “right” religion. It is whether we are willing to think beyond the one we were born into at all

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In my last post, I shared a moment under the flag that started a chain reaction on how I perceived faith moving on. But as striking as that moment was, it wasn’t the turning point. It wasn’t the moment that made me question the world I’d been taught to accept. That moment came later, through heated debates, the discovery of uncomfortable truths, and finally realizing that a culmination of long-held beliefs was incompatible with a constantly changing world.

See, the Bible is far more than a single, unified book. It is an anthology of books, penned over centuries, in diverse languages, and tailored to its eras’ customs, scientific limitations, and cultural norms. For centuries, people have read the same scriptures and reached wildly different conclusions. Some see them as a rigid rulebook, others as an evolving moral guide.

But when it comes to gender, what happens when interpretations conflict with modern values of equality and justice?

Those who receive the scriptures today generally fall into two camps. On one side, you have the liberals… believers who see faith as evolving, willing to reinterpret religious teachings in light of modern knowledge and ethical progress. On the other, the fundamentalists…those who take the Bible at face value, convinced that even the most miraculous stories are historical facts and that science, if properly understood, will always confirm the Bible’s truth.

Take Exodus 21:7–11 and Deuteronomy 22:28–29…laws that allow a father to sell his daughter into slavery and require a woman to marry her rapist. Should I really believe that the same God who supposedly handed down these laws is the same God who, in this century, would condemn these very acts?

I know what some Christians might say: That’s the Old Testament! We live under the new covenant now! Fair point. But if that’s the case, why do so many still cling to Old Testament laws when it suits them…like the Ten Commandments? If you take the fifth commandment at face value (honor your father and mother), then what about the very next chapter, which lays out the punishment for a disobedient child? (Spoiler: It’s the death penalty. Deuteronomy 21:18–21.)

It makes me wonder …if we’re supposed to take these texts literally, are we not clinging to beliefs that are, at their core, relics of a bygone era? But if we’re not meant to take them literally, then who decides what stays and what gets left behind? And on what basis?

Women in the Ancient World: The Context Behind the Texts

Today women are well…women and men are men. In antiquity, this wasn’t the case. Women were simply men who happened to be born “incomplete” with, among many supposed deformities, underdeveloped penises. Their many ‘biological flaws’ explained their physical weakness.

To be weak in the Greco-Roman world meant absolute subservience to the much stronger camp. Therefore, by default, women were relegated to household functions while men took care of public functions.

It’s 2025, and I’m certain you have heard statements like “women are inherently inferior”, and that they are “illogical and more emotional” than men. This was a widely held notion that influenced Jewish, Greek, and Roman society rather than only being a scientific limitation. It governed judicial systems, family arrangements, social conventions, and…above all…scripture.

Women’s worth came down to how they served men as mothers, wives, and daughters, not by their intelligence or capacity for wise decision-making.

It would be self-deception to act as though these faulty notions disappeared along with the ancient world. The idea that women are less logical and more emotional still exists in our political, religious, and domestic spheres today. To be honest, I find it difficult to distinguish between antiquity and the current era. Sometimes it seems like we never truly left it behind.

It is therefore important to make this point before proceeding. It would be a grave mistake to superimpose our current perspective on sex and gender to that of our ancestors. The historical context in which the Bible and other ancient books were composed needs to be considered.

Let’s take a look at what the text actually says.

Facing the Scriptures: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Look, we could go verse for verse, pulling out dozens of scriptures that…let’s say… don’t exactly scream progressive when it comes to their views on women. But for the sake of brevity (and to get this conversation started), I’ll focus on a few key passages and maybe revisit the rest later.

Before we dive into the texts, it’s crucial to acknowledge something often overlooked: Jesus’ ministry was groundbreaking in how it treated women. In a deeply patriarchal society that saw women as secondary…barring them from public religious life and limiting their roles…Jesus broke lots of rules.
Jesus’ mission relied heavily on women. They provided him with financial support (Luke 8:1–3), and stood firm at the cross while the majority of his male disciples had run away. They were the first to share the good news of his resurrection (Matthew 28:1–10).

Paul, in his undisputed letters (the ones a majority of scholars agree he actually wrote), followed a similar pattern. He worked alongside female ministers, including Phoebe, a deacon; Junia, whom he called outstanding among the apostles; and Priscilla, who openly taught alongside her husband. Women weren’t sidelined…they were leading.

So, what changed? If Jesus empowered women and Paul acknowledged their leadership, why does the New Testament also contain strict commands about women’s roles and their inferiority in their societies?

For one, Christianity has become a religion about Christ rather than a religion of Christ.

But also, laws don’t appear in a vacuum. They’re usually reactions to something perceived as a problem. In this case, the “problem” was women asserting themselves, challenging norms, and taking on roles that some found threatening. The restrictive commands weren’t divine decrees…they were attempts to put women back in their place.

Let’s now turn to some of the most infamous passages that continue to shape gender dynamics in faith communities.

A Woman’s Place Is in Submission

I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

(1 Timothy 2:8–15)

There are so many problems with this passage. Besides the fact that it is profoundly misogynistic, this letter to Timothy was not written by Paul but a later forgery penned in his name. While Paul certainly held patriarchal views, the level of restriction placed on women in this letter…along with similar sentiments in 1 Corinthians 14:34–35…goes beyond even his known stance.

what’s going on here? Scholars suggest that the church was dealing with societal uneasiness about women stepping outside their “traditional” roles, particularly as they gained prominence in some Christian communities. This verse was a way to reassert control, borrowing from the Genesis narrative to justify the suppression of women’s leadership.

A property among others

In case you haven’t noticed, the Ten Commandments are written exclusively for men. Take, the fourth commandment on Sabbath as an example…can you see how the law addresses primarily men?

Then there’s the tenth commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or husband.” Ahh that’s of course not what it says. Instead, it reads, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” this commandment isn’t only directed at the husband, it lists his wife among other possessions like his house, slaves, ox, or donkey.

What does this tell us?

The wife is regarded as the husband’s property. And this view is repeated throughout the Bible. Women are seen as lesser in value, both legally and socially. In Exodus 21:7–11, a father could sell his daughter as a servant, but unlike male servants, she does not have the right to go free as they do. While male servants are released after six years without further obligation, a female servant remains under her master’s authority unless he chooses to marry her, give her to his son, or sell her again.

The Poison of Woman

From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her, we all die. … Any iniquity is insignificant compared to a wife’s iniquity.

(Sirach 25:13–26)

This is one of those verses that make you stop mid-read, flip back to the cover, and double-check if you’re actually reading The Bible. I’m yet to come across an unfiltered language than the one found in this book. Sirach doesn’t just denigrate women, it strips them of their dignity.

This rhetoric reflects a deep-seated fear of women’s power, influence, and sexuality…fears that were codified into religious texts and have had a lasting impact on how women are perceived.

Better a Wicked Man than a Virtuous Woman

Do not sit down with a woman; for from garments comes the moth, and from a woman comes woman’s wickedness. Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good; it is a woman who brings shame and disgrace.

(Sirach 42:12–14)

Sirach took “fear women” to the next level. Even the worst of misogynists can’t defend Sirach. Who hurt Sirach?

Moving Forward

Let me get this off my chest as I conclude.

We can agree that women have been victims of gender inequality for millennia. Unfortunately, religion has long been the perfect tool for keeping this patriarchal machine running. To make matters worse, the best adherents of our faiths remain complicit through their silence, allowing mistreatment to persist unchecked.

You find yourself trapped in a cycle of sexual, emotional, or even spiritual abuse…whether at the hands of your pastor, your colleague or boss, your parents, yet you’ve been urged to pray it away, to accept mistreatment as God’s will, to believe that enduring pain will somehow make you stronger, holier, or more worthy. Don’t get me wrong, it is one thing to find strength in hardship, but it is entirely another to be told that enduring abuse is a divine calling. Faith should never be a prison, and oppression should never be sanitized as righteousness.

If you’ve been pressured to stay in a harmful marriage because “divorce is a sin,” denied to make important medical decisions because “God will heal you,” or discouraged from pursuing a career because it doesn’t align with someone else’s interpretation of faith, know that this is control, not guidance.

You deserve better. Most importantly, to be safe, and to be free…here and now, not as a distant promise after enduring years of pain, certainly not ‘when you go to heaven’. Why live in hell now? It’s about time we stop allowing faith to be manipulated into a tool for control and start reclaiming it as the radical force for equality that it is meant to be.

I know it is possible because we have reshaped the moral landscape before, and we can do it again. Christians negotiated slavery out of their doctrine…not because the Bible led them to, but because their conscience demanded it. With this, they proved that justice is not found in blind allegiance to ancient texts but in the courage to transcend them when humanity calls for something greater. This isn’t a betrayal of tradition, but rather a manifestation of its holiest of principles.

Perhaps the most radical act of faith today is to believe that we can improve the world rather than simply accepting it as it is. It’s about firmly stating that no one, woman, man, or child, should ever be subjected to the savagery of injustice under the pretense of divine will.

If you read till the end, you are a real one. THANK YOU

It’s another 7 a.m. Rassemblement at my beautiful high school in Kigali…a very quiet assembly near the flag in a gravel-laid compound. The scene was always the same: a perfect circle of students, thick air, and the two flags swaying above us.

The silence stretched, only broken by the sound of his footsteps. With hurried footsteps, robes flowing, emerging from the couvent, was the school’s director, a priest, whose morning inspections had become something of a ritual. He examined everything…our nails, our hair for unusual haircuts and “waves”, the length of skirts, and the looseness of pants. His sharp gaze missed nothing.

Then came the Protestants. Always late for the assembly.

This time, though, the priest looked furious. He’d recognized a few familiar faces among the latecomers…students he’d seen in his Catholic mass days before. And he erupted.

“Indaya!” The word came out like a slap. Prostitutes.

The priest was fuming. He accused them of shifting camps, of attending Protestant gatherings after clearly making it known they were Catholics. At twelve years old, I stood there, stunned. Why did it matter? Was it even that big of a deal? And why the insult?

I couldn’t shake those questions. Even after the Rassemblement ended and the day moved on, they lingered. That moment was not only embarrassing for those students but particularly confusing for me. I thought religion was supposed to be about love and forgiveness. Why was it being used to shame people for something as personal as faith?

The Seed of Curiosity

That moment was my first brush with the contradictions of faith. On one hand, religion was pitched as this ultimate beacon of love, unity, and understanding. But here…it was being used to shame, divide, and judge. It felt… off. As I grew older, I started seeing the same pattern play out over and over…within families, online, even entire nations.

Why do we draw such hard lines between beliefs? Why is loyalty to a specific belief system treated as a virtue, while questioning or exploring is seen as betrayal? Why do we spend so much time deciding who’s “in” and who’s “out”?

When I eventually grew up (still figuring that part out, to be honest), studied, and became a scientist, those questions didn’t go away. They just got messier. How do we reconcile religious texts…written thousands of years ago, in a world that thought thunder was God clapping…with our modern understanding? Today, we’re transplanting hearts, debating the ethics of AI, and redefining gender roles to empower women as equals and leaders in their own stories.

These questions became the foundation of my journey…one that would take me beyond the rituals of faith and into the deeper complexities of religion, spirituality, and belief.

Why I’m Writing This Blog

This blog is my attempt to grapple with these questions. It’s a space for exploring how religion and spirituality shape our lives….for better or worse. I want to delve into the ways faith impacts our personal relationships, our societies, and our understanding of the world.

Through personal stories, like that morning at the Rassemblement, and deeper dives into Biblical scholarship and history, I’ll explore:

· Biblical scholarship: Examining passages from the Old and New Testaments, not as an attack on belief, but as a way to understand the historical and cultural contexts that shaped them.

· Modern implications: How globalization, science, technology, and the rise of human rights have challenged traditional interpretations of religion

· The art of religious discourse: Why beliefs clash and how we can foster more meaningful, intellectual dialogue about them.

For my Rwandan readers, this is a call to engage with faith beyond dogma and division…to question, reflect, and debate. For everyone else, it’s an invitation to reflect on how religion shapes the world around us.

Why This Matters

Faith is deeply personal, yet it’s often the source of our greatest divisions. I’ve seen religion used both to exclude others and to uplift and inspire. This journey isn’t about persuading anyone to abandon their faith. It’s about encouraging each of us to be open to change, to scrutinize how we live our lives vis-à-vis our beliefs, and to challenge ourselves to consider new perspectives.

My hope is to create a space where we can explore the complexities of faith and belief without judgment or conflict…where we can have meaningful, intellectual conversations.

Most religions, to my understanding, have some version of Heaven and Hell. Heaven for those who follow the rules…those who live “right” by their faith’s standards and belong to “our” camp. And Hell? Well, Hell is reserved for those who don’t meet the mark. But here’s the thing: for the naive, like the 12-year-old me… or maybe for the peaceful religious people….hell seems reserved for the worst of the worst…the murderers, the rapists, the thieves.

But in reality, it’s not just about those extreme actions. It’s also about the little things…the ways we believe you have to pray, eat, give, and live. We supposedly will be judged not just for breaking the “big rules,” but for not following every tiny tradition or commandment exactly as our faith dictates. The moment someone doesn’t worship the same way, or follow the same practices, or even agree on what’s holy, they belong to the “other” camp. And that means, by many religious standards, they’re on the path to Hell.

There are thousands of religions, each with its version of truth, some with their canon of sacred texts and established practices, others with their oral traditions and firm moral codes. Whether you like it or not, no matter how much you pray, fast, tithe, or believe in your version of salvation, you’re not worshiping the way those of other faiths do. You do not believe in the same sacred books, the same commandments, the same rules around which day to pray on, or even how to treat people who don’t share your faith.

And guess what? That automatically places all of us, every one of us, into someone else’s Hell, Gehinomu, Naraka, spiritual exile, or whatever form of spiritual damnation their faith envisions. It’s a reality none of us can escape. We’ve all inherited someone else’s Hell without even realizing it.

To me one of the most important lessons of all, is that we should make our lives the best they can be while we’re still here on Earth, instead of waiting for some perfect afterlife. We have one life to live, and everything else is not guaranteed (at least, I think so).

So let’s prioritize kindness, understanding, and the courage to question, not just to prove a point, but to genuinely connect with each other and the world around us.

If you read till the end, you are officially my favourite person today. THANK YOU