Is your religion a BMW?
My Muslim friend in England was telling me how he thinks of religion. He was using this metaphor to refer to Islam, but it can as easily apply to Christianity. He said it is like a brand new BMW car, and someone takes it for a test drive and crashes it into a wall. “Should we blame the BMW car for crashing, or the bad driver? Obviously you can't blame the car, because it is superb. This is how religion is,” he says, “One cannot judge a religion by the persons driving it. Don't you agree?” he asked me.
Well...interesting question. But, I explained to him, I think of it differently. I am not a driver, driving my religion! It is more like Jesus is the driver driving me, and the car has no value without This Driver!
He then asked me whether Moses had said something about a prophet to come. Oh yes, I told him, he was talking about Jesus! Then I was able to use the concordance to find the verse I needed in Deuteronomy, and then used it again to find several verses in Luke and John where Jesus was stating that Moses was talking about Him when he said that about the prophet to come.
Of course my friend was intending to show me how this “prophet to come” was Muhammad...but we won't delve too deeply into that issue, for now.
We had quite an interesting discussion. Perhaps we will meet again and speak further...
Studying the Torah
The other night I met a woman who defined herself not as a Christian, but as a believer in the Messiah. This surprised me, and I questioned her as to what this meant, since it seemed to be stated in contrast to the term "Christian." As it turns out she is a Christian, by definition, but finds it troublesome how many others use the term without letting it define them! The many false "Christians" led her to feel inclined to define herself more clearly...
As we talked, I grew more curious about her beliefs. A former Catholic, she began studying the bible (contrary to the church's encouragement) and found that there were a lot of beliefs in her church that were not in any way supported in the bible. She began to question, and was rebuffed. In the end, she left her church and began searching for a church that truly (not in word only) considered the bible to be the source of truth, and not just a "holy icon." She found a nice bible-believing non-denominational church and is fairly happy there, though they don't share all her beliefs.
She is a Sabbath-keeper, and has studied a lot in the books of Moses (Torah was the term she used) to find what the appropriate form of worship would be. She keeps some of the feast days, though not as they were originally kept. In the end, I found her to be sincere and searching, though suspicious somewhat of me and my ideas. We had a very nice discussion. It will be interesting to see whether God uses our acquaintance further.