أحمد محمد لبن Ahmad.M.Lbn
مؤسس ومدير المنتدى
عدد المساهمات : 52644
العمر : 72
 | | موضوع: Chapter 2: My Life as a Baptist الإثنين 21 أغسطس 2017, 5:01 pm | |
| Chapter 2: My Life as a Baptist
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I was very content with the teachings of the Baptists. Instead of de-emphasizing the New Testament writings of Paul and the majority of the Old Testament, as my previous pastors had often done, the leaders in the Baptist Church always based their lessons on a wide variety of Bible verses.
I occasionally wished that more of their sermons were based on what Jesus himself had said and done rather than the other sources in scripture, but since I believed that all the writers were in agreement, I had little difficulty with the accepted evangelical Baptist doctrine that Jesus was God, that he had died as a sacrifice for my sins and that I became acceptable to God when I repented and accepted this. Except for much less being said by my instructors about the doctrine of the Trinity (the belief that God manifested Himself to the world in three ways: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit), I found this to be little different from my previous beliefs! The difference that was important to me was that obedience to God was not de-emphasized at all, which seemed to me much more compatible with what Jesus had said in the Gospels.
As a Baptist, I was expected to succeed in living a righteous life, with God's help. The Law which we had to obey was, however, quite different from what was often called Old Testament Law. The Baptists taught that we had to obey God in baptism, in professing our faith, and in worship. Day to day righteousness was still a Gift from God through the Holy Spirit. However, although I did not earn my salvation by my actions, good works were a sign of God’s Spirit working in me and gave further assurance of my forgiveness.
I thought that was great! The expectation that I would do good with God’s help, rather than fail despite divine guidance and support, was very reassuring to me. Even better was the knowledge that in simply choosing to do good, I further confirmed God's approval of me. Coincidentally, I had come to a time in my life where I quite simply had fewer opportunities to be tempted, and so avoiding sin was less of a strain than it had been previously.
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, as a Lutheran and then as a Baptist, the central components of the doctrine of Christianity as I had come to understand them were the same. I believed that "Christian" Faith was the ability to believe that Jesus was God and had died as a perfect sacrifice for my sins, and that by repenting, admitting my sinful nature and accepting that this sacrifice was for me personally, I received God's forgiveness.
This special Faith was both a gift from God and a confirmatory sign that gave me assurance of forgiveness for my sins and an eternal life of bliss in Heaven, as well as God’s help in obedience. In addition, it was a special code that set those of us who believed it apart from others who didn’t. Because we knew who God really was, we had assurances of power, protection and absolution that people with a different religion from us didn’t receive, no matter how much trust they placed in God. In this way, as I studied, Christian doctrine had become linked to my Faith, without my noticing.
Since my “Faith in God” had become indistinguishable from my acceptance of the doctrine of evangelical Christianity, I became afraid that any uncertainty would be construed as a sign of my faith's weakness. All of us knew that strong faith was good, and that weak faith led to failure and hellfire! I therefore eventually became both emotionally and intellectually incapable of closely examining my own beliefs. I was afraid that questioning could easily become damnation if it went too far. As long as I never questioned, I was certain that God would have to forgive my faults and accept me into Heaven when I died. This illusion that I had, of my control over my fate on Judgment Day, was basically the same whether I lived by Lutheran or Baptist teachings.
In the end, although I remained convinced that I lived by Faith (with a capital "F") as I was commanded by the Bible, the faith that I had was in the saving power of my belief, not the Justice or Mercy of God. Even when I considered the people of the Old Testament whom the Bible said had been “saved by their Faith” like Abraham, the other Christians with whom I associated and I generally assumed that this meant they all had had an opportunity to acknowledge the correctness of Christian doctrine, the divinity of Jesus and the universal nature of His sacrifice before the time of their own Judgment, and that it was the acceptance of this sacrifice that had resulted in their forgiveness.
In all honesty, even while I was going through my first theological crisis as a Lutheran, I had never thought to question the validity of the things that I had been taught in my Christian studies about God. I knew that Christianity and its various interlocking beliefs, explanations and assumptions had been developed over the centuries by many wise Christians in an ongoing process of revelation, study and prayer.
I knew that Faith was a gift from God. At the time, I believed, as I have said, that Faith was the acceptance of these Christian doctrines. I was convinced that these three statements were not only true but that they were in some fashion interdependent -- that the human factor introduced with the intellectual development of Christianity was somehow necessary and inevitable and a further sign of God’s beneficence and blessing.
I realized one day that I did not fear God. Quite to the contrary, I believed that God was my friend! In Sunday School for my whole life, whether Lutheran or Baptist, I had been taught that God had come to earth as Jesus and had sacrificed Himself for me personally so that I would not have to suffer the penalty for my wrong actions.
I wasn’t even responsible for the really hard work of obedience to God’s Law, because I knew that God would take care of that through the Holy Spirit in “His” own time! Until then, as long as I meant well and professed the correct creed, I could do pretty much whatever I felt I couldn’t help doing. I didn’t know what I could possibly be afraid of. I had developed a rationalization where I avoided sin and tried to do what was right not because I feared God but because I pitied Jesus. I saw this as proof of the Holy Spirit working within me. I imagined that every wrong thing that I did added to Jesus’ suffering on the cross, and I tried to avoid doing ill to limit that pain. Far from fearing God, I thought that I felt sorry for Him.
I considered myself to be reasonably intelligent. I knew that Solomon (PBUH), one of the wisest of men, had taught that fear of God was the beginning of Wisdom. Although, as a Christian, I told myself that I had passed beyond fear into a real knowledge of God, I wanted to be wise because I figured that it would be a good thing to be. Knowing that it had worked for Solomon, I asked for Wisdom from God. I actually thought that God would somehow confirm to me that I was right about everything and maybe make me rich as well!
Instead, my marriage of nine years fell apart as my wife left me for my first best friend, my work as a physician became a source of anxiety and stress to me when people started to plan on shutting down the hospital at which I practiced (leaving me without a job!), all but one friend decided to side with my soon to be ex-wife, and a tree fell on my car. The first thing that I learned very quickly in the midst of this was how to laugh at myself and at the arrogance of my assumption that I knew anything about being wise. Strangely, at no time did I doubt that God was working in my life, nor did I feel cursed, just chastened.
I had always known Muslims, although I tended to think of them as “Mohammedans”, and I believed that they thought of their Prophet in the same way that I thought of Jesus. I had actually taken some short classes in comparative world religions in the course of my religious instruction and was quite convinced that I knew everything significant about Islam. I believed Muslims were wrong, but otherwise I really gave their faith little thought.
Suddenly, I noticed that I was surrounded by Muslims. New friends, colleagues and respected mentors whose faith I had paid little attention to all turned out to follow Islam. I was astonished by their goodness, their devotion to their God and their obedience to the teachings of their Book, even though I thought that the Book itself was false. I was particularly impressed by the fact that they all prayed five times a day! |
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