Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity

by Qureshi, Nabeel

  I took my search online and began looking up as much information as I could about Daniel 7 and Psalm 110. After a few hours, it was clear. Daniel 7 spoke of a Son of Man that shared sovereignty in heaven with God, being worshiped by all men with a reverence due only to God. Psalm 110 spoke of another lord, someone who would sit on God’s throne alongside God and serve as His heir.

  In Mark 14:62, Jesus claimed to be the divine Son of Man and the sovereign heir of the Father’s throne. He was boldly claiming to be God.68

  But how could this be? Perhaps this portion of Mark, like the gospel of John, did not accurately reflect what Jesus claimed? I fervently searched the internet for a way out, but there was none. Jesus called himself the Son of Man more than eighty times in the four gospels; that he really used the term was undeniable. His position as the one “sitting at the right hand of the power” was deeply embedded in church doctrine, even at the earliest layer.69 If these were divine claims, Jesus’ deity was laced throughout the gospels and earliest church history.

  At nightfall, I reluctantly turned off the computer, put McDowell’s book away, and just let this new information simmer. I was at an impasse. I could not get myself to admit that the earliest gospel, and in fact every gospel thereafter, was built around the framework of Jesus’ deity, but neither could I deny it. On the one hand, the cost was too high, and on the other, the evidence was too strong.

  Mercifully, and despite the title of the book, the evidence did not demand a verdict. At least not right away. I did not need to consciously address the incongruity between the evidence and my beliefs. Subconsciously, though, the tension and pressure found an outlet in my life by way of a renewed fervor for Islam. I gained a new zeal for salaat, spent more time studying hadith, and employed Islamic terms more frequently in daily speech.

  I did whatever it took to avoid the evidence, but I could not escape it forever. And months later, when the tension finally resurfaced, it put my relationship with David to the test.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  PAULEMICS AND THE EARLIEST JESUS

  RAIN THUNDERED ON THE ROOF of my car. What had been a gentle morning shower a moment before was now a deluge, obscuring the afternoon sun.

  It was a new semester, which meant renewed battles with the registrar and the financial aid department. The administrative offices were in Rollins Hall, at the far end of campus, and David had to make the trek. I offered to drive him so he could avoid getting wet, but the rain had since become so fierce that even exiting the car was sure to ruin whatever books and electronics he might have in his backpack. So we sat in my car, waiting for a break in the storm.

  Why we picked that moment to talk about the tensest matter between us, I will never know. The storm outside the car was nothing compared to the one brewing inside it.

  “So I looked into John’s gospel,” David started.

  “Oh? What did you find?” Even though my problem with John’s gospel was moot since I had found a high Christology in the Synoptics, I had never admitted this to David.

  Christology: An interpretation of Jesus’ nature, identity, or role; for example, the Quran has a lower Christology than John, since he is just human in the former yet divine in the latter.

  “First, you’re right that John looks different from the other gospels, but that’s because it comes from a different disciple who had his own perspective. Just like two people telling the same story, they’ll tell it differently, but that doesn’t mean one of them is wrong.”

  I decided to engage him, though my heart was not in it. “But John is more than just a little different from the Synoptics.”

  “Yes, but not so different that it’s incompatible.” David waited for me to respond, but I had nothing to say, so he continued. “Second, we can’t be too sure John was written around 90 – 100 AD.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The way scholars date John’s gospel is somewhat arbitrary. Many of them date it that late because of what it teaches about Jesus. They assume that a high Christology means a later date.”

  “Doesn’t it?” I pushed. “Christians hadn’t developed a high Christology by the time the Synoptics were written.”

  “I think the Christology in the Synoptics is pretty high, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say it isn’t. You still have a problem. There are writings from before the gospels that prove Christians saw Jesus as God.”

  David was taking the conversation in a different direction, and he piqued my curiosity. “What writings?”

  “The letters of Paul.”

  By saying this, David had unknowingly lit a short fuse on a hidden powder keg. Muslims are often trained to despise Paul, to see him as the hijacker of early Christianity. From the highest imam in our jamaat all the way down to my father and mother, I had been repeatedly taught that Paul had corrupted Jesus’ message, misleading billions into worshiping the mortal Messiah.

  Because of what the Quran and hadith teach, Muslims must revere Jesus and the disciples. They were people chosen by Allah to spread His true message, including the fact that Jesus was just a human. But somewhere very early in Christian history, people began to worship Jesus. That was anathema and blasphemy. Muslims are left with no recourse other than to place the blame on an early, influential Christian outside the circle of disciples. Paul is that Christian. Oblivious, David continued, “The writings of Paul make it clear that Jesus was God to the earliest Christians. Paul started writing in the forties, a decade or so before Mark was written. For example, one of his earliest letters says Jesus ‘existed in the form of God’ and that he ‘emptied himself’ to become human.70 In another of his earliest letters, he divides up characteristics of Yahweh among Jesus and the Father.”71

  “So what?” I said, somewhat annoyed.

  “Well, obviously, if the community is already proclaiming that Jesus is God Himself in human flesh, then we can expect a gospel written by that community to contain that belief. We should read the gospels through the contextual lens of the early Christian beliefs, which we can see through Paul’s letters.”

  By this point, I had had enough. I subtly mimicked David in retort.

  “Well, obviously, it’s not in Mark. Paul must have been the one to invent Jesus’ deity. He’s the one who corrupted the Christian message.”

  David was mystified. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  I rehashed the arguments against Paul that I had learned in khutbas and religious books. “Jesus told people that he had not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.72 Then Paul came along and said Jesus abolished the law. Jesus told people to worship ‘my God and your God,’ and then Paul came along and said Jesus was himself God.73 Paul took the religion taught by Jesus and turned it into a religion about Jesus.”

  David began reciprocating my agitation. “And why would he invent Jesus’ deity? He was a Jew. In fact, he was the top student of Gamaliel, a Jew among Jews. What did he have to gain from inventing the idea that Jesus is God?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, David? Paul saw a power vacuum. He saw that Jesus was gone and that the disciples were too disorganized to take the reins. He wanted power and authority, and so he fashioned himself a ‘disciple,’ even though he never so much as met Jesus, and took control of the burgeoning church, promoting his gospel over other gospels that were being taught. Over Jesus’ gospel.”74

  David laughed incredulously. “Are you serious? Okay, first off, that still does not explain why a devout Jew would turn Jesus into God. He did not need to do that, even if he was some power-hungry fiend. And second, we know he was not a power-hungry fiend because he was willing to risk his life over and over again for the sake of the gospel.”75 David’s voice was getting pressured, his volume rising.

  All the same, I cut him off. “Sometimes people can’t pull out of their lies, David. Maybe by that time he was in too deep.”

  “Pull out of his lies? What reason do you have to say Paul is a pathological liar?”

  “
I told you, he wanted power.”

  David was now beside himself. “Power?! If all he wanted was power, he could have stayed just where he was. He was the top student of the top rabbi of his time; power was coming his way. He went the total opposite direction, choosing a life of meekness and poverty. The early Christians had Paul and his sacrifices to thank for their survival!”

  “Yes, and every Christian will have Paul to thank when they’re standing before God, being judged for worshiping a man instead of Him!” The moment the words escaped my lips, I knew I had gone too far. But it was too late, and I was too proud to apologize. I just stared at David, waiting for his response.

  David went dead silent. For moments, he did not speak. When he finally did, his words were calm, calculated, and measured, as if each thought was being pressed through layers of filters. “Nabeel, after Jesus, I see Paul as the godliest man of all time. I’m not about to just sit here and listen to you insult him in order to make your theories work. Our friendship is important to me, so I think we should avoid talking about this again.” He stopped. “Do you agree?”

  “I agree.”

  “Alright, I’ll see you later.” With that, David threw open the door and walked out into the storm.

  To read an expert contribution on the deity of Jesus Christ by J. Ed Komoszewski, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Northwestern College and co-author of Reinventing Jesus and Putting Jesus in His Place, visit contributions.NabeelQureshi.com.

  Part 6

  THE CASE FOR THE GOSPEL

  But what if His majesty is not as important to Him as His children are?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  TENSION AND THE TRINITY

  OUR ARGUMENT OVER PAUL was not the only time David and I butted heads. Our emotions often got heated as we spoke about our core beliefs. The more important an issue on which we disagreed, the more likely it was that one of us would say something rash. Intense disagreements are bound to lead to intense emotions.

  But it didn’t matter how rough our relationship got, because we were living life together. Even if we were at our wits’ end, vowing in moments of anger to never deal with one another ever again, we would be forced to smooth things out when we ran into each other in forensics practice later that week. Or in class the next day. Or, in the case of our argument about Paul, just twenty minutes later, because David needed a ride.

  This is only one of the reasons why a strong friendship is critical. A surface-level relationship might snap under the tension of disagreement, but by living our lives together, we were forced to reconcile.

  Of course, beyond mere proximity, we really did love and care for one another. Like true brothers, even after our biggest knockdown, drag-out arguments, we were still brothers. Love covers a multitude of sins.

  There was a benefit to our arguments, surprisingly. They showed us where points of tension were hiding beneath the surface, needing to be addressed. One such issue that constantly bubbled to the surface was that of the Trinity. As with the doctrine of Jesus’ deity, a strong aversion to the Trinity was woven into my Muslim identity and made for a latent land mine.

  The core doctrine of Islam is Tauheed. A whole field of Islamic theology is dedicated to this topic, so it is difficult to encapsulate, but essentially Tauheed is the doctrine of God’s oneness. This is not merely an affirmation of monotheism but a thoroughgoing cultivation of the concept of God’s absolute unity. God’s essence, or the very thing that makes Him God, is that He is one: independent, unique, sovereign, set apart, and completely unified. There can be no division within Him whatsoever.

  Tauheed: The Islamic doctrine of Allah’s absolute unity and self-reliance

  Distilling this theology in the context of Muslim-Christian dialogue boils down to this: Tauheed, Islam’s most fundamental principle, is antithetical to the Trinity. Growing up in an ostensibly Christian nation, my Muslim elders galvanized me against the Trinity. I can recall many jumaa khutbas, classes at youth camps, religious education books, and Quran study sessions dedicated to rebutting the Trinity. They all taught the same thing: the Trinity is thinly veiled polytheism.

  Roughly, they taught me to see the Trinity like this: Christians want to worship Jesus in addition to God, but they know there is only one God. So they say God is at the same time both three and one, calling Him a Trinity. Even though this makes no sense, Christians insist it is so. When asked to explain the Trinity, they will say it is a mystery and that it needs to be accepted with faith.

  As a young Muslim in the West, I set out to test this. Whenever I had a discussion about the Trinity with a Christian, the first question I asked was, “Is the Trinity important to you?” When they replied affirmatively, I asked, “How important?” anticipating the response that it would be heretical to deny the Trinity. The third question completed the setup. I would ask, “So, what is the Trinity?” and would receive the rote answer that God is three in one. Then the coup de grâce: “And what does that mean?” I usually got blank stares. Sometimes people would start talking about eggs or water, but no one ever was able to explain what the doctrine of the Trinity actually meant. Three what in one what? And how is that not self-contradictory?

  My questions were not abstruse questions on a peripheral topic. They were simple questions of clarification on essential Christian doctrine, yet no Christian I met growing up was able to answer them. That meant every Christian I encountered bolstered what the Quran had taught me about the Trinity: it was a ridiculous doctrine that merited divine retribution.76

  The elders who taught me to see the Trinity in this light ranged from revered imams to learned leaders to my own parents and grandparents. Everyone I loved and respected taught me to reject the Trinity, and that, combined with the inability of Christians to explain it, makes it easy to see why a repulsion to the Trinity was part and parcel of my Islamic identity. The same is true for almost all practicing Muslims.

  David and I had a few conversations about the Trinity, and though he answered with more depth and clarity than many other Christians, my mind had been made up well before I met him that the Trinity was unviable. So we butted heads, and as with the issue of Paul, we decided to table the discussion indefinitely.

  It was coincidence that the solution came to me while I was sitting next to him in the unlikeliest of places.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  RESONATING WITH THE TRINITY

  IT WAS JULY 2003, the summer after my sophomore year, and big life changes were upon me. I had made the decision to graduate from college a year early, which meant I had to begin contemplating the next phase of life. My decision also meant I had to sit for the August administration of the Medical College Admissions Test, an exam that required organic chemistry, so I sacrificed my summer to grueling doses of o-chem five days a week. Not surprisingly, David took the class with me, which meant I got grueling doses of David five days a week too.

  But I was not the only one with big life changes. A while earlier, before boarding a flight to a forensics tournament, David and I had been discussing the resurrection. I made an argument to support the swoon theory, to which David responded, “That weak stuff isn’t gonna work on me, man. I come from the trailer park. I got common sense!”

  Unbeknownst to us, a new girl on the forensics team had been listening to our debate. She threw her hat into the ring, interjecting, “Oh yeah? Well, I come from single-celled organisms.” David and I incredulously turned to her. We barely knew who this girl was, yet she wanted to take us on? One thing David and I agreed on was that blind evolution was statistically impossible. We tackled her arguments together, but she fought back. Over the course of the weekend, we argued with her about truth, relativity, God, evolution, and science. She had spark, and she didn’t go down without swinging.

  Three days later, Marie was a theist, and David was in love. Two months after that, the two were engaged. By the summer of 2003, David and Marie had been married a year, and we were all eagerly awaiting the arrival of
their first child. David and I sat in o-chem on a hair trigger, ready to pick up the phone and race to the hospital. It was a very exciting time.

  Despite the need to leave at any moment, and quite despite our incessant note passing and chuckling, we sat front and center in Mrs. Adamski’s lecture hall, not more than three feet from her as she taught. I vividly remember the exact location of my seat because it was there that I first opened up to the Trinity, a moment still etched in my mind.

  Projected in the front of the room were three large depictions of nitrate in bold black and white. We were studying resonance, the configuration of electrons in certain molecules. The basic concept of resonance is easy enough to understand, even without a background in chemistry. Essentially, the building block of every physical object is an atom, a positively charged nucleus orbited by tiny, negatively charged electrons. Atoms bond to one another by sharing their electrons, forming a molecule. Different arrangements of the electrons in certain molecules are called “resonance structures.” Some molecules, like water, have no resonance while others have three resonance structures or more, like the nitrate on the board.

  Although the concept was easy enough to grasp, the reality proved to be baffling. Mrs. Adamski concluded her lesson by commenting, “These drawings are just the best way to represent resonance structures on paper, but it’s actually much more complicated. Technically, a molecule with resonance is every one of its structures at every point in time, yet no single one of its structures at any point in time.”

  The rest of the class must have had the same expressions on their faces that I did because Mrs. Adamski repeated herself. “It’s all the structures all the time, never just one of them.” After another brief pause, she afforded us some reassurance. “But don’t worry about that. You’re only going to be tested on the structures we can draw,” to which the class gave a collective sigh of relief.