Sweet Essence

What Truth Costs

His illness was grave, a heart condition as I recall, and he was facing a risky medical procedure. He had been in the hospital for several days before I was invited to visit him. Probably in his midfifties, he was alone in the United States as he waited for his children to arrive from the Middle East. He was no longer married, either because his wife had passed away or because they were divorced. But regardless, he was alone.
And afraid.



A woman who had heard me speak about Islam and my journey from Islam to Christ invited me to visit the man and share the gospel with him. She served as a Christian chaplain at the hospital and had stopped in to ask the man if he needed any spiritual support. He told her that he was a Muslim, and they struck up a conversation about their respective faiths and their opinions about Jesus. As their conversation progressed, his questions became increasingly difficult to answer, and the fact that English was his second language didn’t help. Having heard me talk about the evidence for the Christian faith and how it factored so heavily in my own conversion from Islam, she thought of me and asked the man if I could visit him to address his questions. He agreed, and she called me straightaway.



Before I knew it, I was riding up an elevator smelling of disinfectant to share Christ with a man I had never met. As the elevator doors opened on his floor, I expected to face many of the same challenges I myself had put to Christians who shared the gospel with me. Little did I realize that the usual intellectual and theological questions that Muslims lodge against the gospel would not be the main topic of our discussion. Instead, I would be reminded of something far more profound.



The harsh lights of his hospital room greeted us as my wife and I walked in at the chaplain’s invitation. She smiled and made our introductions. Despite his illness, the several tubes sticking out of him and the always-embarrassing hospital gown, the Muslim man exhibited quintessential Arab hospitality as he sat up to greet us, grasping my hand, saying “Marhaba”—hello in Arabic. I sat down next to his bed, and we made small talk. Soon, however, the conversation turned to the main reason for my visit. “So,” he began, “I understand that you used to be Muslim and may be able to answer some of my questions about Christianity.”



“Well, I guess we’ll find out,” I responded. “What questions do you have?”



And with that, he began. To be sure, he provided many of the usual questions Muslims ask about Jesus, the Bible and the gospel. Isn’t the Trinity polytheistic? Hasn’t the Bible been corrupted over time? How could God become a man and die a humiliating death on a cross? They were all objections I used to lodge against Christianity ad infinitum. Taking the questions at face value, I began to address them one by one.



I provided philosophical, theological, historical and scriptural answers to his questions, and he was a bit more open to them than most Muslims—but only a bit. As he offered up the usual rejoinders, I answered them. But still he was coolly resistant, stony even. In fact, with every answer, he became stonier and stonier. Frankly I was getting discouraged and somewhat frustrated, so I paused and turned things toward a different topic: his family.



His children were all he really had left. Having heard that their father was ill, his sons and daughters were making arrangements to fly to the States to see him. And when talk turned to his children, the first crack in his stony veneer appeared. His lip quivered just a bit, ever so slightly, but it was there. “Your children mean a lot to you, don’t they?” I asked.



“They are all I have in this life,” he answered in his heavy accent. “Without them, I may die in this country alone.”



“Do you believe that God is with you? That he cares about you and wants you to know him?”



“I believe that he is everywhere. But I’m not sure that I can ever know him,” he said. “God is too great for mere humans to know.” That is a belief many Muslims have, which is why this dear man was afraid that without his children he would die alone. It was so sad, yet so profound. I let his disclosure hover in the room a moment as I prayed for guidance about the next thing to say. And then it occurred to me.



I gathered up whatever boldness I was capable of and began the part of our conversation that really mattered. “We’ve been talking for some time now about the answers to your questions about the gospel. But can I ask you a personal question?”



“Please. Go ahead,” he answered, sounding more confident than his eyes suggested.



I swallowed hard and asked the question I feared might derail the discussion for good. “What would happen if you did become a Christian? What would your kids think or do?”



His eyes lowered as a slight sigh left his lungs. “They would disown me. It is unforgivable and a shame for me to become Christian.”



I knew that fear all too well. I had to face the possibility of such losses when I was wrestling with (and even against) the answers that Christianity offered to my toughest questions. “I know what it’s like to have to face that kind of rejection. I also know that the possibility of losing the people you love the most is a powerful reason to close your ears to the answers the gospel provides.”



The historical evidence, the philosophical and theological arguments—none of them—broke through the man’s stony veneer like the words I had just spoken. A tear escaped his eyes and rolled down his cheek. “Thank you,” he said, surprising me. “Thank you for understanding that I might lose everything if I even consider what you are saying.”



Though our conversation did not last much longer, the tenor changed dramatically from that moment on. After realizing that it was not the gospel itself that he had difficulty with, but the possible consequences of accepting it, he began to ask me follow-up questions instead of just lobbing rejoinders.



And then a minor miracle happened. Some Muslims will not even touch a Bible, fearing that it is an unclean corruption that pollutes them. But this Muslim man, having realized where his real difficulty lay, asked to keep the Arabic Bible I had in my hand. I gave it to him, put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Allah Ma’ak, Amu,” which means “God be with you, uncle.” (Arabs call male elders, even strangers, “uncle” as a sign of respect.)



The Trouble with Truth

As my wife and I walked into the hallway, I was reminded of the sober reality that truth has a cost. That cost may vary from person to person and from circumstance to circumstance, but there is no doubt that truth is costly.

Abdu Murray
What Truth Costs