Today is a day of bright sunshine, of a sky expansive, cloudless and deep blue, of a cool air with occasional gusts of wind running from uncertain and various directions, quite a normal and universal climate of dry season in Ethiopia. I was in the office of CCD headquarter, and was quite jolly when greeting Mr Yosoph, the legal adviser of CCD, a tall and handsome guy in his early 30s, then Mr Tamagn, his immediate boss, whom I met also occasionally in the gym, Bole Rock, with whom I enjoyed quite a congenial relation. I gladly greeted with Tamagn by: “Hi, Gym Guy!” and he greeted back with equal enthusiasm: Hi, Gym Friend! We hugged and touched our shoulders twice, masuculinely and warmly.

I was then alone with Yoseph. To break a conversation or something else, Yoseph said:“you must feel really good after working out in the Gym”.

“indeed, I am, I almost feel that I am strong enough to do anything after such heavy exertion and massive sweating of working out, I hope I will meet you someday in the gym.” I replied, feeling really good to share some of my sublime moments.

“Me, I don’t think I would ever and ever go to that kind of place.’ He said coolly.

Totally unexpected of such an answer, I asked: but why?

He enumerated: it is, first of all, a waste of money which is quite a lot; secondly, it gained nothing but aggressiveness, greediness, avariciousness, amorousness, and such and such evils.

“A lot of money, maybe, considering the local standard of income, but it may not be such a waste without any benefit gained, and how such evils are related with exercising in gyms?” My confusions are enormous.

“Because human beings are all sons of God, and being a human, we should be grateful and satisfactory enough to God for whatever he has given to us, the mind, the spirit, the body are all embodiment of the Creator himself, any attempt to try to improve the strength of our body would only lead to arrogance, the desire to kill and getting possessive, to take advantage of the weak, to bully, to solve problems by relying on violence, etc and etc.” Yoseph is quite confident with his knowledge of theology.

I was quite overwhelmed like always in face of elaboration of theology, but being not convinced in the least and daring not to touch anything related to religion, I timidly retorted: “But bodily strength is not necessarily leading always to evils, physical strength may lead to good deeds as well, it is our conscience that governs our action, not the other way around.”

To my great astonishment, from thence he launched a monologue of eloquent harangue of about 30 minutes, with occasional assistance of somewhat wildly body language when it was required to increase the strength of his argument.

He cited many examples of evil deeds committed by those people after they have gained much muscle, showed me how arrogant they become by the waggling way of walking adopted by these big muscles when walking in a crowded street. Then how our souls are immortal and our bodies are weak and perishable. He continued with the creation of the world, the garden of Edan, how Eve sinned against the will of God, by believing in God. And only by looking deep into of our mind constantly for the help of GOD can salvations be gained, citing example how the soul of Solomon was saved, how Noah Ark will appear again in somewhere in the future to save those people who are eligible and salvable when the doom day comes, and such narrations as the 10 commandments, the relations between God, Saint Maria and Jesus, to the subordinate position of Koran, and the messenger Mohammed, etc etc and etc, My mind was lost somewhere between Koran and Mohammed, and all of his remaining lecture were fuzzy and meaningless and making no sense to my over strained mind. He ended with something emphatic and thrilling, quite moved by his profound piety and total devotion to God.

I was quite at loss about what to say in return, my aversion to God is at the highest, the Creator should have no right to confiscate one of things I loved, that is to exercise to keep fit and increase my physical strength and mental strength as well. My perplexity remains and I feel something bigoted and folly undescribable in his lecture that is beyond my power to eradicate from his mind which is fully armed by the holy and invincible Bible, just like an armed injustice is beyond the reach of ordinary people.