In April of 2010, I told my mother that I had converted to Islam a few weeks before. It was one of the most difficult conversations I've ever had with her. At the end she said, “Well, who knows, maybe you'll go back to being Christian one day.” I remember scoffing and replied, “Yeah, maybe, but I highly doubt it.” Yet here I am, three and a half years later, writing an essay as part of the candidacy process to begin an ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) seminary education. And somehow, it makes total sense to me. In my head and in my heart, the idea that God is calling me to ordained ministry, to be a help and a blessing to others, feels right. It feels like what God wants me to do.
It's strange how life can seem like it's come full-circle. For a few years in high school, I hoped to become a pastor. I was active in the youth group of a friend's non-denominational church, was very passionate about the faith, and identified as a born-again (even to the point of being “re-baptized”). But slowly, imperceptibly, I lost my faith in Christianity during my freshman year of college. God and I were on good terms, I thought, and Jesus' sacrifice “for the sins of the world,” as well as organized religion as a whole, seemed wholly unnecessary. I would have described myself as an agnostic, still believing in a supreme being but not adhering to a particular religion.
In 2008, I began to want to be part of an organized religion again, to fully believe in its scriptures, traditions, and main doctrines. At the time, I was studying Middle Eastern history and Arabic at New York University, so Islam seemed like the most logical choice. I was convinced that my fascination with the Arabic language and Middle Eastern cultures had all been for a reason, had been leading up to my decision to convert to this largely-misunderstood religion. I thought I had everything figured out.
After my conversion in 2010, my honeymoon period with Islam didn't last very long. Hardly four months had passed when the doubts started creeping in. Most of them arose as a result of my intensive study of the Qur'an. Now that I was Muslim, I realized, I could no longer study the Qur'an from a purely academic standpoint. Eventually, although I still found its language beautiful, I started having issues with much of its content and theology. About six months after I converted, I was increasingly wondering if Christianity could actually provide the best articulation of what God is like and the type of relationship He wants with us. So I started going to church again for the first time in several years (Our Saviour Lutheran Church). I also began to study the Bible, joined a class at my church, and read all the books and articles I could get my hands on about Christianity. For several months, I was spending a majority of my free time poring over works on Christianity and Islam and contemplating which path God really wanted me to go down.
My hours thinking and reading about Christianity and Islam were never easy. They always involved some kind of mental and emotional stress. There were only a few people who really understood why it was so important to me to come to a spiritual decision (most notably my friend Kelly Graziano). Many of the people close to me said something like the following: “Why are you spending so much of your time studying this stuff? Isn't it kind of a waste of time? God exists. What's most important is that you treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated. Why bother trying so hard to find the right religion, if there even is such a thing?” Or: “Why don't you just say a prayer and accept Jesus Christ into your heart right now? The rest will work itself out later.” But I've always believed that if God is our Creator, we owe it to Him and to ourselves to try to figure out as much as we can about Him. I thought that settling with being agnostic, or forcing myself to believe in something that didn't make sense to me intellectually and morally, would be selling God short.
I knew intuitively that for me to come back to Christianity, I couldn't just believe it based on “blind” faith. I needed to have a better understanding of the religion itself, and especially of the Bible. I needed to feel that Christ was Lord both in my head and in my heart. That moment finally came in April of 2012, when I stumbled upon an Easter sermon written by NT Wright, a well-known New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop. Wright's work made sense of all of the issues that had kept me away from Christianity in the past. Because of him, I became certain of two things: the historical probability of Jesus' physical resurrection, and the idea that Jesus was the culmination of all of God's plans for mankind and creation. Since April, there hasn't been a single day of the creeping doubt or suspicion that surrounded me when I was a Muslim.
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