CNSNews.com, Europe’s Decadent Education, Friday, January 15, 2010, By L. Brent Bozell III
When people think of the public morals of Europe, the word “decadence” comes to mind. Sex, drugs, and the decline and fall of the churches all define the trend. Amsterdam, for example is celebrated as “San Francisco times ten.”
Testimony of Abdul Saleeb
My name is “Abdul Saleeb”. I was born and raised in a Muslim country in the Middle East. Even though I lived in a very conservative Muslim society I grew up in a somewhat of a liberal Muslim family. Furthermore, my Muslim upbringing was unique due to my mother’s serious involvement in Islamic sufism. So I can honestly confess, that I have had first hand experience of every aspect of contemporary Islamic movements. I personally did not consider myself very religious. At one point I even turned to Marxist ideologies thinking that they could provide real solutions to my country’s social ills. However, throughout all this time I never doubted the fundamentals of my religious faith. I thought of Islam as a faith with such high ideals that I did not consider myself worthy of the name Muslim but I wholeheartedly believed that Islam was God’s last and most perfect religion for all mankind, based on God’s final revelation, the Qur’an, and the prophet Muhammad, God’s seal of prophethood. My view of other religions (especially Judaism and Christianity) was that although they were fundamentally the same since they had all been revealed by one God, they were all inferior to Islam because all of them had to various degrees corrupted the original message of their founding prophets, something that we as Muslims have not done.
So, today we are going to talk about what the Kingdom of God is.
Romans 14:17 “for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
Normally when we hear the word Kingdom, we think of a territory; for example Sweden or England. You can travel inside or outside the territory of a kingdom.
But if we think carefully about this, we will see that maybe its not as simple as a territory.
For example many big Cities, like New York or San Fransisco, have a section called China Town, where all signs are in Chinese, and every one speaks Chinese. So is that part of town really American or is it Chinese? Likewise, imagine with me, if we took all Chinese and placed them in USA, and all Americans and placed them in China. So we see that a Kingdom is actually more closely connected to its people, than its territory. If all Chinese lived in America, and all Americans lived in China, I would probably call America China, and China America.
If we look even more closely, we will discover that its not as simple as a people either.
With free will, God gave every person the right to choose what life he or she wants. God does not force His own will on our life choices. God appreciates that we may have our own opinion of what’s best; that we have our own tastes, desires, and values.
God is empathic and he understands us. But do we understand Him? Do we understand that God also has a choice, a will, an opinion, a taste, a desire, and values?