Just came back from an interfaith dialogue in an international Islamic university on “The Concepts of God”. The moment I stepped out of the parking lot – it seems like I have landed on another planet. There was a bazaar displaying booths from different countries and ethnic groups – manned by Muslim students. Some Africans were dancing to the cheers of ladies in black ‘tudung’. It was festive mood till the wee hours of the morning.
God, people from every tribe, nation and tongues are at our doorstep. These are people who take their religion seriously. I wonder if there’s any law that prohibits mutual interfaith dialogues with international students.
Back to the dialogue… Yet again, the event became a soapbox for Muslim evangelism. Once again, the Christian representative got most of the bullets and was made to look inept during the one-hour Question and Answer session. Mr. Shah Kirit, a disciple of Ahmed Deedat and trained in dakwah, came well-prepared with a polished presentation, memory verses and ready polemics. No prizes for guessing who was at the receiving end of such polemics. But overall, he’s a good communicator but I'm kinda encouraged thinking, "Is this the best they can come up with? After years of study and training?" He's very much beatable.
The Buddhist-relativist handled himself very well – explaining that Buddhism is a man-centered religion of self-reliance, Buddha is not god but a man who has achieved the highest development in being enlightened to see how we can escape suffering and be happy. He said that there may be no God, but Buddhists still do good works because any human can see that it’s wrong to harm others.
The Hindu was reading a written text that was philosophical and his strong accent didn’t help. He affirmed that there is one God – Supreme Being of which the other deities were forms of God. Basically he talks about our knowledge of God being partial at best, the illusion of the outside world, karma – a law of cause and effects etc. He also took pride in that Hinduism doesn’t have a conversion rite.
The Catholic archbishop was not very well-prepared, I feel. He was calm and managed to come up with some semblance of an answer for most questions. Overall, though, I’d give him a C minus. He has about 20 minutes to speak, but more than 15 minutes were spent on Old Testament story of Abraham and Moses. In my opinion, those 15 minutes made no impact whatsoever for the Christian gospel to a predominantly Muslim audience who have no problem with anything he said. One of them even wore a shirt saying “Prophets of Islam – Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Mohammad”. The last 5 minutes or so were too little to unpack Jesus’ virgin birth, incarnation and such in any meaningful way. The audience probably knew some of those claim already… It’s not the time to reassert those claims, but to provide a rational defense for them!
The Question and Answer session turned ugly at certain moments when the students made sarcastic remarks about other faiths. Most of them were directed to the bishop – an unofficial estimate is 70% relate to Incarnation and Trinity, and 30% relates to exegetical, apparent contradictions in the Bible. Actually, I find myself quite comfortable with issues surrounding the Trinity and the Incarnation, because they were attacking straw version of these doctrines. My conclusion is that Muslims were vehemently against a doctrine which I myself reject in the first place. Even I don’t believe that God gave up His deity to become man or gave up his humanity to become God! I wonder how surprising this little news would be to those students who easily demolished these straw men, thinking they had dealt with the real article. Frankly I had more problems with the exegetical questions. Yes, there were old rehashed ‘contradictions’ they picked out from the Bible which had often been discussed and resolved… but on the spot, it’s hard to recall all those points. It comes back to Preparation. I can imagine someone who has done his homework would comfortably and confidently answer all of them … Where is Greg Koukl when you need him? Seriously, it’s very difficult to do any worse than the guy on stage.
A few lessons we ought to learn here…
“It’s not what the Muslims say, or what the Christians say or what the Buddhists say, but what this one God is saying to us.” (Catch phrase)
Memorize points, plan your presentation and repeat them proficiently. Some Christian students told me that the Muslim speaker could reproduce his message word for word, along with the hand gestures.
Muslim rhetoric was specifically directed at the Christian gospel – God cannot have son, or equals or father etc. that is the one unforgivable sin.
When it comes to forum like this, the concern is not so much about truth but about sound-bytes. It’s image, presentation, preparation.
I don’t think he made any converts tonight, the Christians were complaining about his quoting out of contexts. (One girl brought the Bible and actually checked the references he quoted and found him got some of them wrong)
But to a casual observer or to the many Muslim girls yearning to cement their existing beliefs, he has clearly won the contest. It doesn’t help the Christian cause to appear flustered and flabbergasted every time. It’s tragic that people just get the idea that we don’t know the answers… when in fact the Christian faith has some very good answers.
What am I doing here??
God, people from every tribe, nation and tongues are at our doorstep. These are people who take their religion seriously. I wonder if there’s any law that prohibits mutual interfaith dialogues with international students.
Back to the dialogue… Yet again, the event became a soapbox for Muslim evangelism. Once again, the Christian representative got most of the bullets and was made to look inept during the one-hour Question and Answer session. Mr. Shah Kirit, a disciple of Ahmed Deedat and trained in dakwah, came well-prepared with a polished presentation, memory verses and ready polemics. No prizes for guessing who was at the receiving end of such polemics. But overall, he’s a good communicator but I'm kinda encouraged thinking, "Is this the best they can come up with? After years of study and training?" He's very much beatable.
The Buddhist-relativist handled himself very well – explaining that Buddhism is a man-centered religion of self-reliance, Buddha is not god but a man who has achieved the highest development in being enlightened to see how we can escape suffering and be happy. He said that there may be no God, but Buddhists still do good works because any human can see that it’s wrong to harm others.
The Hindu was reading a written text that was philosophical and his strong accent didn’t help. He affirmed that there is one God – Supreme Being of which the other deities were forms of God. Basically he talks about our knowledge of God being partial at best, the illusion of the outside world, karma – a law of cause and effects etc. He also took pride in that Hinduism doesn’t have a conversion rite.
The Catholic archbishop was not very well-prepared, I feel. He was calm and managed to come up with some semblance of an answer for most questions. Overall, though, I’d give him a C minus. He has about 20 minutes to speak, but more than 15 minutes were spent on Old Testament story of Abraham and Moses. In my opinion, those 15 minutes made no impact whatsoever for the Christian gospel to a predominantly Muslim audience who have no problem with anything he said. One of them even wore a shirt saying “Prophets of Islam – Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Mohammad”. The last 5 minutes or so were too little to unpack Jesus’ virgin birth, incarnation and such in any meaningful way. The audience probably knew some of those claim already… It’s not the time to reassert those claims, but to provide a rational defense for them!
The Question and Answer session turned ugly at certain moments when the students made sarcastic remarks about other faiths. Most of them were directed to the bishop – an unofficial estimate is 70% relate to Incarnation and Trinity, and 30% relates to exegetical, apparent contradictions in the Bible. Actually, I find myself quite comfortable with issues surrounding the Trinity and the Incarnation, because they were attacking straw version of these doctrines. My conclusion is that Muslims were vehemently against a doctrine which I myself reject in the first place. Even I don’t believe that God gave up His deity to become man or gave up his humanity to become God! I wonder how surprising this little news would be to those students who easily demolished these straw men, thinking they had dealt with the real article. Frankly I had more problems with the exegetical questions. Yes, there were old rehashed ‘contradictions’ they picked out from the Bible which had often been discussed and resolved… but on the spot, it’s hard to recall all those points. It comes back to Preparation. I can imagine someone who has done his homework would comfortably and confidently answer all of them … Where is Greg Koukl when you need him? Seriously, it’s very difficult to do any worse than the guy on stage.
A few lessons we ought to learn here…
“It’s not what the Muslims say, or what the Christians say or what the Buddhists say, but what this one God is saying to us.” (Catch phrase)
Memorize points, plan your presentation and repeat them proficiently. Some Christian students told me that the Muslim speaker could reproduce his message word for word, along with the hand gestures.
Muslim rhetoric was specifically directed at the Christian gospel – God cannot have son, or equals or father etc. that is the one unforgivable sin.
When it comes to forum like this, the concern is not so much about truth but about sound-bytes. It’s image, presentation, preparation.
I don’t think he made any converts tonight, the Christians were complaining about his quoting out of contexts. (One girl brought the Bible and actually checked the references he quoted and found him got some of them wrong)
But to a casual observer or to the many Muslim girls yearning to cement their existing beliefs, he has clearly won the contest. It doesn’t help the Christian cause to appear flustered and flabbergasted every time. It’s tragic that people just get the idea that we don’t know the answers… when in fact the Christian faith has some very good answers.
What am I doing here??
Comments
(was going to post this as a comment to your blog entry "Interfaith Dialogue" on http://hedonese1.blogspot.com/ but thought I'd share this more widely instead, and maybe spark some discussion).
Just arrived at the airport after attending Future of People of God conference with Tom Wright (and of course other ancillary work-related reasons for my UK trip!!) when I received your text for this talk on the concept of God at IIU the very same evening, so could not attend. I was tempted to attend the previous one on Faith & Science but was warned by my fiancee that it'll just be another Christian-bashing session, so didn't bother going - in addition to the fact that it was at the other end of town.
Looks like she's vindicated to say that about these meetings.
Having been soaking up the Tom Wright stuff recently, these so-called interfaith dialogues, like so many Jay Smith talks and debates I've witnessed in London, just seem so far from my present reality. Yet they can't be, can they? Framed in terms of Wright's perspective on New Creation, the question for me now would be:" What does God's future arriving at the present look like when Christians attend an "interfaith dialogue" set up deliberately to ensnare them? "
I've no doubt it is substantially a thumping good comeback to their straw-men attacking rhetoric. There's a part of me that really wants to spend few years reading up and sharpening my debating mind. (*sigh* but with Christian Origins Vols 1-3 to read, where got time?). In fact, we should get a study group going to prepare just to attend these sort of meetings, now that they seem to be happening more frequently and more importantly, publicly!
I suppose getting rid of these Deedat-type red herrings would constitute first-aid or firefighting in what is a dire situation where people are duped by baseless rhetoric. So rebuttals are very necessary and urgent too.
However, I would just like to quickly add another personal observation, though, that probably the crowing glory of Josh McDowell's face-off with Ahmad Deedat on the Trinity was not so much the rebuttals he mustered but his personal testimony in his closing statements. Ironically, this debate is now widely circulated in dakwah missions as it's perceived to be a 1-0 to Deedat... yet in doing so almost guaranteeing a wide audience for a moving personal testimony of a man's coming to faith in our Lord.
I would also like to mention in passing a famous encounter between a local Christian lecturer with Mr Deedat during a talk at UM over a decade ago where his response to "turn the other cheek/go the second mile" to Mr Deedat's challenge displayed that it is humble perseverence & courage in the face of spiteful insults which is the mark of a disciple of the True Lord.
Oh well... I suppose I could get off by butt and start by attending some of these meetings.
Agape
YK
"To embrace the life that God has laid out for you, what do you need to give up?"
I've been losing sleep over this question lately... it came back to haunt me after the last ibridge camp when i thot i got it figured to be a good marketplace ambassador for christ rite? Yea, like ur jazz guitarist lar... work by day, SPiderman by nite... slog it out as an IT guy for paycheque by day, and swinging abt as Malaysia's answer to JP Moreland by nite...
Now i feel like a total schizo! Thru recent events, and even a cryptic parable from a buddhist monk (about "Buddhism needs you!"), I'm wondering if i shud just throw caution to the wind and go to a seminary or stg.... maybe try to pester Dr Ng Kam Weng to pass me his mantle before i turn 35. Sigh....
Any wise nuggets of wisdom to spare, o great one?
"To embrace the life that God has laid out for you, what do you need to give up?"
I've been losing sleep over this question lately... it came back to haunt me after the last ibridge camp when i thot i got it figured to be a good marketplace ambassador for christ rite? Yea, like ur jazz guitarist lar... work by day, SPiderman by nite... slog it out as an IT guy for paycheque by day, and swinging abt as Malaysia's answer to JP Moreland by nite...
Now i feel like a total schizo! Thru recent events, and even a cryptic parable from a buddhist monk (about "Buddhism needs you!"), I'm wondering if i shud just throw caution to the wind and go to a seminary or stg.... maybe try to pester Dr Ng Kam Weng to pass me his mantle before i turn 35. Sigh....
Any wise nuggets of wisdom to spare, o great one?