And he renounced his faith at 60! (I)
And he blamed Prophet Isa (upon him be peace) for leading him astray!; For leading him to Christianity! Subhanah! Subhanah!! Subhaanah!!! But exactly what religion did Prophet Isa profess and practice while on earth? Did he practice Christianity? In a series of videos recently shared on TikTok, a man expressed deep regret over spending six […]
And he blamed Prophet Isa (upon him be peace) for leading him astray!; For leading him to Christianity! Subhanah! Subhanah!! Subhaanah!!! But exactly what religion did Prophet Isa profess and practice while on earth? Did he practice Christianity?
In a series of videos recently shared on TikTok, a man expressed deep regret over spending six decades of his life as a Christian, arguing that it brought him no benefit and only caused him harm. He stated further: “I am the only person I know on planet earth who is saying this out loud, but I know I’m not the only person who has experienced it. Following Jesus Christ, Christianity, and the Bible for 60 years destroyed my life. I do not recommend it. Run.”
The man added that despite spending tens of thousands of hours praying and crying out for help, he never received any response. “I can’t even begin to count the tens of thousands of hours of suffering and crying out for help. Did Jesus not hear that? It was a big waste of time. Following Jesus Christ completely ruined my life. I don’t recommend it,” he said.
It is not and never has it ever been my intention or pastime to question the choice people make of what or who to believe. It cannot. Nor will it ever be. This is fundamentally so because of my awareness that people’s beliefs are personal to them. People’s beliefs are sometimes driven by choice, chance or compulsion. There are those who believe in God, may His name be exalted, simply because they are led by reason to do so; by the extremely logical impossibility of the absence of an inimitable authority in the universe, rather multiverse, to whom all entities are subservient by force.
Overwhelmed by the acute awareness of this reality, submission to that authority by choice becomes, as it was for the heavens and earth, by choice, not force (Quran 41: 11). Resort to force therefore becomes useful only in comparative terms – the most potent weapon for the weak that finds itself in a counterpoise with the strong is unmitigated acquiescence!
But belief in God, the Almighty also reminds us, is equally and normatively a divine gift. ‘You cannot by yourself’, so says Ayat 113 of Chapter 9 of the Quran, ‘guide those you love to the path of Islam; it is the Almighty who guides whoever He wishes’. For example, the Prophet strongly desired that his uncle, Abu Talib, accept Islam before his transition to eternity. But despite his best efforts, the latter died an idolater.
There are friends of yours and mine out there who see and appreciate the stellar qualities and characteristics of Islam; its unique features, its practicality, its universality, its historicity and its comprehensive ethos and systems but who would not and have not taken the bold step to embrace the faith simply because the illumination of guidance, the light of Islam has not yet been shed on to their hearts.
Such is the case of a friend of mine and Professor of Islamic Studies outside Nigeria. He is so enarmoured by his knowledge of Islam, by the mysticalities of this faith, by its incomparable socio-political and economic systems and precepts that he is ever ready to defend it against the constant attacks of the Islamophobes in his country. But unknown to him and until recently, he had been listed as a potential ’terrorist’ by his country’s state security apparatchiks. Yet, he is not a Muslim. He does not observe the five daily prayers. He does not fast in the month of Ramadan. He remains a conscientious church-goer of the Christian faith.
Yet, there are others – those who believe in deities other than the owner of the heavens and the earth. Belief in deities other than the Almighty could be hereditary – ‘our fathers worshipped them; we are doing so too!’. Idol worship also sometimes occur as a result of the slippery assumption about the inaccessibility of the Almighty; that since He is located high up in heavens, the necessity becomes urgent for intermediaries whose sole duty and functionality would be the transmission of earthly desires of God’s subjects at the terrestrial to the celestial. Idol worship does not therefore consider the illogic of the absence of the Almighty in spaces where none but He alone actually superintend! Nor are idolaters imbued with the discernment that an entity fashioned not of the material can only be appeased by the ethereal.