8/17/16
Yusef about 22
“Excuse me, you asked me a very interesting question about a week ago”.
A middle-eastern man interrupted an outreach conversation I was just finishing
up, and patiently waited until I could give him my full attention. “I’m Yusef, and I’m sorry I couldn’t talk
when you asked me that question last week.
I had a very bad stomach ache, but now I’d like to talk about it” “Of course” I answered, and he
continued. “You asked me what I think
happens after we die. I’m a Muslim, and
I know you are a Christian, and I’m just wondering, do you think I will go to
heaven? If I do will I see any other
Muslims there?”
There is a short answer and a long answer to that question. I believe it is such an important question,
it deserves the long answer in order to avoid a misunderstanding. The short answer would be “No, he would not
go to heaven”. The misunderstanding
would be that he would be condemned to hell for not being a Christian, for not
having the right religion. This common
misunderstanding makes the God of the Christianity seem so unreasonable as to
be unbelievable.
I was not about to tell him he would be shut out of heaven and condemned
because he is a Muslim, but what I did explain is that Muslims, along with all
people, are condemned because we are all sinners. Yusef agreed that God deserves our total
respect and devotion, that He is holy and perfect in all His ways, and that
there is nowhere we can escape from His presence. He understood and agreed that he has
willingly sinned against God regardless, that he deserves punishment and needs God’s
mercy.
It’s at this point where I began to explain the major differences
between Islam and Christianity. Islam
teaches that a combination of God’s mercy and one’s religious devotion can allow
people to obtain salvation. “But God,
who is perfect in all his attributes, would have to compromise some of his
mercy in order to require religious devotion, and some of His justice in order
to overlook the punishment we deserve” I explained.
But Yusef objected. “What if a
man has oppressed and mistreated me all my life? Wouldn’t God’s justice require that he be
punished rather than me?” Yusef was making
a very common mistake. It’s so easy to
point fingers at others, and Yusef was focusing on the sin of others but
forgetting about his own. God’s perfect justice
requires that the payment for sin is death, but in His perfect love and mercy the
free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Jesus took our punishment for us in our place
on the cross, not Mohammed, not Confucius, not Buddha.
There are many religions that tell us we can be good enough to earn
some sort of heaven or salvation. But we
are all equally dead in our sins. Only
one has a Savior, Jesus, and He alone deserves to be our Lord.
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