Islam, Human Rights & Secularism

“So many others have tried their hand at putting together a story of the wonderful harvest of Scripture and history that took place among us, using reports handed down by the original eyewitnesses who served this Word with their very lives.

Since I have investigated all the reports in close detail, starting from the story's beginning, I decided to write it all out for you, most honourable Theophilus, so you can know beyond the shadow of a doubt the reliability of what you were taught.”

- Luke, 1:1-4

I recently attended a talk by distinguished Professor Abdullahi An-Na’im on Islam, Human Rights and Secularism. While a firm believer of Islam, I found out however, that for him, faith was not blind at all. Coupled with his extensive knowledge and work on Religion, Law and Human Rights in cross-cultural perspectives, he proved that religion neither has to be dogmatic nor employ the use of arms to proliferate its beliefs.

I don’t suppose for one minute that he meant his talk for the sole purpose of sparking some lively discussion and clever scholarly debate. And neither did I think he meant for us to pack his thoughts and ideas into a neat little parcel so we may pat ourselves on the back as we walk out of the auditorium and congratulate ourselves for being open-minded and world-conscious thinkers unlike our more ignorant Singaporean counterparts.

Rather, I noted with interest as Professor An-Na’im noted at the outset of his talk that he did not believe in scholarship for its own sake, but scholarship for the sake of social change. It felt like he was a keen analyst, liberal thinker, and a firm believer of Islam all rolled into one. Using a didactic approach, he sought to convince his audience that Islam (and religion more generally), human rights and secularism most certainly may – and should indeed, co-exist in a tripartite relationship. All this without negating the basic premise that all religions must necessarily be founded upon human agency: i.e. a faith and conversion experience that is both intimately personal and based on one’s own volition and free will.

Religion, if understood in Professor An-Na’im terms, can be as reason-able as it is spiritual. I agree. A faith that is blind is dogma and extremism at its worst. Perhaps that may shed some perspective on the monstrosities and violence that we witness taking place in and around our world, committed against believers and un-believers alike, all in the name of god.

We use it in vain.

If nothing else, I was convinced that Professor An-Na’im demonstrated a genuine, and no less outstanding understanding of his faith and applied it to his world no less fervently than some of the fiercest proponents of Islam. This ought to give us some food for thought, and perhaps, more than a mouthful to swallow.

There is certainly room for us to revolutionise our conceptions and notions of evangelism and outreach – and the way we are used to doing things. To be given an international platform and to have the chance to step into secular institutions to speak, if not “preach” Islam, and to be embraced, and lauded no less, for doing so, is something worth giving more than a penny for our thoughts.

Apologetics shouldn’t be the be all and end all of our attempt to engage with our worlds. We have what it takes to step out of our defences and to a greater extent, our defensiveness, and take the offence for a change with the same grace-full confidence that David took against Goliath. Sling and shot, sword and spear, surely that which we purport as the Truth, the Way and the Life is more than able to hit the nail on the head and engage the world by way of Reason, Witness, Spirit, or Signs, Wonders and Miracles.

Samuel reasoned with the Israelites concerning their choice of a human king over that of the divine King of Kings that delivered them out of Egypt. Solomon’s display of practical wisdom in Proverbs still addresses the human condition to this day. Paul wrote letters to clarify doubts and address issues that the various churches were struggling to deal with such as idolatry and debauchery. And God chose the Word as the medium through which we may get to know Him – “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” (1 Cor 1:21)

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Faith, or hupo-stasis in Greek, is literally under-standing. Our faith is a relevant faith, where what we believe and know about God is the confidence upon which we may stand on as kings and priests, human beings created in the likeness of God.

Faith is not blind. May we apply our minds even as we apply our hearts. God is alive and present in our world. May our under-standing show it.

Out of the Woodwork

I guess it’s time to emerge from the woodwork. To break the silence that has almost deafened my own ears.

It has been a rollercoaster week. A week in which I have fallen into the depths of despondency, and have also, by the tender mercies of God risen on the wings of eagles with fresh faith and hope anew. Before, I had felt like a king and priest stripped of his kingly robes and priestly garments, naked and as shame-faced as Adam and Eve. Now, I feel like a little girl stretched out on a field of soft green grass – basking in the warm and glorious rays of the sun.

What transpired in between?

A simple woman who reminded me that there is war in the heavenlies, that good and evil existed long before man was created in the Garden of Eden, that to lose heart is to lose life and that the devil is fighting for our hearts as hard as God is.

A nightmarish week – as I took a good long hard look at myself, my life, and the convictions which I have clung onto for the past six years since I decided to abandon my boats to become a fisher of men like Jesus. Angry words hurled at me that shook the very confidence upon which my faith stood and put into question the vocation to which I thought I had been called.

I wondered about me. The heart is, as Jeremiah 17:9-10 put it, deceitful above all things; it is perverse – who can understand it? It is the Lord who tests the mind and searches the heart, to give to all according to their ways and according to the fruit of their doings.

Have I really hidden behind the things I have been so good at doing? Have my ruminations and reflections about God in my world turned out to be a defence of the wayward Self more than a defence of the Gospel? Has religiosity and dogmatism taken precedence over an authentic spirituality expressed through faith, hope and above all else a love that is supposed to be patient and kind, that is neither proud nor attention seeking, but seeks rather to bear all things, believe all things, and endure all things?

The heart is indeed deceitful above all things. I don’t claim to understand mine. But if I can’t speak for all, I speak for myself at least – that there is as much a monster in me as there is a saint. I am capable of committing unthinkable monstrosities as I am able to serve my fellow brethren in sacrificial acts of love. I don’t have the last word. But if I can have a word at all, I pray that this may at least be an attempt, no matter how pathetic it may seem, to allow God to shed His light on my darkened heart and to probe my limited mind. If only, this vessel could shine just that little bit brighter, just that little bit warmer.

Yes, when tempers run amok and the monsters in us unleashed, I am reminded that whatever evil we have committed against each other really ceases to matter if we are to believe that the greatest of all is love, and that this love is more than able to cover a multitude of sins. We fear not the evil that can be committed against us, because we trust in the bigness of our Lord, who is our hope, and whose love we may hope-fully look to, to drive out all our fears that we may never find strength enough to piece our broken selves back together again.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease form yielding fruit. (Jeremiah 17:7-8)

All things work together for good. Good can come out of evil, where sin abounds, grace abounds also. We bear fruit in such times of testing, for it is in the longing that we experience love most strongly; it is in moments of doubt that we learn to exercise faith, and it is in times of pain and suffering that we find ourselves hoping against all hope.

Give me thy grace, good Lord... To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

­

- Thomas More

Amen.

Spokesman for God

spokes::man
I samuel 3:I-4:I 'spOks-m&n probably irregular from spoke, obsolete past participle of speak >> a person who speaks as the representative of another or others often in a professional capacity

I don't just want to be a Hannah. I want to be a Samuel too.

"Samuel grew up. God was with him, and Samuel’s prophetic record was flawless. Everyone... recognised that Samuel was the real thing - a true prophet of God. God continued to show up at Shiloh, revealed through His word to Samuel at Shiloh."

- 1 Samuel 3:19-21 The Message

I just celebrated my twenty-third birthday yesterday. Or was it more like a lament of my twenty-third birthday? For amidst the good food, wine and the even better company that accompanied it, there was a strange hollow feeling inside of me.

Not just a big two-one, but I was an eve bigger two-three now. I pondered over the last twenty three years of my life, and I wondered what I had been doing with it all this while. I pondered over the six years since I had professed Jesus as my Lord and Saviour and I wondered if I had really been that faithful follower of Christ that I thought myself to be.

Twenty-three – an adult no doubt, yet somewhere inside, I still felt like the boy Samuel, the child that still needed growing up. Deep down inside, I still longed to grow up, to grow up as Samuel did: To grow up with God and to be a spokesman for Him – to stand in the gap and be a true spokesman for God, a true representative of Christ.

I was struck that Samuel hadn’t always heard from God, until now. Nevermind that he had been called to minister as a servant of God even before he was formed in his mother’s womb. Nevermind that he had spent all this time in the temple since he had been weaned. Nevermind that he had grown up under the supervision of Eli the priest and ministered to the Lord under his guidance.

Nevermind all that, for Samuel, as Eugene Peterson put it, had still yet to know God for Himself, and the revelation of God had yet to be given to him personally (1 Samuel 3:5-7, The Message). In fact, the truth was that Samuel could barely tell whether it was Eli’s voice or God’s voice calling.

Nonetheless, where Samuel failed, Eli perceived that it was the voice of God calling, and taught Samuel to not just hear Him calling, but to respond to His calling.

I guess it sometimes takes another to point out to us that it is the voice of God calling us, to recognise the potential that is latently residing inside of us, and to prod us to respond to His calling to take hold of the destiny that He had meant for us. Perhaps that was why Timothy found himself being reminded by Paul to stir up the gift of God which was already in him (2 Tim 1:6).

So Eli directed Samuel, ‘Go back and lie down. If the voice calls again, say, ‘Speak God. I’m Your servant, ready to listen’…

Then God came and stook before him exactly as before, calling out, ‘Samuel, Samuel!’

Samuel answered, ‘Speak, I’m Your servant, ready to listen.’

I am ready to listen. To listen to the desires that God has placed inside my heart. To recognise the gifts, the talents, the tools that God has placed in my hands. To respond to the groanings that words cannot express as they arise in my spirit each time I flip through the papers, greeted by pages and pages of grim and grey stories, to survey our world, our predicament, and intuitively cry out that this is not what it is supposed to be.

That’s not how the fairy-tales end.

That’s not how the movies we watch and the stories they tell portray it.

The bad guys aren’t meant to have their way.

Evil isn’t meant to have the run of the day.

Innocent children are not meant to lose their families in a car crash.

Whole communities are not meant to be wiped out just like that by the unrelenting waves of a tsunami.

Governments are supposed to provide good leadership for its people. Not tangled up in a web corruption, in-fighting and red tape.

‘Where is God in all this?’ sceptics ask.

And rightly so, for we may just have become so unfamiliar to the voice God in an age that perhaps is really not that far removed from the times of Shiloh, where the word of God had become rare and the revelation of God hardly heard or seen (1 Samuel 3:1).

Perhaps, we have become all too familiar and glib with our rhetoric of good biblical theology. Perhaps to be a true prophet, a true spokesman, is not just about raining judgement on the sorry state of our world, or to simply tell people that they are sinners who need a Jesus that hardly means anything to them, but rather to “be Jesus”, to lay down our lives, to speak and to relate to them in ways they may understand.

Perhaps to be a true prophet is to be in touch with the grim and grey stories of our world, to weep as Jeremiah wept, to weep as Jesus wept as he looked upon the multitude who were like sheep without a shepherd and had compassion on them. As governments change hands and new leaders step up to the platform, perhaps that should stir us to pray as Paul exhorted Timothy to pray, and especially for kings and all who are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. This is what is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour (1 Tim 2:1-7).

Perhaps that is how none of God’s truths may fall to the ground, but that all may know that God is alive and present in each our world – even when we did not know it.

Help me Lord, to listen.
Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears.
Teach me Lord, to respond to You in prayer.
To grow Lord, as Samuel did.

Amen.