A Drummer's Testament

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Chapter II-19:  The Dagbamba Belief in God

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Why Dagbamba believe in God; arguments for the existence of God; God's greatness; how Dagbamba remember God in their daily living



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Contents outline and links by paragraph

Belief in God is universal in Dagbon

Reasons for believing in God

Why God hides His purpose

God's power with death

Differences in the human condition

Belief in God and respect



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Proverbs and Sayings

As for “I don't want,” there is no medicine for “I don't want.”

Dagbamba say that when the river is dry, it is not a shame to the river; it is God who is in shame.

This sun, this moon, this earth, and the mountains and the sky:  these are God's rooms.

The person who says there is no God is the person who doesn't know, and the one who doesn't know is the one who doesn't want.

Sometimes you will be holding something in your pocket and saying, “I'm walking to give this to so-and-so.”  By the time you get near that fellow, you will change to another way and give it to a different fellow.  It is God Who directed you to change and give it to the other one.

God wants us to doubt ourselves.

What God wants is what He does.

In everything we are doing, there is God inside.

Everything is standing on the power of God.

“There is God” is better than “There is no God.”

Death hasn't come yet, and medicine is bluffing.

It is God Who is for your life.

Our life is a promise between us and God.

God cannot let everything be equal.  If everybody were equal, we wouldn't have respect among ourselves, and we wouldn't have belief that God is there.

In the Holy Qur'an God says that human beings should be more than one another.

In this world, there is nothing that is equal.

The work of God is just too great.  We can't take our sense and compare it with anything, and we can't take our work and compare it to God's work.

An animal knows the one who owns it.

Maalams say that God put us on the world so that we would come and look after ourselves, to search for what we can get and then come back home.

God likes us, and that is why He has put us here.


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