Will you take three pills a day to improve the chances that you will walk your daughter down the aisle on her wedding day or partake in the mother-son wedding dance?

If you are an African of a certain age, you will eventually face a choice: should you take three pills a day to stay alive long enough to see your grandchildren, or embark on fasting, prayers, and night vigils instead?

Surprisingly, many Africans who can imagine money as water struggle to imagine pills as a complement to food.

I have always been aware of our aversion to science and our fondness for superstition. What I didn’t realise is that our fear of pills is one force pushing us deeper into the arms of merchants of the supernatural. I used to think our craving for shortcuts ended with the pursuit of wealth and happiness. I was naïve not to see that it extends to our quest for health.

If you are an African of a certain age, one or two chronic illnesses will find you. High blood pressure. Diabetes. High cholesterol. Heart disease. Arthritis. Alzheimer’s. Depression. Asthma. Something. They catch up with you because of your DNA, family history, where you grew up, the way you’ve treated your body over the years — or just because they can. But be assured, they will catch you.

Before you spit out tufiakwa or declare, “it’s not my portion,” think of your body as a car. It was once brand new. Over the years, its parts begin to wear out. Some will need replacement. How fast that happens depends on the make of the car, the road you drive on, your servicing history — especially how often you change your fluids — and the quality of fuel you use. If your fuel had impurities like sulfur, your engine would deteriorate faster.

Your body is exactly like that car, except for one crucial difference: you can’t buy another one. It’s the only car you will drive in this lifetime. You’re stuck with it.

And like any car, it will need a mechanic. 

You can choose a roadside mechanic, a certified mechanic trained to fix your car’s model, or that cousin who used to hang around a mechanic shop. The choice is yours.

If your car refuses to start, you might get the neighbourhood kids to push it uphill, let it roll down, and, as it gathers speed, try to jump-start it. If the problem is not the starter, it still won’t work. You might borrow another car to jumpstart your battery.

Or you could sprinkle holy water on it and wait for it to start — because you believe.

The choice is yours.

Surprisingly, many Africans are opting for holy water. I used to think it was because of our love for shortcuts. Now I know the pill is part of the problem.

It’s either the pill from the pharmacy or the bill from the church.

For the holy water therapy to thrive, every so often, you need a General Overseer willing to testify that he drove from Ore to Lagos without fuel. When that miracle story gets old, he will upgrade it — claiming that his miracle handkerchief cured breast cancer, and that Jesus visited him and his wife for dinner and drank tea with them.

It all fits well with our predisposition towards the supernatural. After all, we haven’t entirely emerged from a world where superstition reigns, and the demand for empirical proof has yet to come naturally.

So, we keep sprinkling holy water, keep pasting stickers on our doors and car windows — those almighty stickers from our new shrines, franchises whose logos are not so different from Starbucks’. Meanwhile, our GOs have personal doctors abroad, never miss their checkups or specialist appointments, with highly paid cardiologists, endocrinologists, urologists, oncologists, neurologists, dermatologists, psychiatrists, and others. And when in Nigeria, they travel with armed security. They don’t depend on angels or stickers to protect their armoured vehicles or CCTV-surrounded homes.

We are too lazy to think — it pains our brains. We are too eager to pray, fast, and sprinkle holy water.

What I didn’t know until now is that part of the reason we prefer to pray and fast is simpler than I thought: we are too lazy to take three pills a day.

For those Africans who choose holy water over hypertension medication, remember it is preposterous to fear the pill more than the demons.

If it helps, the phrase “God works in mysterious ways” includes inspiring pharmacologists to develop treatments for illnesses. Your belief in miracles cannot end when it is time to take your pills. Don’t say that you do not know that your pastor, who tells you to pray your diabetes away, is religiously taking his pills.

The central idea of the Gospel According to Holy Water is that Jesus is not your pharmacist.

Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History, Afrodiasporic Literature, and African Folktales at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of the Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life” and “Children of a Retired God,” among others. His upcoming book is called “A Kiss That Never Was.”