Corruption is a vile disease that sucks and drains the health out of something good. Corruption in society is an evil moral infection that keeps community in the state of perpetual sickness. Corruption is a moral virus. It’s so potent, it leaves its hosts sick, lethargic and unable to realize and accomplish all that a well person can.
Where corruption thrives, poverty and not prosperity thrives. Wealth is grabbed into the greedy grubby hands of those who get fat on the toil and labor of good people. Corruption benefits only temporarily those who participate in it. Everyone else is a victim of the theft, the deceit, the dishonesty and the lies that corruption feeds on, you need to know that a corrupt person is stealing from you. Corruption is filthy work and despicable acts of treachery done under the table and behind closed doors. Corruption is a disgusting shame.
Corruption keeps a nation back from true development and from progress. Wise investors steer clear of a corrupt environment. They would rather put their resources into a place where the playing field of opportunity is equal for all and not bent towards feeding the financial lust of corrupt, lying, cheating, thieving politicians and government officials. How many wonderful development projects have been lost because the investors didn’t want to do business in a swamp of evil? When those great projects go to another nation, or to some other place, we all lose.
Believe me when I tell you that corruption steals from you. It steals from all of us. Corruption plunders the nation’s wealth. People compromise on truth, equity and fairness, choosing instead to feed off the short term benefits of crookedness, exploitation, and financial perversion. Corruption is not just a personal matter. It’s a culture. It’s a way of life not just for individual people, but for companies, communities, governments and nations.
Corrupt nations hiding behind large companies, will seek to invest in other weak nations, in order to take over the assets of the nation that they’ve invested into. They will provide financial loans to a nation for the much needed infrastructure, and they will do it with assets that they provide. They will sign contracts by lining the pockets of rotten government officials who participate in this kind of corruption, and are then held hostage by their own deceit and greed. Corruption is nothing less than a form of theft, and national robbery. A corrupt person steals from everyone in society. We all lose when corruption is rampant.
Those who participate in corruption have chosen evil over good, lies over truth, and personal gain over well being of all. To be corrupt means to be rotten. When meat is corrupt, it’s rotten, and it stinks. Rotten meat can’t be eaten. When a person is corrupt, he’s rotten and unfit for a place in the community. A corrupt person should be jailed in order to protect society from the vile deeds of the corrupt person.
Government should be protecting us from the foul results of corruption instead of being the proponents and participants in corruption. When corruption is systemic, when it’s a culture and a way of life – when corruption thrives, it destroys the health of the community and nation.
Now, let me tell you something, defeating corruption is a very difficult thing. The love of money is the root of all evil, the Bible says. People who love money will do almost anything to get it. Those who choose to stand up against corruption, you need to know that we’re going to be involved in a war. We will be threatened, vilified, intimidated, marginalized and ridiculed. These kinds of people who stand up against corruption will often feel alone, as if they are the problem, instead of the solution. Corruption can only be defeated when enough people have had enough and decided to do something about it.
Africa needs to raise up a new generation of corrupt free young people, who together, and in support of one another, build a beautiful new corrupt free Africa. We need a new generation of young people to fill the places of leadership, who think differently and are motivated not by greed, but a genuine sense of servanthood to the people of our community.
The Church exists to call the nation back to righteousness. We are here to live the standard of good that God requires for prosperity and health to flourish across the land. The Bible says, ‘woe to those who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent. Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD Almighty.’ (Isaiah 5:22-24).
We all need to be reminded that from time to time, God has created everything. Therefore He owns everything. He is the final authority over everything, and He has the right to determine how everything should be managed and used. We own nothing. What we have, we only manage on God’s behalf. We need to be reminded that God, the righteous judge, requires every one of us, on a day He has appointed, to stand before Him, and to give an account for what we did with His property, with the positions and the people that He entrusted into our hands.
God, the righteous judge, will act and decide justly, He will not forever allow the corrupt to thrive and dominate the poor by their evil and corruption. Oh, young Ugandan, you who hold the future of this nation in your hand, the most important message that I can give you today, in this anti-corruption week, is this: Never pay bribe and never demand one. I’ve had the honor of living in Uganda for almost 40 years. I came here to preach the Good News about Jesus and to call this nation back to God and to godliness. I can confidently tell you that over those 40 years I have never paid a bribe, and I’m proud of it.
The way to kill corruption is for all of us to just say, ‘no.’
The above article is a transcribed message of a video on corruption shared by Watoto Church in Kampala in 2021, of Pastor Gary Skinner, the visionary and passionate Team Leader of Watoto Church.
