I had an appointment this morning to see a therapist. As I was crossing the street, someone said "hello" to me. I turned to see who was kind enough to do that, and there was a portly, dark-skinned man with a white hat. Beside him was a table with a lot of Indian objects. "Looks like you've got some interesting stuff here," I said.
"This is my god," he said, as he pointed to a black statue. Around the statue was a necklace with elephants on it.
"So is your god from India?" I asked.
"No, no, no. This was made right here in America," he replied. He may have said that he carved it himself. I don't remember.
"So is this really your god?" I asked.
"No, I was just kidding," he said. He then gave me a big speech about monotheism and how God is too great to be reduced to a statue, since God is the creator.
I had to agree with him. He sounded like the apostle Paul in Acts 17. "That's a very Judeo-Christian thing to say," I told him. He agreed. I then asked him if he was a Christian.
"No, I'm a Muslim," he answered. He proceeded to give me a speech about the problems of Christianity, specifically how it worships a man and states that the great God was once a baby who had to use the bathroom. For him, that reduced God's dignity.
"Yes, that is a problem that many Jews and Muslims have with the doctrine of the incarnation," I responded. I'm not sure if he understood my technical terminology, but he seemed rather impressed with it.
I tried to ask him a question: How can you be sure that you will go to heaven (or whatever the good afterlife is). Part of my motive for this arises from my evangelical background, since that question is a highly recommended evangelical "ice-breaker" for witnessing. But another motivation was a desire to know. I mean, how can anyone be sure that he'll go to heaven and not hell? For Muslims, do you have to be more good than bad? Do you have to avoid big sins, such as murder? How would Muslims answer, "What must I do to be saved?"
But I had a hard time asking my question. This guy wouldn't shut up! Even if I wanted to witness to him, it wouldn't have been like the scenarios on Campus Crusade for Christ videos. One reason is that this guy was preaching to me. And another reason is that he didn't really think he had much to learn. And that's the way it is with a lot of people, of all sorts of religious and a-religious persuasions: they're know-it-alls when it comes to religion. Don't get me wrong--I want to learn from all sorts of people, since I myself don't have all of the answers. But I don't really like being preached at, as if I'm a passive dog with no thoughts of my own.
Anyway, he went on and on about monotheism, the importance of believing in God, and the universality of Islam, in contrast to religions such as Judaism and Christianity. He said that Americans assume that all Muslims are Arab, but he is not an Arab, since he is a Kurd who converted to Islam. I responded that Christianity is also a universal religion. "Look, I've been studying religions for thirty years," he said.
He then went on about the errors in the Bible, such as Noah being drunk and David killing Uriah to get Bathsheba. "How do you know they are errors?" I asked. "Because prophets are holy men. They are moral examples," he responded.
That was interesting. My evangelical background has continually emphasized the flaws of the biblical heroes, since (for evangelicals) that demonstrates human sinfulness in the face of God's free grace. In James Kugel's The Bible As It Was, however, I read that ancient interpreters viewed the biblical heroes as moral exemplars. And that seems to be true, since Jewish interpreters often went out of their way to explain away the moral foibles of biblical characters. "They made mistakes because they were sinful, and God accepted them by grace" didn't really cut it for them, for they viewed the biblical heroes as moral exemplars. In a class at Hebrew Union College, a professor of mine was saying that the biblical authors actually felt this way about their own characters. When I pointed out that Jacob deceives his brother and in turn gets deceived by Laban as punishment, my professor said that this is not the only way to see the passage, since Jacob is actually an admirable character because he is cunning. Perhaps. I still say that the Bible is hard on its heroes, for there are times when God explicitly disapproves of their activity. Cases in point: Moses and David.
But, anyway, my new Muslim friend was claiming that King James inserted these errors into the Bible as a reflection of his own depravity, since King James was a homosexual. "That's not true," I replied. "We have Greek and Hebrew manuscripts with these stories. The Dead Sea Scrolls are an example. Plus, King James' homosexuality is a debated issue."
He then went on about how King James was a prominent Christian, and how he's responsible for priests molesting children. "First of all," I said, "King James was a Protestant, while the priests are Catholic. So he did not cause that scandal. And, second, you can't judge Christianity from its bad apples. I don't judge your religion solely on the basis of those Muslims who flew planes into the World Trade Center." Actually, I was thinking of asking him about Muhammad's conquests, since he was claiming that Islam is a peaceful religion, but (alas) the discussion didn't go in that direction.
Eventually, he was bashing Bush and America's mis-characterization of Islam as a terrorist religion. And I found myself saying, "Look, I have a lot of respect for you Kurds. You suffered a lot under Saddam. Now your country has democracy. Isn't that better than Saddam gassing you?"
"Look, Saddam was your [female dog]," he said. "Where do you think he got those chemical weapons?" At that point, we were kind of talking over one another. I said "We were fighting Iran then." He said that democracy in Iraq is a joke. Somewhere in the conversation I uttered the words, "George W. Bush is your friend."
At some point, I looked at my watch and realized that my appointment was in a few minutes. We exchanged pleasantries, and he said we should talk some more in the future. Believe it or not, it was actually a pleasant conversation, even though we disagreed. And I think that I learned from him, especially through the process of challenging what he was saying.
When I came home, I saw a woman in a burka. One thing you can say about Cincinnati, and that is that it's a truly internationalized community. I don't have to get a plane ticket to see the world. The world is right outside my door.