“So, are you a hardcore Christian?”
This is the question devout Muslim Nabeel Qureshi asked his roommate David Wood. The two of them were entering their freshman year of college and they were on a trip for the college debate team. While the rest of the teammates had gone out to party that night, Nabeel and David stayed back. As they settled in their hotel room, Nabeel was surprised to see David pull out a Bible and begin reading it. This is what prompted his question, to which David replied simply, “Yes I am.” After that, Nabeel challenged David on the trustworthiness of the Bible. To his surprise, David did not shut down the conversation. He actually had an answer, an answer Nabeel had never heard before. While Nabeel was obviously not convinced about Christianity at that point, he was convinced that David truly believed in the Bible and that he had allowed the Bible to change his life. Nabeel had been trained to be a Muslim apologist and he had never met a Christian who could actually engage him in debate, until he met David.
This began a four-year-long spiritual journey for Nabeel. At first, he set out to investigate Christianity in order to tear it down and convert his new friend David to Islam. However, when the evidence actually stacked in favor of Christianity, Nabeel turned the same criticism against his faith, his culture, his identity, his life—Islam. It did not hold up under that same criticism. This put Nabeel in a terrifying position. Would he turn his back on everything that had given him identity, purpose, and joy his whole life in order to follow Jesus Christ? At the end of an excruciating struggle between truth and feelings, Nabeel gave in to Christ as the Son of God and his Savior! Not long after, the consequences of his choice hit him. His devout Muslim parents found out and it crushed them. The connection that Nabeel had enjoyed with his family was severed. And it hurt. A lot.
One day, Nabeel was crumbling beneath the cost of his choice to follow Christ. Here is an excerpt from Nabeel’s book, describing this moment: “I pleaded with God, full of despair because it was too late. ‘It would have been better if You had killed me the moment I believed so my family would never have had to taste betrayal. This is far worse for them than my death would have been. At least our love would have lived on. At least our family would have always been one. Why God?’ At that moment, the most agonizing moment of my life, something happened that was beyond my theology and imagination. As if God picked up a megaphone and spoke through my conscience, I heard these words resonate through my very being: ‘Because this is not about you.’”[1]
After that experience, Nabeel had a new perspective. He saw the world not through his own eyes, but through Jesus’ eyes. He realized that he was not left on this planet for himself, for his comfort, his pleasure, or his purpose. God had left him here for them—for his family and the many others like them without Christ.
Then, Nabeel began another journey—a journey to become a Christian apologist. He became someone who was ready to give an answer for the hope that was in him. He began traveling around the country, and even the world, sharing his testimony and preaching the gospel. Who would have thought that a Muslim apologist could end his life as a Christian apologist? God called Nabeel to heaven in 2017, but God is still using Nabeel’s testimony to glorify His own name. Nabeel has left behind three books and numerous sermons, all of which declare Christ as God and Savior of the world! You want to know something even more crazy? David, the one God used to reach Nabeel, had been a hardcore atheist before he became a hardcore Christian! David and Nabeel’s incredible stories demonstrate that there is something real, true, and powerful about the gospel. Truly, the gospel is the power of God (Romans 1:16)!
This story has wrecked me. It has convicted me. Too often I have prioritized my own comfort, my own pleasure, and my own purpose over God’s. Many times, this is because I am such a child of my American culture. I love America, the American dream, and the liberty that I enjoy here in the United States of America. But I am called to love Jesus more. As dearly as I hold my American identity, my Christianity should be my greatest identity. Recently, I’ve been confronted with the fact that too often my Americanism tempers my Christianity, rather than the other way around.
As I’ve been studying and preparing for a worldviews class, I’ve had the privilege of encountering the gospel as if for the first time again. Although, growing up in a Christian home, Christianity has been wallpaper for me, it is not wallpaper for most people. As I’ve encountered the gospel through the eyes of a Naturalist, a Hindu, a Muslim instead of a “good Christian,” I’ve been smitten with how awesome and how radical the gospel message is. And I’ve also been convicted with how my American identity too often trumps my Christian identity.
What I mean by that is that my esteem of the pursuing the American dream (you know, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) has often trumped my esteem of pursuing Christ’s call (take up your cross and follow me). Protecting my rights has often trumped preaching the gospel to others. Protesting someone else’s politics has often trumped preserving my Christian testimony. For too long, I’ve struggled with my liberty to do what I want to do rather than thinking about the importance of the gospel. That’s my privilege, I suppose, since I know I’m going to heaven. But many people do not have that assurance, and if I’m too busy worrying what I can and can’t do in my Christian liberty, I may miss opportunities to share Christ with them.
Like Nabeel was, each of us have been left here for the purpose of sharing the truth in love with others. We are not here just to get comfortable, have fun, and pursue our own ambitions. In John 15:12, Jesus told his disciples, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” How has Jesus loved us? Before he went to the cross, Jesus shared a meal with his disciples and washed their feet! That’s how Jesus loved us. He served with humility. He sacrificed everything for us. He forgave us. Ultimately, Jesus laid down His life for us. So, this command to “love one another as I have loved you” is a tall order. But it makes sense to the hardcore Christian, the true disciple (follower) of Christ. As Jesus said in Matthew 16:24, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Following Christ is about losing ourselves in Him. After all, what have we got to lose? We only have heaven to gain! The real life only begins after this one ends, and we step into heaven. The best is yet to come! That is why we are here to spread Christ’s message and pursue His ambition—to preach the gospel to every creature. And we have a good sampling of every creature right here in the United States of America! While pursuing the American dream is good and well, it must not get in the way of Christ’s dream for my life.
I know that’s easy to say and to intellectually grasp. It’s so much harder to live. So often my life is about me. Too often it is about my life, my dreams, my family. And yet it isn’t about me. It’s about our infinitely great yet loving God and the other souls for which He died. It’s great that I get to go to heaven . . . but what about the other souls who haven’t found the hope of heaven yet? It’s about God and it’s about them!
Yes, it is hard to live this truth of self-denial even if it does makes sense. And that’s why Nabeel’s story is so encouraging to me! If Nabeel could leave everything in pursuit of the truth, surely, I can give up relatively little in pursuit of the truth. If Nabeel could witness to people, then I can witness to people. If Nabeel, who was not raised in a Christian home, could be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in him, surely, I can be ready too!
Nominal Christianity, Americanized Christianity, is like lukewarm coffee—worthless. Jesus isn’t looking for more lukewarm Christians. Those are a dime a dozen. I know because I am one too often. Jesus is looking for Christians who have caught the vision of eternity, who have caught the fire for souls, who have realized the implications of Christ’s command to “love as I have loved you.” On one hand, Christ’s command to take up our cross and follow Him is radical. At the same time, it is only reasonable.
I am an American and I will proudly live as an American. But being an American has nothing to do with my Christianity. My Christianity comes first. And if Christianity requires me to give up a dream, or ditch my comfort zone, or dogmatically declare truth, then I must extract my Americanism out of my Christianity.
Nabeel is with the Lord Jesus in heaven now. But his testimony is still affecting hearts and lives on this earth. I’m an example of that. I just had a little revival meeting in my office and Nabeel was the evangelist! You and I can have that kind of legacy, too, because we serve the same Jesus that Nabeel served. C. S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, “The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ.” That’s what Nabeel did. We can, too!
So, I’ll ask you the question Nabeel asked David and I have asked myself. Are you a hardcore Christian?
[1] Nabeel Qureshi. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 281.