The Eric Metaxas Show - Abdu Murray

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Abdu Murray is in the studio to share his coming-to-faith experience and the important concepts found in his latest book, "More Than a White Man's Religion."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Eric McTaxis show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, welcome to the program. I will shortly be flying south to Florida to go to Moralago, where tonight President Trump will be making his announcement. I will try to report. I will try to report on that tomorrow. It's tricky because I'm traveling tomorrow again, going to Leesburg, Virginia, and then after that, going to Colorado for a couple of events. So it's going to be tricky.

But tonight, that's the plan. I'm supposed to be at Moralago for the president's announcement. I am, for one, tremendously excited about that. And I'm also excited about the fact that on this day, for two hours today, I get to talk to our friend, Abdul-Murie. We haven't had him. on in a while. He's a brilliant Christian apologist. He's also six foot eight. That has nothing to do with anything. But he's probably the largest apologist I've had on the program.

And we're going to be talking to him for a couple of hours. But right now, I want to talk to my friend, Sean Foyt. Sean, we love to kick off the day with a blonde surfer dude wearing the let us worship t-shirt, sweatshirt. You are in California with your family. But I wanted to talk to you before we launch into, everything with Abdou Murray, who really is amazing. You are doing something next year that when I heard about this, I said,

this is exciting. And I want to get my audience excited about this. I hope that I can join you for a lot of this. But talk about what you call this tour that you're doing next year. Yeah. So the Lord gave us this kind of mandate because nobody would do anything this crazy without hearing from God. But it called Kingdom to the Capitol, which is basically,

taking the battle, taking the fight of worship, prayer, activism to every single U.S. state capitals. So meaning 50 states, 50 capitals. And in a post-Roe era, it's increasingly more important that we bring the fight for life, for justice, for education, for everything, to the capitals of every state. And so what we're doing is in 2023 and 2024, we're mobilizing the Church of America in every single state to gather on the steps of their state capital. And it looks like next year we're probably going to do about 26, 27 capitals, and then do the remaining capitals in 2024.

We're partnering with Turning Point Faith USA, which is going to be really fun and a bunch of amazing friends. It is going to be the wildest tour. I'm telling you guys, you've got to pray with us, join us. We're going to come to your state, your capital. You can go to kingdom to thecapital.com to sign up. That's capital with an O, by the way. Kingdom to thecapital.com sign up.

Find out when we're coming to your capital. Okay. So you and I were together in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which is Pennsylvania's state capital. And we got a private tour with our friend, Doug Mastriano. And I was astonished at the beauty. I mean, honestly, there's no way to do it justice. the state capital in Pennsylvania is so gorgeous that I was I was absolutely shocked.

I was just slack-jawed looking around thinking this is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen in my life. It's in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There are of course state capitals in every single state and you're doing this journey to travel to all of them. Now, you and I were together in Harrisburg and we were in the room. I guess it was, was it the house chamber where there's a picture of. William Penn, a mural, and he freakishly looks just like you. You can, yeah, I'm not making this up. Am I wrong?

Come on. Come on. Well, come on. He's the seat of a nation, man. He's the, he's the guy that, you know, the foundation of Pennsylvania and those documents really played a large part in what the Constitution looked like and the Declaration of Independence. And so, hey, if that's, if that's my, at least my heritage look alike, I'll take that.

But it was like a twilight. an episode or something like that where you look at the painting and you're like, wait a minute, that guy's right here. But that was 400 years ago. What is happening? What is happening? No, but honestly, I just think it's a beautiful thing. And listen, you and I, you know, I'm lately talking about my book Letter to the American Church because you understand that this idea that the church is not supposed to be political is insane. I mean, imagine on the slavery issue of people saying, well, that's not a gospel issue. I don't want to get, I don't want to be divisive. you'd say divisive, God calls you to speak truth. There are people suffering when you're silent.

There are people suffering when you're silent about socialism and Marxism and people are going to suffer. And this idea that we're supposed to assiduously avoid politics, it's not just madness, but it's anti-biblical. It's wrong. And so your leadership really in making people understand that your faith is supposed to be lived out, not just in the public sphere, but also in the political sphere, that God has given us the ability to self-govern in America and that we need to own that and get involved. I just want to say thank you for that, Sean. I want to ask you, do you have a schedule for any of the kingdom to the capital stops that you're going to be doing?

Do you know when you're going to start that? Yeah, so we'll kick it off in March. Yeah, we are building a schedule right now. As I mentioned, you can go to kingdom to thecapital.com to sign up and find it when we're coming to your capital. And, you know, there's kind of a crazy scientist madness math to this thing because we want to do it while every single state government is in session. We also want to do it as it sinks up to the political calendar. So, for example, we want to be in Iowa, you know, in the fall, right? When that starts to heat up for the presidential in 23, we'll do

the biggest worship and prayer event right in the middle of that. You know, same for New Hampshire in the fall of 23. And we're probably going to focus more on the blue and the red states in 2023 and then move on to the purple states in 2024. So, you know, we are being very intentional with this. And we're being very, we're praying into it. We're strategizing. And it's going to be, I think, one of the greatest things that we've ever done, our ministry. I'm real excited about it. Look, you know I'm excited. And I'm also excited about potentially joining you. at as many of these as I can make. When you told me that you're going to do this,

I said, this is such a great idea. And I'm really looking forward to it. It's just a wonderful, it's just a wonderful concept. I should say, before I forget, folks, if you want to know my schedule, go to Eric Mataxis.com. I mentioned that tomorrow I'll be in Leesburg, Virginia. I'll be in Englewood, Colorado.

I'll be in Fort Collins, Colorado this week, and a lot of stuff coming up. So please go to Ericmetaxis. to check that out. And December 6th, of course, here in New York, we have a Socrates in the city event. Go to Socrates in the city.com. Sean, you've been very bold and outspoken, and you've been an encouragement to be, to me, frankly, because we really do live at a time where a lot of people think like, well, you know, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut. I don't want to get involved in any controversy. And you've just been out there. You and your family have been attacked by Antifa. where does that come from for people who don't know you at all? How do you get to be the kind of a guy that is willing to do that? Well, I think, you know, going back to what you're saying about politics, Eric,

and why we should get involved. I mean, listen, when I, you know, when I gave God my yes, when I said, I'll go anywhere, I'll do anything, I meant that. And initially, I thought that meant to the mission field. And it does mean that. And I did that for 20 years. And so I went into persecuted and unreached nations and places of war and strife, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, different places. But then when God changed that calling for me and he said, you know, was calling me into the political arena to bring light, I just took that as, hey, this is a dark place too.

Like I need to be a missionary and follow the call of the Lord. For some reason for Americans, that seems to be controversial, which is still hard for me to understand. you know it's a dark area that needs the light of jesus just like these other nations are and um and i feel like people just need to broaden their understanding what the great commission is we're called to go into every sphere of society and bring the light in truth and hope of jesus so to me that's how the progression worked and and you know maybe he'll call me into i don't know what's next but i'm when i gave him my yes i gave him my yes and that meant anywhere well i mean look it's exciting. You've been a huge encouragement to me. I want people, I want to encourage people to check

you out to let us worship.us.us. And we are, we're going to be seeing a lot more of our friend Sean Foyt by God's grace. When we come back, folks, we have Abdul Murray. An amazing apologist for the Christian faith comes out of a Muslim background, an amazing story. But Sean, we love you, my friend. Thank you so much. Love you too, man. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed. And when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes leading the prices of goods to rise.

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Make the switch today and get a free month of service plus free activation. Patriotmobile.com slash Eric. That's PatriotMobil.com slash Eric or call 972 Patriot. Hey, folks. Welcome back. As I believe I warned you, we have a wonderful guest on right now. His name is Abdu Murray. He's been on the show before.

Abdu, welcome back. Great to be with you, Eric. Thanks for him. Now, Murray and Abdu, I'm guessing you have, like me, kind of a double parentage. Well, everybody pretty much has double parentage. You have been parents from different parts of the world as your parents. Well, I actually do, but the reason why the last name is Murray, and it's Scottish with Abdu, is actually because our last name is really my.

Oh, are you serious? Yeah. So when we came over. they changed. What's your last name? We said, Mirri. They said, okay, that sounds like Murray. So now I'm Lebanese and I'm Scottish, which means that I fight with everybody. The Lebanese Scottish.

Well, so you've been on this program before. You told your story, but it's just an interesting story. And now you have a new book out, obviously, called More Than a White Man's Religion. And I want to talk about that. But first, I want my audience to know

your story, how you came to faith, you know, where did you grow up? all that good stuff. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for asking. So I grew up in the United States. I was born in the United States, and I was raised in a Shia Muslim home. And I was taught to be very proud of being a Shia Muslim. What part of the world? So we're from Lebanon originally. No, but I mean the United States, what part of the... Oh, I'm sorry, yeah, the Metro Detroit area. Okay, so you're raised in Detroit, you're raised as an American, growing up in Michigan, but in a solidly Shia home.

Yeah, absolutely. Salihiyahoum. You know, and in the Detroit area, there's a very strong, very heavy Muslim population there as well. So that was around me, but we ended up growing up. I ended up growing up in a back then not terribly diverse neighborhood. We were sort of the dollop of olive oil and the pot of rice, as it were. But now, you go now, and it's wonderful. The diversity there's great, especially for the menu options. It's fantastic in that city.

But I grew up thinking Islam was. true. Very proud of that fact and got myself educated in enough ways in which to propagate Islam as true and then combat Christianity as false for a number of reasons. Okay. Now, I just want to say, because I think it's important for people to understand, at least for me to understand, when somebody says, you know, I was raised in a Muslim home, I was raised in a Christian home, that might mean nothing. In other words, I was raised in a Greek Orthodox home, but it was really a Greek home. My mother was German. I always joke around if you're raised by Greek and a German. You're raised Greek. But the point is for a lot of people,

their faith is mostly cultural. And I know many, many Muslims in New York that I, you know, mix with who they're not really serious about the Muslim faith. They identify as Muslim the way an Irish guy says, well, I'm Catholic, but I only go, you know, three times a year. So it's mainly a cultural thing. And they're not. And they're not, you know, really taking the faith seriously. So I know, you know, cab drivers, sometimes you get the impression, this guy is serious about his Muslim faith. Other times they start talking about

their kids and whatever, and you get the impression that they're just technically Muslim in the way that a lot of people say, you know, I'm this or on that. But it's kind of like a tribal identity versus an ideological theological, theological identity. But so for you, even you're saying Shia, it was, well, it was both. But you're saying that you were. You're saying that you were were raised in a home that was serious about the Muslim faith. It wasn't just a cultural thing. Right. And like most Muslim families, like many Christian families, you have people who have various levels of devotion. One of the phenomena, and you're pointing it out very well, one of the phenomena in Middle Eastern and Eastern religious sort of expression is that your

religion becomes your identity in a tribal sense, and so you're very proud of it. And so you can sit across the table from a Muslim, for example, or a Hindu. It doesn't really matter. who doesn't really, if it were a crime to be a Muslim, there would be no convictions short of a confession, because there's no evidence of it in their lives. But they would defend their faith to you in a verbal death match because it's who they are. Other people think it's actually true and live it actually out. So it's tribal and it's serious, theologically. This is, I mean, just because I wrote the Bonhofer book, this has become very clear to me that you have these different examples of, you have a, spectrum, right? I mean, growing up

in the Greek church, right? There were many, many people who were super proud to be Greek and took it almost. This is the way a lot of the Germans take being a Lutheran, German, were proud, whatever, but they weren't really living it. They were just a tribal identity and a lot of Greeks

were proud. It's like we fought the Turks. The Turks persecuted us and they're the Muslim Turks and were the Christian Greeks. But if you ask them about theology, they didn't really they weren't. Yeah. aware of Muslim theology or Christian theology

very much. So it was still it was earnest, but it's just fascinating to me that spectrum. But so you were raised in a home where you really, you genuinely believed and understood the Muslim theology.

Right, exactly. And I thought that you know, I'll sort of framework my beliefs around this idea of, you know, you hear this phrase all the time. Allaho Akbar. And usually when we hear it in the news, something terrible happens right afterwards. But the reality is this phrase, which means literally in Arabic, it means God is bigger, but the connotation is God is greater. So I as a Muslim, this is the central idea of all of Islam,

that God is the greatest possible being, sort of an Enselmian theology as well. So I thought God is the greatest possible being in Islam. Every other system of belief is deficient because it has some diminution of God's greatness. So I thought, and Christianity was, I picked on them more because they were sort of low-hanging fruit in the area I grew up in. And so Christian theology, I thought, was worthy of being picked on because I thought the idea of the Trinity made no sense. Right.

And therefore, can I be honest, it sort of doesn't make sense. It's complicated. It's a mystery. So you can understand how quickly people could just go, like, look, I have no time for that. That's a mess. Yeah. And it's much easier to believe God is well. one case closed. Right. And so this was actually part of my argument is that if Christians

couldn't define it, how could they possibly defend it? But also, if God the Father is God and God, the Son is God and God, the Holy Spirit is God, how come God the Father needs help from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit if he's great? But also, aren't you just confused tritheists? That's what I thought. Christians want to be monotheists, but they're just confused tritheists. Tritheists. I don't know if I've ever heard the term tritheists, and I can tell you, if I had a dollar for every time somebody on this program mentioned Anselmian theology, I would have a dollar right now. Enselmian theology. Remind us, give us the footnote. Who's Anselm? And why would you? St. Anselm has this wonderful argument for God's existence on God being the greatest possible being.

And so he basically, if you understand the concept of God as the greatest possible being, then you can actually argue a very persuasive way in which God is maximally great in maximally great-waking properties. and then that would be a single close-case, no need for any other arguments, argument for God's existence. Right. Not Christian necessarily, but specific,

but the idea generally of God's existence. And Anselm, it's a brilliant argument, actually. What is the fourth, fifth century? I'm just guessing here. I want to say, oh, boy, 12th, I think, yeah. Way later. Yeah, I think so. Way later.

I think so. He's a contemporary of Aquinas. I mean, I don't remember because I'm not a Catholic. Yeah, but I think it's after the, both the fourth century. But the, and it was sophisticated argument, but the reason I'm saying this is because I thought, and by the way, the Trinity was my favorite topic to talk about with Christians because they had the hardest time with it. But now I'll tell you, Eric, it's my favorite topic to talk about because I think it is not only explainable to a degree,

but I think it's also one of the most beautiful things about Christian theology. And I've seen, and I'm telling you right now, this is skipping ahead a little bit, but I have been on college campuses where I do open forums and dialogues and debates with people of various religious views, but including Muslims. And I remember speaking at McGill University, for example, in Canada, on the Trinity, and the Muslims had lined up at the microphone. And one of them said, I've never heard an idea more beautiful than this. I think when properly understood, not because I'm eloquent, but because the concept itself is amazing. And these guys were like, I want to hear more about this. So I thought it insulted God's greatness. What I

I came to learn after a nine-year journey was that the Trinity, the incarnation of God and Christ the cross, I once thought insulted God's greatness, and I've come to believe that historically and philosophically, they actually are the things that demonstrate his greatness. But that's because at the heart of all truth is the paradox, right? In other words, that God's truth is not simplistic. It's not one-dimensional, two-dimensional, three-dimensional. It is, it kind of falls into the universe of mystery at some point, it's so deep, it's so heavy. The Trinity is the classic example of that. I mean, anyone who thinks they can easily explain the Trinity, I think you're kidding yourself because this is something so extraordinary, so difficult and

beautiful, and that it is impossible to sum up. And it's challenging to people, which is why when you were a devout Muslim, you're able to get people. on that. Yeah. I think some people are better at living with a mystery. You know, you find usually Catholics are better at living with the mystery and not feeling like they've got to chop it up into five pieces.

Here it is. It's real simple, whereas you get kind of enlightenment, rationalist, apologetics folks who kind of just like, boom, boom, it's very simple. When we come back, I want to talk to you a little bit about the Trinity. I want to talk to you more about your story,

and I want to get to your book more than a white man's religion. when we're back with Abdu Murray. I like knowing exactly where my meat comes from, and with Moink, that place is from small family farms all across the country. You can help save the family farm and get access to the highest quality meat on earth when you join the Moink movement today. Moink delivers grass-fed and grass-finished beef and lamb, pastured pork and chicken, and sustainable wild-caught Alaskan salmon,

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Tell us what you can. Sure, absolutely. And so what I think the important part is that Christians often, I think, get hung up with, and people who aren't in the Christian sort of sphere get hung up on misdefinitions. So thinking God is one and three, that's true, but people think often that God is one and three in the same sense and that we chalk it up to mystery. Now, I agree with you. Mystery is a big important part of this because to quote someone else, and I forget who said it, but it's we can apprehend the Trinity without comprehending the Trinity.

So you can get it. It can actually make sense, but it can transcend our ability to actually make sense of it because of our limited capacities. So I think if we understand the Trinity as what it's not sometimes we can get that out of the way. So it's not that God is one in one way and three in another way. It's God is one in one sense and three in another completely different sense. So God is one being, one what, like this cup has nature. It has a nature of a non-living thing. And I have a nature, and my nature is living thing.

So I have a whatness, and the cup has a whatness. But I have an additional quality, and that additional quality is whoness. Sounds like Dr. Seuss a little bit. Okay, so you're a what, the cup is a what, but you are also a who, and the cup is not a who. Right. So it's nature, something's nature, and something's personhood are exclusive ideas. So it's not contradictory to say God is one in his nature and three in his persons. Now, I only have one who.

God has three who's, father, son, Holy Spirit. They're not each other, but they all share the same nature. So the father is a mind or a who of God and the son is a who of God and the Holy Spirit is a who of God, yet they share the same nature because they're the same being. Now, can I fully get that? This is where mystery comes in. No, because I'm unipersonal. God is tried person.

I was also going to say, Abdu, part of this, and this is a lot of times we don't talk about this in the Christian world. We are limited because we exist in a broken, fallen world bounded by time and space. God exists in eternity outside of time and space. So to some extent, it is genuinely impossible for us to apprehend eternity, infinity, we have to accept that limitation in the same way that an aunt cannot, you know, understand what a person is saying. In other words, that's the first issue for me is that there's only so much, even at our best, that we're able to comprehend. And this goes back to something you were saying earlier too, is that a lot of Muslims will say, a lot of people who

are Unitarians would say, God is one, it's simple, it's straightforward. Like, well, here's the problem with that. If your God is so easy to understand that he looks just like you, then either you created him in your image or your God's too small. But a God who is rational, where it's not a contradiction to say that God is one in one sense and three in a different sense, but it transcends your ability to understand it. Maybe that's a God who's big enough to encompass mystery and logic at the same time. But it goes one step further for me as well with regard to Islam, is that if in Islam, for example, God is the greatest possible being. There can be no being greater than God. He also needs nothing to be who he is. In Islam, God is relational. The 99 names of God

are almost entirely relational in Islam. And in Christianity, he's relational, of course. He's also uncreated. So the uncreated one, what that means is that he's the only uncreated being. If he's the only uncreated being, that means that there was a state of affairs in which God was the sole thing that existed. But if God is loving, as Islam would say, in a different sense in Christians say it, or if God is compassionate or God is merciful or God is a relational being inherently, then he needs to create something outside of himself to be relational toward, because relation requires an object. There's a relator. All the way to say, wouldn't some people say that God, because of the Trinity, existed

in community and relationship before he created? And that's exactly what I'm getting at. In Islam, you have the problem of God is one through and through. So if he's uncreated, he needs to create something outside of himself. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. So this means God is insufficient. He's not fully great. In that definition, if God is not a Trinity before the creation, then he has to create us to have relationship. Right.

Whereas with the Trinitarian view, he already has relationship and community before he creates us. Indeed, it goes further than that, exactly right. And it goes further than that because not only does he have relationship because he is the necessary being, he is the source of all of existence, he defines relationship by being a being in relationship with himself. So Father, Son, Holy Spirit, have an eternal community so that there's a community in the Trinity from eternity. And so he never lacks relationship. He defines relationship. But it goes even further. One step further, Eric, I would say this, is that I was having a diet.

with a Muslim at University of Toronto, and we were talking about the necessity of the Trinity actually making sense of the atonement. Because Muslims will often say, wait a minute, Jesus pays the price on the cross, and that's like, and he's God, and he pays it to the Father. Isn't that like taking money from your right pocket and putting it in your left?

There's not a real transaction. But if God is triune, then the Father is a distinct personhood in the Trinity, and the Son is a distinct personhood in the Trinity. So when Jesus pays our debts for us, It's an actual payment from one distinct personhood to another distinct personhood in the Trinity, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings these things to our light. So the fact of the matter is the Trinity actually beautifies, makes sense of, and I think solidifies the atonement.

So Christian theology is so beautiful because it leaves room for mystery, but it's comprehensive and it's cohesive. We're going to put a pin in it, as they say, and we'll be right back more with Abdou Murray. the book is more than a white man's religion. With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, lots of companies are coming out saying they'll pay for employee abortion travel and expenses. Most of you've heard about some of these companies. You've decided to stop shopping or doing business there, but did you know that you most likely own stock in those companies

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Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Abdu Murray. You can find him. I ought to have said earlier at Embrace the Truth.org. Embrace the truth. Dot org. So, Abdu, that's just beautiful to hear you talking about the Trinity and this and that. And I can see you speaking on college campuses and all these places you've been doing this for years.

But I want to go back again to how you went from arguing. for Islam and against the Trinity and against Christianity, what happened in that, in the course of your life? So during the course of this time, I was engaging with people on various ideas, and I would ask Christians oftentimes, why are you a Christian? And it was very conversational.

I wasn't a Quran thumper or anything. I was just asking them conversationally, why are you a Christian? And they would often... And this is in college, in high school? This is in high school and into college. Okay. But I'm asking them this question, and they would answer questions.

They would answer, like, well, I guess I'm a Presbyterian because we go to the Presbyterian church on Christmas and Easter. So I'm a Presbyterian, and they'd have that little lilt in the end of their voice. And I'm like, is that a question or an answer? I'm not even sure you know. And so I would respond by saying basically something along the lines of this. It's like, tradition is the reason. So you're trusting the destiny of your eternal soul to a worldview someone else thought through. Did you think through it at all yourself?

And the answer was usually no. Of course not. And I'd say, well, I thought it through for you. And here's 15 reasons why you're wrong. And most of them had no idea how to respond, but there were a couple of people who were fairly annoying who knew how to respond to it. And they were annoying because they were jerk. So maybe one or two. But for the most part, I'm a debate at heart.

I'm an advocate. If I think something's true and right, I advocate for it. But I'm also competitive. I like to win. And these guys were good at this. And they didn't just roll over and die. So I had to take their responses seriously. I began to study Christianity, got a good dose of both a conservative side and a liberal side

in terms of, you know, form criticism, redaction criticism, biblical criticism, theology stuff. And I would use the more liberal stuff in order to sort of show Christians, oh, don't you know your Bible's been changed? And you didn't always use to believe this stuff. And here's the differences in it. I was wrong, but I thought I was right because I had all these, you know, highfalutin people standing behind me on this. Two guys were going door to door.

I was at University of Michigan. They were in Ann Arbor. They were going door to door at the apartment complex. Dave and Pete were their names. I remember their names very, very well, and I remember those guys very, very well. And they came and they preached the gospel door to door. And I'm like, you guys deliver. This is great.

Come on in. I loved talking to Christians, you know. So me and my roommates, we gave these guys a little bit of what for. And I could tell these guys actually liked me, and they cared about our destinies. And I wanted them to go to God's Paradise. They wanted me to go to heaven. So we had wonderful exchanges, and they kept coming back over and over again to our apartment.

To whatever we didn't have a class or an exam or whatever, they'd come and we'd spend hours talking about matters of faith. Sometimes they had good answers, and sometimes they gave a guy the best answer you can possibly give. I don't know, I'll get back to you. And then they would. And I just could tell. What ministry were they with? They were with the Baptist Church down the street. See, that's so amazing.

Yeah. in Ann Arbor, Michigan, these guys just doing this. Wow. So I wanted to show them a fundamental contradiction in the Bible, one where, like, you know, Jesus says X in Matthew and then not X in Luke. Right, right, right, right. So I get a Bible, and I'm reading this thing, and I'm sitting in my apartment, and I'm just like, I'm going to find a contradiction in the Gospels. And I come across Luke chapter 3, verse 7 and following. And it's John the Baptist is speaking, and he's talking to those who come to him, and he says, who told you to flee from the wrath to come, meaning God's judgment. He says, do I say to you, don't even begin to think to yourself.

You have Abraham as your father, as if that would save them, their tradition. For I tell you, God can raise up for Abraham children from the stones. In other words, God can make one just like you out of a rock. Your tradition does not save you. Truth is what saves you. Well, what irritated me about that was I was saying that to Christians. You say tradition. I say not good enough.

it's got to be truth. But no Christian had really ever had a chance to ask me, why are you a Muslim? And I would have given some rational answer, but the real answer was tradition. Yeah. And it was John the Baptist. Here's the terrible irony.

Is that I thought that this book, this Bible, was corrupted, that God had revealed parts of the Bible, but it became corrupted over time, which is why the Quran came. Right. And these words, I now know, born aloft and vouchsafed by the Holy Spirit

for 20 centuries from John the Baptist, speak to me and I suddenly realized I've not been objective about this. If I'm going to find out what's true, I need to find out what's true, not what's tradition. And that started me on a nine-year search into the validity and the, whether or not Islam, Christianity or any otherism or schism was true or not. And that started a nine-year journey into this. And I began to see within a couple of years that this Christian faith really isn't as dumb as I thought it was. And then it became compelling. and then it became sort of costly. But that's so amazing to me that at that age,

you know, you knew enough that I could, it would seem to me that you were about truth, but there was something inside you, and there's no other way to explain it, except that the Holy Spirit kind of touched you to make you realize, no, really where I'm coming from in my heart, this is about defending tradition,

and maybe I need to be on. honest. And this is the part that I think is really important. I do apologetics evangelism all over the place. And I've had the blessing of being on the stage with people who are far more brilliant than me and far more eloquent than me, some of those eloquent expositors I've ever seen in my life or in the world. And all of them would tell you. And my testimony of what John the Baptist words did in the Bible would tell you this. No one is more powerful or more eloquent than the Bible. So I would say this, no matter how many lofty arguments we have, may we never speak. with lofty arguments and a closed Bible.

That book changes people. It changed me. Ivers so slightly on that chair when I first read it, and that started the trajectory of nine years that got me to the feet of the... It's amazing. Now, have you told the story of your conversion in a book? So it's in bits and pieces of different books. I haven't given the whole omnibus sort of thing. A lot of it's in a book called Grand Central Question,

where I talk about atheism, Hinduism, and Islam, and the central questions they ask and how the gospel affirms the question. and answers it better. And it's what's in bits and pieces throughout various books. And it's in the latest one as well. Okay. Well, the latest one, we're going to be talking about that at length. That is called More Than a White Man's Religion.

And folks, I'm talking to Abdul Murray, lives in the Detroit area with his wife and there are three children. If you want to find him, and I recommend you do, go to Embrace the Truth.org. Embracetruth.org. If you want to find me, go to ericmataxis.com. Ericmetaxis.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Erichmetaxis.com. All kinds of stuff there that I never have time to talk about on this radio program.

If you're not signed up for the newsletter, hurry up. Thank you. We'll be right back. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Abdu, Murray. You can spell Murray. Abdu, A, B, D-D-U. Abdu, Murray.

Embrace-the-truth.org. So we're just talking about your story, and it's fascinating to me. So you're a young man who clearly is created by God to think on a level that most of us who call ourselves Christians. We're not getting into these weeds and the tales and the arguments and the theology. But this is what you do now. I mean, you've been doing this for a long time. And debating people, helping people think things through. So when did the penny drop for you?

as a believer. So over the course of this nine years, you know, and part of it too, Eric, is that, and I say this often, is that the answers are not hard to find, but they are hard to accept, because there's always a price. You know, there's, and I don't care if you're an atheist, if you're a Hindu, if you're a Muslim, if you're a Buddhist, if you're Jewish, whatever it is, some level Christ calls us to carry our cross where he says, die to ourselves. And for me, identity was a big part of this. I liked being Muslim, and it was a big part of who I was. And so I found the answer sufficient to become a Christian within a couple of years, but I wrestled with the answer for seven more because of the consequences of it. But I'll tell you when the penny really did drop for me was it goes back to that Allah who Akbar, God is the greatest possible being.

And sell me an idea once again, is it occurred to me something really interesting is that as I wrestle through some things, I think to myself, if God is the greatest possible being, then he would express the greatest possible ethic. And that's not a mystery. It's love. He would express the greatest possible ethic in the greatest possible way. If he expressed the greatest possible ethic in a half-baked way, will he be a half-baked God? He wouldn't be great. So I think it logically flows from one to the other to the other

that the greatest ethic would naturally be expressed by the being who defines that ethic in the greatest possible way. Well, what is the greatest possible way to express love? And it's not a mystery. It really isn't. It's self-sacrifice. And we're capable of doing that. I do it.

You do it. At the end of the day, that's the agape, the definition of agape love is self-sacrifice. So when people talk about feelings, skip it. Self-sacrifice. Paying a price for someone other than yourself, that's love. And obviously. Yeah. And that's it.

So it comes down to it. Not only is it does God, so one could say we self-sacrifice. I'm a father of three. I'm a husband of one. And my wife and I, you know, she, knows I love her if I give her sweets or chocolates for this occasion or that occasion or I surprised her. But, you know, part of me wants, I want to be her Romeo to her Juliet. I don't want to take it too far, obviously, because that story in it badly. But, you know, I want to, there's a selfishness

in my selflessness until I sacrifice in a way that hurts me but helps her. But we're capable of doing that. And God does it as, must be capable of doing it as well. Islam knows no such idea. But not only that, it goes further than that, because if I can self-sacrifice, and express love this way. But God is greater than I am than he would express self-sacrifice even greater than I do. And what do you find?

And I remember where I was when I read it for the first time and I suddenly saw everything I was looking for in Islam. I finally found in Christianity for Romans chapter 5 verse 8. For God demonstrates his love, his self-sacrificial love in that while we were sinners,

not those who love God back, but those who hate God, Christ died for us. So God's self-sacrifice is not only the greatest way to express the greatest ethic, but it is so much higher than our way

that we are now called to emulate to sacrifice not only for those who love us but for those who hate us. This is pretty compelling stuff. I'm thinking of considering this thing you call Christianity. It is kind of funny when you hear it, you know, as I hear you say it and you realize

wow, that is beautiful. It's moving. It's unique. It's extraordinary. And of course, for some people, it's just idiotic and problematic and it makes no sense. Because it's so you know, it's a stumbling block. It's everything in some ways it makes no sense. And then you realize it makes every kind of sense. But on this whole other level, here's the good news. I get to continue my conversation with Abdu Murray. Don't go away. And Abdu, please don't go away because you're part of this conversation. We'll be right back.