1,001 Questions

Continuing with pulls from my facebook notes, to elaborate on my crisis of faith:

There's a God, for sure. I'm pretty comfortable with that idea. I recently heard it verbalized well by Baba Ali in his "Why Islam" episode of the Reminder series: That just be cause you can't see the architect standing in front of his building, it doesn't mean you think he doesn't exist, or that all the components of the building came together by some cosmic accident.

I think God is perfect, or what we understand to be perfect, loving and compassionate. When we say that we are made in God's image, I don't think that means God has hands and feet (unless He wants them) I think that means that we are free to choose whether we will love him back or not; and whether we will show that love or not. It's the greatest gift we could have been given..the capacity to choose.

We express our love for God through emulating (however weakly) His characteristics. When we show love, kindness and compassion to our fellow man, it's as close to God as we can get. I don't just mean words. It's pretty across the board that no one believes people who say one thing and do another. No one believes that a man who abuses his wife loves her. In that same sense, God's not gonna buy it if we say we love him, but hurt others in our actions. We had to be taught what constituted acts of love against acts of selfishness. Which is what I largely believe the point of Religion to be...the teaching tool for us to learn to express love. Rather, ideally it's the tool for that. People aren't perfect, and never can be. Which is why we screw up so much.

Making that choice to be loving or selfish is difficult. Will I hurt myself to help another? It goes against basic instinct to do so, so why do we consider that an expression of love? Because when we do express love, it's as close to God as we can get, and God's in a pretty cool place.

I'm comfortable with the idea of a judgment. I don't think it'll take a day. But using our concept of time as a marker, there is going to come a point where God sits down with us and helps us to see the choices we have made. He'll be able to look with us through our lives and see which of us loved him, and which of us didn't. And those of us who lived our lives in an attempt to express that love, will get to hang out with God. Those of us that didn't love him, and lived only to fulfill our own selfish needs, will get to accept the consequences of that choice and be removed from God.

I always liked the theory that Hell wasn't sulfur and brimstone and being poked with pitchforks; but that Hell is regret, the absence of God's presence, and his withdrawal. Not out of lack of love, but because of it. Even parents can only be kicked in the teeth so much before they just have to say, "You don't love me, that's okay. It's your choice not to love me. So I'll give you what you want, and won't have anything to do with you anymore."

So having that basis of faith...taking all the scripture out of it, stripping it down to the raw components, I have building blocks for the questions I have.

It's difficult for me to accept the idea of a points system for the afterlife. While I just said that a life lived expressing love with result in an afterlife of closeness with God; doing "good deeds" so to speak just to insure that sort of takes the most important component out of it: Love. Doing good for good's sake, because someone or something needs help and you are able to help them is an expression of love. In my discussion with the fella, I hear a lot of "Well this act counts as 25 of these other acts," or something similar. Catholicism has this too. We call it the Indulgence system. So which is greater? An act done for extra afterlife points, or an act of selflessness?

Separating the culture from the religion is a difficulty across the board. Again, something common to Catholicism and to Islam. But on the books, Islam is a very sexually progressive religion: being among the first to offer women the right to choose their spouse, to hold them equal in the eyes of God, to speak of them with respect, and, as well, to consider their pleasure and needs, while usually different from those of a man, to be equally important in the survivability of a marriage. Islam approaches sex from an angle of communion, a necessary and pleasurable act for both men and women. Christianity, on the books, fails on this point, viewing women as inferior to men, separated from God, the source of sin, and sex is for procreation and no other purpose. So my question would be, how is it that Today's Christian-based cultures typically offer women a more equal footing than the Muslim-based cultures? I know the reasoning behind Christian women not typically being clergy (something that is changing); but why can't Muslim women be Imams? They are, in God's eyes, equal in standing and intelligence. I have seen female Islamic Scholars. So why can they not be Imam?

What is the official Islamic standing on the crucifixion? I have heard that another man was crucified in Christ's place, and I have read Ahmed Deedat's theory that the crucifixion didn't actually kill Christ. So if Jesus got a stand-in, why would God deceive people? Going back to my basic idea that God is perfect, God isn't a deceiver, he doesn't lie. Why would God Lie?

I see, as I read the Qu'ran, a lot of bits that pertain directly to Mohammed, such as the accusations against one of his wives, as well as the squabble between his wives. A perfect recitation would speak in generalities, wouldn't it? I mean certainly there can be examples of Mohammed's life that can be used to teach others, but if that's the case, then certainly that same rule must apply to Jesus and the Gospels, that of course they aren't the perfect recitation of the word of God..but that lessons can be gleaned from the writings of the men who walked with Jesus. Same goes for Moses and Abraham. Why is there such a broad spectrum rejection of the previous scriptures..even to the point of people referring to Jesus as "So Called"? Why, when the Qu'ran is so very clear on it's approach to previous scripture (They must be studied, the people who follow them must be treated with respect), is there such a broad spectrum of disrespect toward them?

While the Shi'ite view toward Jihad, violence (when necessary) and the other Abrahamic faiths is more in line with American Mass Media's perception of Islam, why is it that the Terrorist groups we fear the Most (Al Qaeda) declare themselves Sunni?