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January 4 - January 7, 2022
But what if the blasphemy was the truth?
“O Allah, the Bible couldn’t be right, could it?”
the emphasis on the words themselves leads many Muslims to neglect the meaning of those words. Muslims who recite the Quran regularly are regarded as pious, whereas Muslims who only contemplate the meaning of the Quran are regarded as learned. Piety is the greater honor, and most Muslims I knew growing up could recite many chapters of the Quran from memory, but rarely could they explain the meaning or context of those verses.
What was the message that Muhammad considered so important? Essentially this: God is not a father, and He has no son.
single day. Even then, the words are exogenous to the worshiper, not the least because they are in a foreign language. This is true
The language of the daily prayers is not personal to anyone.
all four major schools of Sunni thought and all three major schools of Shia thought teach that people who leave Islam must be killed for their apostasy, disagreeing only on the details of qualifying circumstances and implementation. Only outlying groups, such as liberal Muslims and Ahmadis, disagree with this time-honored practice.
dreams are the only means I know of by which the average Muslim expects to hear directly from God.
I also realized that I asked far too many questions for my relatives’ tastes. In our culture, elders are simply to be obeyed. Obedience is what shows them that you respect them and, in certain contexts, love them. Questions are often seen as a challenge to authority. In school though, our teachers taught us critical thinking and that it was good to question everything.
People from Eastern Islamic cultures generally assess truth through lines of authority, not individual reasoning.15 Of course, individuals do engage in critical reasoning in the East, but on average, it is relatively less valued and less prevalent than in the West. Leaders have done the critical reasoning, and leaders know best. Receiving input from multiple sources and then critically examining the data to distill a truth is an exercise for specialists, not the common man.
There are simply too many barriers for Muslim immigrants to understand Christians and the West by sheer circumstance. Only the exceptional blend of love, humility, hospitality, and persistence can overcome these barriers, and not enough people make the effort.
culture. To be Americanized was to be disobedient to your elders, to dress less conservatively, and to spend more time with your friends than your family. Cursing, drinking, and dating were simply unfathomable.
They did not categorize religion with belief but with cultural identity. The tragedy here is that no one has given them a reason to think otherwise. If they were to intimately know even one Christian who lived differently, their misconceptions might be corrected, and they might see Christianity in a virtuous light.
Thus, positional authority yields a society that determines right and wrong based on honor and shame.
Rational authority creates a society that determines right and wrong based on innocence and guilt.
If there is no dishonor, it is not wrong.
Stealing the soda was not an issue for him before being caught. In fact, it was still not the issue after being caught. As strange as it might sound to Westerners, it was more dishonorable for him to be called out by a minimum-wage employee than to be caught stealing soda.
Adam & Eves shame was their nakedness, and being caught naked by God, not their disobedience and in eating the apple (Genesis 3). and
and
Cain's remorse was due to his punishment of being being cast out of Eden, not the murder of his brother. (Genesis 4:8-16).and
and
Cain's descendant Lamach boasted in his sin (Genesis 4:23-24)and
and
Could my outrage at their callousness toward their sin be b/c i have been reading this thru western guilt-innocence eyes? But all thru the Bible, we are called to repent of our sin, while eastern honor-shame cultures apparently try to get away with it. The Gospel is counter-cultural from the beginning.
For having told such a good story, he was able to transform the shame of being caught lying into the honor of being a good storyteller. Actually doing the right thing did not even enter into the equation, and neither did guilt.
Effective evangelism requires relationships. There are very few exceptions.
Effective evangelism requires relationships. There are very few exceptions.
“Scholars are virtually unanimous: the death of Jesus on the cross is among the surest facts of history.”
if I wanted to hold onto an Islamic version of Jesus’ crucifixion — whether through the substitution theory or the theistic swoon theory — I would have to discard history. The Quran required me to close my eyes to the evidence and believe solely on faith.
I realized I could no longer uncritically trust what my parents had taught me. I did not doubt their sincerity, their devotion, or their love, but I was beginning to doubt their grasp of the truth.
“liars make poor martyrs.”
“The only thing we’ve got is the resurrection? Buddy, that’s all we need!”
The Bible and the Quran were nothing alike. Not in the slightest. Why was I trying to interpret them in the same way?
So fractured are narratives in the Quran that only one story has a clear beginning, middle, and end: the story of Joseph. All the other stories pick up in the middle, or else they are never carried to their conclusions. It was no wonder I had to turn to my teachers in order to understand the Quran.
There was no need for any commentary in order to understand the gospels. Anyone can understand the Bible.
If Jesus truly did claim to be God, then the Quran is wrong and Islam is a false religion.
even the earliest records of Muhammad’s life are altered versions of previous stories that were also altered.
Through selective quotation, Muhammad becomes the picture-perfect prophet.
It did not take long for me to realize that the Muhammad I had come to know was a filtered version. Honestly, it took me about thirty seconds.
It was then that I began to realize that I had inherited an airbrushed image of Muhammad.
And that was the pattern that emerged. Whether proclaiming scientific miracles or defending scientific inaccuracies, the protocol always called for redefining the clear statements of the Quran to say something they did not say and then glossing over any strain.
I added up all the pieces in my mind: multiple recitations of the same verse, missing verses, missing surahs, disputes over the canon, controlled destruction of all variants. How could we defend the Quran as perfectly preserved?
My decision would shame my family with incredible dishonor. Could I do such a terrible thing to my family? After everything they had done for me?
The greatest concern for me, were I to accept Jesus as Lord, was that I might be wrong. What if Jesus is not God?
He who believes Jesus is God, “Allah has forbidden Heaven for him, and his abode will be the Hellfire.”
It is no understatement to say that Muslims often risk everything to embrace the cross.
If Allah confirmed to me personally that He was actually the God of the Bible, I would accept Him, Jesus, as my Lord.
