AN AFRICAN “country doctor” is no ordinary doctor. I know because I was one of them.

Persons would come to me because they sought revenge on real or imagined enemies. I would determine the punishment and administer it by magical means. I specialized in divination and made “medicines” to protect one from “departed spirits” or those seeking to bring evil upon a person.

Years before I took up the practice of divination, I became a regular attender at one of Christendom’s churches and later went to a religious mission school. Why? Well, in my early teens my uncle took me to a church in Monrovia. He explained that those who did not go to church would go to hellfire, where first the fingertips would burn, then one arm, then the other arm, the other limbs, and finally the whole body. When finished, God would so fix it that the burning would start all over again, to be repeated to time indefinite, he said.

I was afraid of burning. So, along with so many others, I went to church. But church attendance did not change me very much. My real religion was still the worship of the “spirits” of my ancestors.

The efforts of my church to get me to stop worshiping the “spirits” failed. Why? The church did not teach that the dead were not alive to receive such worship. No, the church said otherwise. I was taught that each person possessed an immortal soul that survived the death of the body. This only strengthened my belief that my ancestors were alive and needed to be appeased. My non-Christian relatives, I reasoned, were not far from the truth after all.

I Learn How to Be a “Country Doctor”

Unfortunately I could not read the Bible for myself to see just what it said about God and his ways. Not until I was twenty years old did my guardian yield to years of pleading and send me to school. After three years, I was compelled to accompany my ailing guardian to the chief “medicine” town in my country. There I took a course in “country medicine.” This included the art of preparing and administering poisons made from the bark of trees, leaves or the gall of alligators. This knowledge was essential to the work of a “country doctor” whose patrons sought revenge on enemies.

Having heard a complaint, a “country doctor” determines if punishment is merited and to what degree. Learning how to become such a “doctor” did not bother my conscience, despite years of church attendance. I believed that God not only allowed the “country doctor” to do his work of administering revenge but also empowered him to do so.

Divining was another requirement in mastering my craft. Methods of divining included looking at the water in a pot or at a mirror. For protection against departed spirits or evil persons, I learned to concoct various “medicines.” Often such would be put in a bottle and buried in the threshold of a house, with just the top of the bottle showing.

One day all my possessions were burned up when fire gutted the village. My depression turned to astonishment when I was told that this was a sign from the spirits that I would receive more power. The next day the chief practitioner gave me a ring and confided to me: “If you put this on your finger and start rubbing it, you will be invisible to anyone standing by. Here are the laws of the ring: Don’t look at the sun when it is noon; don’t eat onion!”

The first time I tried rubbing the ring, people passed me by as if I were not there. But the second time I was greatly disappointed. My confidant explained: “It cannot work all the time, but it is a quick way of making money. I will show you how to do it.” Thereafter I would supply rings at a price to make one invisible, rings for ambitious men seeking power and position.

On one occasion, I made a ring for a clan chief, and he paid me $32, convinced that it had made him invisible and that he would be empowered as chief to time indefinite. But on an occasion when the ring did not seem to work for him, I simply told him that the spirit of the ring was temporarily visiting other parts of the earth.

Uncertainty and Confusion

When I was twenty-four years old, I decided that I wanted to return to school. My parents mocked the idea, but I was not to be put off. I enrolled at a religious mission school, and although the students, mere children, laughed at me, the teacher gave me encouragement: “Try your best. I was big like you and went to school. Now I am teaching you.”

During Bible class I was told: “It is wrong to punish anyone for his wrongdoing to you, or to harm him with country medicine.” Defending my conviction that the “country doctor” was actually God’s means for returning evil for evil, I countered: “Since God punishes people when they wrong him, then we are only following his example and punishing people when they wrong us.” But the teacher maintained: “We are not to do it. That is for God to do.” Nevertheless, I reasoned to myself that if that were true, then why did God make the “medicine” work? This was not explained.

During those years I continued to sacrifice to my “medicines” by rubbing them with the blood of a victim, usually a chicken. I attended church services, yet I trusted in “medicines” and magic. Despite years of church instruction, I still thought that there was nothing like “African science” practiced by the “country doctor” for dealing with the problems of life.

The shock of all this​—that as a “country doctor” I had been misled by the Devil—​was so great that I could scarcely think of anything else for the next two weeks. At the end of that time I had made my choice. Early one morning before daybreak, I gathered all my “medicines” and my prized magical ring. After packing them all into a bag, I dumped it into the river. No one was around, but I knew that the true God, Jehovah, was observing.​—Prov. 15:3.

Serving the True God for Life

When news got around that I had made a break with magic and all forms of spiritism, I was summoned to the entrance of the local secret society “bush.” Thereupon the chief “country doctor” or zo asked me: “Are you the one who has said that you have no more time for Poro and Sande [native secret societies] and you have dumped all your medicines into the water?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Are you not afraid of all the gathering here, and to admit to us these things?”

To this I replied: “I will not allow fear of you to cause me to do what is wrong before the living God Jehovah!”

“Go and be for your Jehovah,” thundered the zo, “but you will know who we are!” This was clearly an intimation that I could expect to be poisoned by “country medicine.” Turning from them and walking straight ahead, I sought protection from Jehovah through prayer.