Priest Deacon
Priest embraced Islam, (3) ex- minister of the United Methodist Church -iiiPriest embraced Islam, (3) ex- minister of the United Methodist Church Part 3
This is the third priest in this series of "Priests Embraced Islam" This is the second priest in this series of Before he embraced Islam: His name was Dr. Jerald F. Dirks from USA. After he has embraced Islam, he changed his name to Abu Yahya. His position was Former minister (deacon) of the United Methodist Church. His Education and qualification:
Dr. Jerald F. Dirks has embraced Islam after an stimulating spiritual and rational trip for the duration of which he held reading and thinking. Herein is the story of the Ex- minister (deacon) of the United Methodist Church.
Dr. Jerald F. Dirks (Abu Yahya) proceeds his story and says:
By December, 1992, I was beginning to ask myself a great deal of severe questions when it comes to where I was and what I was doing. These questions were prompted by the following considerations. 1) Over the course of the prior 16 months, our social life had become growingly centered on the Arab element of the local Muslim community. By December, probably 75% of our social life was being expended with Arab Muslims. 2) By virtue of my seminary training and education, I knew how badly the Bible had been corrupted (and many times knew precisely when, where, and why), I had no faith in any triune godhead, and I had no faith in anything more than a metaphorical "son ship" of Jesus, peace be upon him. In short, while I surely believed in God, I was as rigorous a monotheist as my Muslim friends. 3) My personal values and sense of morality were much more in keeping with my Muslim friends than with the "Christian" society around me. After all, I had the non-confrontational examples of Jamal, Khalid, and Wa'el as illustrations. In short, my nostalgic yearning for the type of community in which I had been raised was finding gratification in the Muslim community. American society might be morally bankrupt, but that did not appear to be the case for that share of the Muslim community with which I had had contact. Marriages were stable, spouses were committed to each other, and honesty, integrity, self-responsibility, and family values were emphasized. My wife and I had attempted to live our lives that same way, but for assorted years I had felt that we were doing so in the context of a moral vacuum. The Muslim community appeared to be different. The dissimilar threads were being woven together into a single strand. Arabian horses, my childhood upbringing, my foray into the Christian ministry and my seminary education, my nostalgic yearnings for a moral society, and my contact with the Muslim community were getting intricately intertwined. My self-questioning came to a head when I in the long run got around to asking myself precisely what divided me from the beliefs of my Muslim friends. I suppose that I could have raised that question with Jamal or with Khalid, but I wasn't ready to take that step. I had never discussed my own religious beliefs with them, and I didn't think that I wanted to introduce that topic of speech into our friendship. As such, I begun to pull off the bookshelf all the books on Islam that I had acquired in my collegiate and seminary days. However far my own beliefs were from the established position of the church, and nonetheless seldom I actually attended church, I still identified myself as being a Christian, and so I turned to the works of Western scholars. That month of December, I read half a dozen or so books on Islam by Western scholars, including one biography of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Further, I started out to read two dissimilar English translations of the meaning of the Qur'an. I never spoke to my Muslim friends with regards to this personal quest of self-discovery. I never brought up what types of books I was reading, nor ever spoke when it comes to why I was reading these books. However, once in a while I would run a very circumscribed question past one of them. While I never spoke to my Muslim friends with regards to those books, my wife and I had some conversations in regards to what I was reading. By the last week of December of 1992, I was forced to confess to myself, that I could find no area of significant disagreement amidst my own religious beliefs and the popular tenets of Islam. While I was ready to know that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was a prophet of (one who spoke for or underneath the inspiration of) God, and while I had utterly no difficultness affirming that there was no god besides God/Allah, glorified and exalted is He, I was still hesitating to make any decision. I could readily confess to myself that I had far more in mutual with Islamic beliefs as I then understood them, than I did with the established Christianity of the organized church. I knew only too well that I could without apparent effort assert from my seminary training and education most of what the Qur'an had to say with regards to Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus, peace be upon him. Nonetheless, I hesitated. Further, I rationalized my hesitation by sustaining to myself that I genuinely didn't recognise the nitty-gritty details of Islam, and that my areas of agreement were confined to ordinary concepts. As such, I continued to read, and then to re-read. One's sense of identity, of who one is, is a powerful affirmation of one's own position in the cosmos. In my professional practice, I had most times been called upon to treat sure addictive disorders, ranging from smoking, to alcoholism, to drug abuse. As a clinician, I knew that the basic physical addiction had to be win a victory over to invent the initial abstinence. That was the easy part of treatment. As Mark Twain once said: "Quitting smoking is easy; I've done it hundreds of times". However, I also knew that the key to sustaining that temperance over an extended time amount of time was overcoming the client's psychological addiction, which was to a considerable degree grounded in the client's basic sense of identity, i.e. the client identified to himself that he was "a smoker", or that he was "a drinker", etc. The addictive conduct had become portion and parcel of the client's basic sense of identity, of the client's basic sense of self. Changing this sense of identity was important to the maintenance of the psychotherapeutic "cure". This was the difficult portion of treatment. Changing one's basic sense of identity is a most difficult task. One's psyche have a tendancy to cling to the old and familiar, which seem more psychologically comfortable and secure than the new and unfamiliar. On a professional basis, I had the above knowledge, and applied it on a daily basis. However, ironically enough, I was not yet ready to utilise it to myself, and to the issue of my own hesitation surrounding my religious identity. For 43 years, my religious identity had been neatly labeled as "Christian", notwithstanding a great deal of qualifications I might have added to that term over the years. Giving up that label of personal identity was no easy task. It was share and parcel of how I specified my very being. Given the gain of hindsight, it is clear that my hesitation served the aim of insuring that I could keep my intimate religious identity of being a Christian, altho a Christian who believed like a Muslim believed. It was now the very end of December, and my wife and I were filling out our application forms for U.S. passports, so that a proposed Middle Eastern traveling could become a reality. One of the questions had to do with religious affiliation. I didn't even think regarding it, and mechanically fell back on the old and familiar, as I penned in "Christian". It was easy, it was familiar, and it was comfortable. However, that ease was momentarily disrupted when my wife asked me how I had answered the question on religious identity on the application form. I without delay replied, "Christian", and chuckled audibly. Now, one of Freud's contributions to the understanding of the humane psyche was his realization that laughter is ofttimes a release of psychological tension. However faulty Freud may have been in a heap of distinct elements of his theory of psychosexual development, his perceptivities into laughter were rather on target. I had laughed! What was this psychological tension that I had need to release through the medium of laughter? I then hurriedly went on to offer my wife a brief affirmation that I was a Christian, not a Muslim. In response to which, she politely informed me that she was merely asking whether I had written "Christian", or "Protestant", or "Methodist". On a professional basis, I knew that a person does not defend himself versus an accusation that hasn't been made. (If, in the course of a session of psychotherapy, my client blurted out, "I'm not angry when it comes to that", and I hadn't even broached the topic of anger, it was clear that my client was sentiment the need to defend himself versus a charge that his own unconscious was making. In short, he actually was angry, but he wasn't ready to confess it or to deal with it.) If my wife hadn't made the accusation, i.e. "you are a Muslim", then the accusation had to have come from my own unconscious, as I was the only other person present. I was conscious of this, but still I hesitated. The religious label that had been stuck to my sense of identity for 43 years was not going to come off easily.
To be continued.
Honoring the Priesthood As a Deacon, a Teacher and a Priest (2002), Men's liturgical robe - size 38-40-42 - pastor, priest, deacon, Russia PRIEST Protoiereus Deacon Vintage CABINET PHOTO, Priest Deacon Seminarian FISHING Fishermen by PEROV old, Catholic Priest Deacon BAPTISMAL SHELL Baptism Church, Priest or Deacon Alb, Estate Anglican Priest Vestment Deacon's Dalmatic Black & Purple, Estate Anglican Priest Chasuble Vestment Deacon's TUNICLE Black Purple & Gold, Honoring the Priesthood As a Deacon, a Teacher and a Priest (2002) LIKE NEW, Priest or Deacon Alb By Beau Veste - Size Large - White - Gently Used, Orthodox Church Byzantine priest Bishop Archimandite Deacon clergy kalymafki, Gold Enameled Filigree Pectoral Cross Deacon Priest NR!, Orthodox Priest Deacon Monk Nun, Clergy Very Small Vest, Candle Holder for Priest or Deacon 6" Russian Wood WOW!, Holy Hammered Party Priest Drunk Deacon Adult Costume, GOLD CHASUBLE, STOLE, DALMATIC & TUNICLE Priest Deacon Vestments Church Clergy , CHRISTIANITY SILBER RING FISH KEYS Bishop Priest Deacon,
How do deacons, priest, and religious brothers and sisters aid us listen gods call? They become spiritual leaders Yet are servants for the Lord , they spend a life time in worship and prayer to God , they spend a life time learning each day more of they Mysteries of Faith , and they part them with us , instruct us , and lead by example to us. Thru the Pascal Mystery of the Eucharist they fetch us to a personal kinship with God. The priest, Deacon, Brothers & Nuns all know the unfeigned meaning of the Eucharist , they celabrate this gift each day with us, The Host is not just a piece of bread, it is the Body and Blood of Christ . Jesus told us 2009 years ago that it was. These People understand this and they share this with us, any any info we wish to find or need ....we just merely have to ask. My Local Priest is a young Man from Africa he is in all probability 10 to 15 years younger than I am , But I never have met a more knowledgable powerful priest in my life , yet he is as meek as a lamb and soft spoken as they come. I have learned a great deal from this young Preist, It is evident that God is calling to us thru him....Thats a good way to look at it .....!!! |
