Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Breaking Anonymity... One Person at a Time

Today I told the first person to whom I'm actually close about my spiritual wandering. The friend is someone who has decent exposure to both Christianity and Islam. It was nice to talk to someone I know who also knows me and my background. Until now, aside from this blog, the only people to whom I've talked personally have been some acquaintances from the mosque, people with whom I've only had contact in a religious conversational sense. I'd say they're better informed about Islam than my friend but my friend, on the other hand, probably has more experience with Christianity.

I wouldn't say any major theological ground was covered but it's definitely a nice start. We talked about the importance of religion in our lives, how religion plays a role in relationships and family, and the mismatch between religion and modern society, liberal, conservative, and fundamentalist. Aside from all that generic talk, we did talk some specifics. We talked about the difficulty of justifying the Trinity as monotheistic, we talked about the strictness of Islam and the occasional laxity of Christianity, and we discussed some history and its affect on the development of the two religions. Altogether, it was a great conversation and I really hope that it was only the first of many.

Perhaps I'll expound on some more of the details and some of our shared conclusions tomorrow. Also, I've been unlucky thus far when it comes to talking with my pastor. However, we have multiple meetings, both one-on-one and group meetings, planned this weekend to discuss other church matters so I hope to begin my assault of questions and concerns then.

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