The Sacred Press: When God’s Weight Becomes Your Witness
By Harold Mawela, from my study in Akasia, Pretoria
My friends, if you listen closely on a still Akasia night, past the hum of a struggling generator during load-shedding, you can hear it. It is a deep, collective groan. It’s in the sigh of a father scanning empty job portals, in the silent tears of a mother rationing medication, in the clenched jaw of a student studying by candlelight. It is the sound of a nation under pressure. We know this song, don’t we? The melody of the squeeze, the rhythm of the press.
Just last week, my own small pressure came in the form of a shattered smartphone screen—a modern tragedy of cracked glass and frozen digits. There, in the bustling repair kiosk at the Mall@Reds, surrounded by the tangible fruits of South African ingenuity, I had a revelation. The young technician, Letso, wasn’t just replacing glass. With focused intensity, he was using precise, mounting pressure to laminate a new screen, bonding it to the heart of the device. “Too little pressure, mlungu,” he said without looking up, “and it won’t stick. It will come loose. Too much, and you crack the digitalizer. The pressure… it must be just right to make it whole again.”
Isn’t that the very image of our lives with God? We fear the weight, the crushing force of circumstance. We cry out for it to stop. But what if the divine hand upon your life is not a fist to destroy you, but the precise, necessary pressure of the Master Technician, laminating your spirit to the image of His Son? This is not destruction; it is distillation. It is the sacred process where the diluted wine of our self-sufficiency is pressed until only the priceless, potent essence of Christ in us remains.
The Counterfeit Gospel of the Pain-Free Life
Before we can understand the sanctity of the press, we must sound the alarm against a deadly counterfeit that has infected our continent like a spiritual parasite: the Prosperity Gospel. A profound and courageous document, the Africa Statement on Prosperity Gospel and Word of Faith Theology (2025), arises from Kenyan and South African church leaders to draw a line in the sand. It names this doctrine as “the greatest danger facing the church in sub-Saharan Africa today”. Why? Because it dovetails perfectly with the transactional core of African Traditional Religion and our deep, post-colonial longing for relief, offering a blasphemous bargain: “Have enough faith, give enough money, and God must make you healthy and wealthy.”
This is a lie woven with threads of scripture, but it creates a tapestry of despair. It tells the suffering single mother in Diepsloot she is poor because her faith is weak. It tells the saint battling cancer that their illness is a curse they have not confessed away. This theology is an anesthetic that numbs us to the cross. It denies the very words of our Lord: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The Apostle Paul, who prayed fervently for his “thorn” to be removed, was told by Christ, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). His pressure remained. His weakness became the very platform for God’s power.
The argument of the Prosperity Gospel can be dismantled with clear, biblical logic:
· Premise 1: Scripture promises that God works all things—including suffering—for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).
· Premise 2: Scripture explicitly states that godly living often leads to increased persecution and trouble (2 Timothy 3:12, Acts 14:22).
· Conclusion: Therefore, the absence of suffering or the presence of wealth is not a reliable sign of God’s favor or one’s spiritual maturity. His favor is found in His sustaining presence in the suffering.
This error is not just theological; it’s a cultural poison. When a preacher in a flashy suit promises a breakthrough for a “seed faith” offering, he is not offering the Gospel of the crucified Christ. He is practicing a form of spiritual piracy, preying on the vulnerable. As Augustine argued centuries ago, the difference between a pirate and an emperor is merely one of scale. The prosperity preacher, seizing the hopes of the poor, is little different.
Between Two Cities: The Press of the Rainbow Nation
Our pressure in South Africa is not merely personal; it is national, historical, and systemic. We live, as the ancient African theologian Augustine so brilliantly framed, in the tension between two cities: the City of Man and the City of God. The City of Man—our political and economic structures—is “dominated by that very lust of domination” (libido dominandi). It is fragile, “like glass in its fragile splendor,” always at risk of shattering.
Look at our own “Rainbow Nation.” Thirty years after liberation, the lofty idealism of 1994 has met the brutal realism of persistent inequality—South Africa has the highest income inequality in the world. We experience this daily: the relentless “load-shedding,” the water shortages, the fear at the gate. The ANC’s fall from an outright majority is not just a political shift; it is the groaning of a City of Man that cannot fulfil its messianic promises.
But Augustine’s wisdom, born in North Africa, speaks directly to us at the southern tip. The City of Man may falter, but the City of God persists. This City is not a physical place but a spiritual community, “oriented toward the love of God”. Its citizens live in both realms. Our calling is not to abandon the broken City of Man but to be outposts of the City of God within it. This is where the press becomes purposeful. Our socio-economic suffering is not a sign of God’s absence. It is, as Black Theology of Liberation powerfully contends, the very arena where faith must engage in “prophetic activism”. True liberation is not just political; it is economic, social, and spiritual. The pressure we feel is, in part, the groan of creation longing for the children of God to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly within the struggle.
Forged in the Digital Fire: The Soul in an Age of AI
Yet, the press takes new forms. We now live in the age of the algorithm and the AI chatbot—a different, subtle pressure that threatens to hollow out our souls. A fascinating paper presented in Boston this year asked, “What Does ‘the Single Individual’ Have to Do with ChatGPT?” It wrestled with the ideas of Søren Kierkegaard, who warned of the “crowd” as a force that dissolves true individuality. ChatGPT itself admitted that social media and AI contribute to this “massification”.
Here is the pressing question for you, student in Sandton, developer in Fourways: In a world where an AI can aggregate all knowledge, craft your emails, and even generate a prayer for you, what is the value of your uniquely pressured, struggling, God-shaped soul? The danger is that we outsource our spiritual struggles to the digital crowd, seeking pain-free, pre-packaged answers. We seek a frictionless faith.
But God does His deepest work in the friction. Kierkegaard championed the “Single Individual” before God. Your anxiety, your doubt, your midnight wrestling—these are not glitches to be solved by a better algorithm. They are the sacred data points of a soul in communion with its Creator. The pressure you feel to conform, to numb out, to scroll past the hard questions, is the very press that can force you to choose: Will I be a digital avatar, or an eternal soul?
Look at the stunning creativity born from constraint at events like rAge 2025 in Fourways Mall. In the “Home_Coded” zone, South African developers, with limited resources but boundless ingenuity, create games like Mighty Peckers or the crypto-boardgame ToTheMoon!. Pressure breeds innovation. In the “Artist Alley,” local crafters turn passion into purpose, making “something no one else in the world owns”. This is a parable! The world’s pressure can either crush you or compel you to create something beautiful, unique, and enduring that glorifies the ultimate Creator.
The Theology of the Winepress
So, let us return to the vineyard. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser,” Jesus said (John 15:1). Every branch that bears fruit, He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Pruning is a precise, painful pressure.
The grape does not become fine wine on the vine. It must be harvested, destemmed, and crushed. The “free-run” juice that flows easily is good. But the richest, most complex flavours, the deepest colour and tannin, come only when more pressure is applied to the pomace. This is the sacred press. Christ Himself entered the winepress of Gethsemane and Golgotha alone. The pressure was so great His sweat became like drops of blood. He was crushed for our iniquities. And from that divine pressure flowed the wine of the New Covenant—the redemption of the world.
You are in fellowship with Him in His sufferings (Philippians 3:10). Your press is not evidence of His abandonment; it is the sign of your adoption. He is extracting the impurities of your self-reliance, your love of comfort, your trust in the City of Man. He is revealing the priceless essence: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Therefore, endure the press, my brother. Stand firm in the squeeze, my sister. Do not listen to the merchants of pain-free piety. Do not numb your soul in the digital crowd. Feel the weight. Pour out your lament to God. Then, look for the juice of the Spirit beginning to flow: patience where there was frustration, compassion where there was judgment, steadfast hope where there was despair. Your value is increasing with every calibrated kilopascal of God’s grace. You are not being destroyed. You are being distilled. You are becoming a masterpiece, fit for the Master’s eternal use, a living stone in the everlasting City of God.
Endure the press. Your finest vintage is yet to come.
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