06/01/20 Zubair Simonson

[Music] well good evening and welcome back to the journey home program I'm your host John Mark Grodi filling in for my father Marcus he'll be back next week and once again we have this wonderful opportunity here on EWTN to bring to you another wonderful story the story of how our Lord has brought another individual home to the fullness of truth in his Catholic Church and very interesting story today I'm joined by Zubair assignments and Zubair welcome to the show to meet you John mark severe you you come from a different background than many of our our usual guests yeah I did so that was a I was raised Muslim yeah I was born in Massachusetts my mother moved here from Pakistan and my father moved there from Michigan which is where he he grew up and his mother was Catholic his father was Lutheran but he was a convert to Islam so I was born in Massachusetts raised Muslim when I family was when I was six years old my family moved to North Carolina which is where I primarily grew up our household was that's a fairly moderate okay Muslim but when I was I was starting so he also went to Sunday School mhm well we couldn't have Fridays off because we actually had school yeah so we had Sunday school just like the Christians and it was there that I kind of began began as a child yeah first having questions about Islam the Sunday School instructors they could be kind of they were on the stricter side and I was taught a lot of great things such as how to pray five times a day from the age of ten I began fasting during Ramadan and then also I began learning from the Sunday School instructor a lot of the details yeah such as one particular night we had like a I was maybe 10 or 11 years old but all the boys were sleeping over at the mosque and I was on the Friday night and our instructors would kind of go up and down and make sure that all the boys were sleeping on their backs rather than on their stomach reason being that well it's recorded that Mohammed would sleep on his back we have to imitate the life of Muhammad as much as possible as closely as possible and so since he did it we need you to do it too bad thing and that was kind of the one of those early things were as a child yeah I just kind of wondered well what does that even matter right that thing and you know there's um there's 1.4 billion Muslims so there's great variation sure on how you're going to interpret that in our household it's pretty much about as innocuous as an interpretation as you could have okay but I'd noticed like growing up a lot of a lot of our fellow Muslims who had many of whom had emigrated from the Middle East they had kind of some very strict much stricter interpretations to the point where it's often hostility it officer they would often have hostility toward the greater community the country that we live in yeah type thing there were a lot of sentiments that were being tossed around about how awful American foreign policy was and that could be spoken during the hood buzz what was the equivalent of a sermon sure we would have on the Friday prayers and I began having it questions about okay am i able to be a good American write that thing because you know I was I had a father who was born in the United States his parents generation were all World War two generation I'm incredibly proud yeah of what they had done so it's like I I want to be a good American I want to be a normal American kid but at the same time there's like um and my family told me very moderate it's like yeah you can be both of course but then there is also like this voice that I was often hearing from our mosque from so many fellow Muslims right which is much more common than a lot of politically correct types would really really like to admit saying like no you have to be Muslim like a you cannot be a good Muslim and an American because there's just look at the culture all around and I think how how degenerate it can be and you know Muslims have Christians have many of the same objections to the culture and I can't blame them there but then like but when it starts going so far as like well like well we're the good people and this is very degenerate society mm-hmm type thing to the point where it's like our neighbors are are evil mm-hmm type thing that was also a common voice and just kind of it began it became becoming more and more of a conflict as I was in my teens and I was wondering like why did so many of these guys move to a country that they hate so much and you know like within my family we had objections to a lot of the Israel's foreign policy yeah but the thing is like and then and that's common throughout the whole Muslim world it's like oh look at seeing Israel as more or less than apartheid state for the Palestinians but then often there's like some of the Muslim peers would kind of go even further push it even further oh it's like it's not just Israel it's the Jews the Jews are always conspiring against us and there's a conspiracy theories that are being tossed around so often where it's saying you'd think that all they ever do in Langley is sit sit at the board smoking cigars talking about how we can keep the Muslims down that thing and there's a subsection about like well why is there so much trouble throughout the Muslim world it was we have this early history were Muhammad and the Sahaba Sahaba being like the earliest generations has companions and the earliest generations they conquered everything and they had this grand civilization which is rife for hundreds of years and look at where we are now and there's something lost there's something we need to regain to be properly Muslim again so that we can have that glory right and I think so much of the the resentment of the United States is not just about Israel it said this country is in a place of power were were supposed to be and before you're going on and I don't fully understand it so you know to help us to understand here in terms of your living out of view of the Muslim faith at that age what was your spirituality like what was your relationship or idea to God and certainly you had that the forms I think yes Muslim but in terms of your interior life where were you with God so what Islam Islam means submission right and what it ultimately gears you toward is to become a servant of God and some would say well maybe even a slave of God where your duty is to obey God is always right and then we have a the example of mohammed to follow type thing and you know some people will imitate him loosely follow the five pillars of islam as we were told to do five pillars being to pray the five daily prayers too fast during Ramadan - one time in your life go to do a pilgrimage to Mecca to pay alms it's about 140th of your income two and a half percent and the declaration of faith so you know and and within my household my understanding was like okay we do these things to please God and and then you know we also that was within the household and it was like you know very fairly like loose moderate interpretation but still pious from the age of 10 okay I began fasting during Ramadan this was my own choice it wasn't something that your mom and dad made me do it's something that's like hey I I want to do this and it actually is one of these things where it's like my mother wasn't always consistent about fasting during Ramadan and she kind of says like wolf my ten-year-old son's doing it but I gotta get better I gotta get up to speed with this you know a lot of the reason I did a lot of the things that I did do not so much out of a love for God out of a fear for God also or it's like okay well if I'm not good then I'm gonna get punished and the thing is um I don't want to like just say well this is this is simply like the way Islam right always teaches you yeah because this is not something that's exclusive to Islam you could be a Christian and just and just think like well I don't want to go to hell so I I'm gonna do I'm gonna go to church each week right checkboxes yeah but as far as as having like a relationship with God seeing God as a friend that was pretty much non-existent right there it's like God is my Creator and I owe him my obedience that's yeah our guess I'm just gonna say it again for the radio our guest name is Zubair Simonson a former Muslim so again you you you took it seriously as you were able and you you grappled with it the practices but then also with some of the examples you were seeing those set up growing questions in your mind yeah okay yeah okay I mean so God was a some kind of entity or being that I obey mhm but also I learned about Sufi ISM okay when I was probably 16 17 years old and it's this idea of these there's some idea in there of being close to God which has this tremendous amount of Appeal it's like well wouldn't it wouldn't it be great to to like know God personally mmm I think would it be great if there's a some kind of religion which actually encourages that and Sufi isms like you know Muslims there's a range of how Muslims view Sufism some yeah it's great others so it's like and you'll see like the from bombings of Sufi shrines throughout the Muslim world it's like no no this is things that were added on sure from what the pure version of Islam was and it needs to be it needs to be cast out yeah bad things so there's a range but I was among those who had a great fascination with it my family is the type that would have a great appreciation for a lot of the Sufi poetry we even had a family friend who was killed in Pan Am flight 73 which is a hijacking in Karachi in 1986 mom said um you know and he he was a man who was outspoken very outspoken about his sympathy for the Palestinian people and the thing is and then he was just shot down by Palestinian terrorists they didn't care he was coming from a conference which he spoke very sympathetically in Bombay about it they didn't care and so the thing is it's like okay well what is Islam sure and I kept telling myself it's like okay well I'm I'm practicing it right I'm doing I'm praying five times a day yeah not exactly at the time I'm supposed to but like you know I'm doing all of them at least to get when I'm not able to pray the daytime the daily the noon prayer okay I'll make up for it by praying it at night but making sure those five prayers are said yeah fasting during Ramadan for the most part my understanding was okay there's an angel over my right shoulder who's who's - jotting down all of my good deeds there's the angel over my left shoulder who's jotting down all of my bad deeds I need to make sure this guy has more written down and fortunately for me when I do my pilgrimage to Mecca then his records gonna get erased and I get a fresh start there and we keep this guy's record and and the goal was okay I want to you know make sure I get all the bad things out of my system so maybe I'll go and do my pilgrimage sometime when I'm like in my 30s 40s when I was like a little more stable yeah and it's like I got all the sins I all the youthful sins out of the way oh by the way yes all right it was inevitably going to be brought up that I go to college during this journey and some months back I was invited to be on the show and told I was gonna be flown to a town Columbus Ohio and then I immediately realized okay you know what if you're going to be bringing me to the yet territory I've got it we're opening the room represent my alma mater and go blue what no let it go so classes began September 4th 2001 and we know what happened a week later and it was I was in or do class so we had to take two years of a foreign language or lose the native language in Pakistan so I have pretty familiar with it so I got to take that as my two years as the easy a it was in that and I remember the first thing I heard that something had happened was one of the students and did she she wore the hijab headscarf she said like yeah as I was leaving my roommate said like a missile had hit the Empire State Building and she just kind of rolls her eyes and it's like you know who they're gonna blame for this one-time thing and it's like it seems like kind of she was rather indifferent about like hey what might have happened and throughout the whole class it's like I couldn't focus like well wait did something awful happen yeah did something terrible happen it's a so classes up in an hour I go over to the Michigan Union whether it's you know a few TVs that everyone can see and everyone's crowded around this TV yeah and it wasn't the Empire State Building it wasn't a missile its planes head struck I guess she would have left probably when the first plane had struck the first tower a plane had struck another tower and by that time one of the towers had already collapsed and just kind of watched on the TV watched the second tower eventually come crumbling down as well the more reports like okay there was a the Pentagon just got hit another plane crashed in Pennsylvania it's like okay what's going on type thing and we knew like you know even though there we knew even I knew even then it's like we know who did this type thing and your country's attacked that's something that like all of us can remember very vividly who were there that day but then like you know to add to the bitterness it's like the people that did the attacking were people from my faith and it's just kind of like the first time the question got brought up it's like wait are we the bad guys mmm time thing and you know they were and and how the Muslim community reacted also that that varies there are some people that are every bit as upset as I was it's like okay your patriotic sentiments come up I mean I mean like I remember my aunt she's just like they make me so embarrass these guys about my religion type thing and understood like what a horrible thing had happened and then also there was some other Muslims who were just kind of seemed more concerned about like what's gonna be the fallback for us in hedging and like I went to the the the Friday prayers in Ann Arbor that Friday the September 14th and they had a police officer there to make sure that none of us were harassed or bothered by anyone but still the ax-cut bah the equivalent of the sermon it was there were parts where the guys just says I guess this was a terrible thing but look at the plight of Muslims all around everything the hood bizarre so often politically driven because Mohammed was a political figure mm-hmm I mean the idea of of separation any separation between mosque and any reforms that would lead to separation between the mosque and state they're very complicated by the fact that like okay the man whose life we need to imitate as much closer as possible he was a religious figure but he's also a political figure right but so there's just a lot of political trouble that often comes up in these foot buzz yeah but he wouldn't let it go not of all weeks can't you just let it go this week that thing but you know I nevertheless I remained continued being Muslim and still faster during Ramadan I mean as a probably one of the few Muslims within within the college community there that was actually supportive of the invasion of Iraq and you know carried on with my religion okay but uh also if interesting about thing about colleges that's where a lot of my conservative instincts began began awakening I think I was kind of I was like going into University of Michigan it started out like yeah I guess I'm a Democrat by the end I walked out a Republican sympathizer this was during the era of a Supreme Court case Grutter versus Bollinger which was about the affirmative action policy at the University of Michigan Law School that eventually made its way up to all the way up to the Supreme Court where and you know political correctness was a big thing thing then and on college campuses throughout throughout the country it's it's gotten even bigger and this is one of the things where I guess I was being kind of a contrary in' where it's like you know the idiot 18 19 year old thinks like well you know what I disagree because I'm smarter than all of them than all of you and I'm gonna figure out why I disagree when you talk about this topic they were just actually repeating what all the other people were saying around them right and because you know well this is I think somewhere deep inside the head there's that thought that this is what smart people are supposed to think so this is what I need to agree with and this has gotten more and more yeah and you know like a diversity and inclusion or great things but the way that the university was you know if you want to have true inclusion yeah it has to come from the heart and that can take a very long time it's we want diversity now and in that rush the one to get right now the methods can become very sloppy right and I think like you know what was what the university was doing wrong was actually just in in that coming from that rush that wanting a good thing right now and you know that's not just that's that can be for anything right and and so I kind of began questioning that mhm and kind of realizing that that okay it very intelligent people can also pair it very intelligent people can be manipulated yeah and it's like so many people who give in to the politically correct camp mmm-hmm they want to be good people yeah but the thing is a person who says I'm a good person can be the easiest in the entire world to manipulate because to maintain that thought that okay I'm a good person I'll believe whatever it takes to be a good person to be one of those people on the right side of history yeah then I'll believe anything okay sure there's 80 genders okay sure sure things that kind of run away from common sense right that thing it's such a it's a great point especially in our ever more you know media driven age that we do tend to think it's a counterintuitive point it CS Lewis makes this point in his the third of his space trilogy that hideous strength they have a couple of characters and I can't quote them but they're talking about this exact point where the our intuition on the onset would tell us well you know the the very well-educated they're not gonna be swayed by the newspapers or the headlines of the weeklies but that intelligence that learning has to go along with virtue otherwise you're you're even more prone to being moved by those things because there's this sense of well I need to stay with the in and crowd or with you to the intelligentsia or this is what the good people do or believe yeah and so yeah that it's it's a really important point because we again we're all I think in Lewis's time there was more of a distinction between maybe the the people the the more well-read and the common man today we're all kind of in that class we've all we follow that you most of us have it all had basic education we all have access to the Internet and so it's very easy to think well I'm not I'm above that influence when we're all in that soup absolutely yeah oh it should also be noted I didn't have cable TV growing up in that household yeah when I was a kid so College was the first time I had access to cable which included Comedy Central and which included South Park okay and that's a that's college is when I discovered my love for the show which just regularly pans the PC cam mmm that thing so I'm that one guy who actually walked out of the University of Michigan a Republican sympathizer very interest and it never occurred to me that okay it occurred to me during college okay somewhere in this conservative view we see that there's things that are actually worth preserving uh-huh but I was not really ready at that point to say like oh the judeo-christian right roots right well that that's just happenstance wasn't my thought there was a crack in the armor yeah I mean it's a Christianity didn't make sense that's okay well why why would God need a son anything what's this Holy Spirit you keep talking about and you know this three persons and one God it seems like really bad math that's what you guys believe in so the Christianity just doesn't make sense like most of my friends are Christian at least culturally Christian but I mean you know it's a go ahead have your religion it's like but I would I'm kind of smarter than than that to join that cam well that's a good place for a break so again yeah you have this upbringing you know engaged in the faith but some questions in the background and then this college experience and and again not having much sense to make of Christianity yet but but some openness there given your experiences well we'll come back to that in just a minute here we're gonna take a break again we're here tonight with Zubair Simonson a former Muslim and he's sharing his exciting story with us so come back in a few minutes we'll hear the rest of it [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home program we're joined tonight by Zubair assignments and we've just heard the first half of his amazing story his upbringing as a Muslim American and he's when we left off his story he'd just been to college he's come out of it he's interesting mixture of views given his experiences and you were just telling us about you know at that point Christianity as you as you saw it in the at least the experiences the people you'd known didn't make any sense to you right his point yeah no yeah I'm since my father's a convert and his his mother was Catholic his father was Lutheran I actually also had far more exposure to Christianity like every Christmas I would go along with grandma the family would go with grandma to the Catholic Mass I think so it's not something alien and during a good number of summers I do I go to the summer day camp at a Methodist Church that thing and we'd sing the songs about Jesus and God like he's got the whole world in his hands and you know it kind of I didn't note as a kid that like why are the instructors at this Methodist Church so nice I wanted so many of our instructors at our mosque at Sunday school so harsh but so I had I am an exception from a lot of the experience of a lot of Muslims in the sense that I've had much more exposure that's really fascinating and then but but continued being Muslim throughout college summer 2003 we actually uh I was little in DC that summer were interning and I'd found actually a program which housed Muslims throughout the summer and was in the Georgetown area a very swanky neighborhood and the thing is that's like okay so we had some place to stay while we're interning yeah but in return we were supposed to talk about Muslim topics each night or we had to usually had a speaker and there's one particular night this was one of the best summers of my life and I I had a blast I had such a great time with all of the fellow Muslims there but there was one night which actually disturbed me a great deal and we didn't have a speaker that night and so for the evening we were actually gonna have a discussion and the discussion was well should apostates from Islam be killed executed as is prescribed by Sharia law right thing is and a lot of these fellow Muslims we are all attending prestigious colleges like University of Texas UCLA we had a guy from Yale and I was I was very outspoken that it's like I I don't think we should even be having this type of conversation were this is beneath us that thing we were Americans we believe in freedom that thing and none of the fellow Muslims ever said that like we should kill the apostates but they did engage in a serious discussion about about this but it's like well there's it might be kind of harsh might have been the proper punishment and that day but it's kind of seen as a bit harsh in our day so there's other ways to punish him and it's like we're even actually engaging in this type of discussion kept going through my head right and this would take this discussion would take a much more personal to turn some years later yeah and that what you were really discussing is whether I should be killed right or not right I attended one last quit BA at our mosque and we had a guest a guest speaker doing the quit the sermon and at some point he made the complaint this is two years into the Iraq war yeah well is complaining about the US government which is not normal for some of the speakers but and he said something that really upset me what should upset anyone or it's the complaint that well the United States government prevents Muslim American men from serving their jihad in Iraq that thing and it's okay now that's getting on sedition there I'm never going back to that mosque again I actually never did so I can kind of see that like okay well there's the way we practice Islam but there's like all these other voices that that are making me like one or like oh can i really say that they're not muslim right i think i'm wondering that yeah i eventually moved to new york and you know i'm i'm one of these guys that with a big starry eyes like okay i would have moved to new york i would have become a published writer i'm gonna get a great job and make lots of money and maybe down the line I'll run for office this and then you know but with barely having any skills just a little bit out of college the great thing about the city is it is it knocks down a guy like that a human except real quickly yeah so eventually I got a job with a marketing company and our it started out as part-time but eventually became my full-time job and our clients were film production companies and Broadway shows and I actually had the opportunity to meet a good number of celebrities I think this is like okay finally I got a job which is putting me on the right direction giving me like you know if people in put me in touch with people like I can't actually stand as friends I can never be friends with but people that like you know can help give me what I want so I'm network yeah yeah and I was at the same time working for the head of the office was a man who was who would lie a lot so often that that it you as you got to know him you'd kind of wonder it's like does he even know what's going on anymore I think and you can a man lie so much that that that he loses touch with reality we're gonna get back to that but at the moment that I decided to stop becoming a Muslim I remember that I was in New York walking through Times Square and on the end the news ticker the news there is a announcement about the bombing of the al-askari shrine in Iraq which is a big Shia mosque that was bombed by Sunni terrorists that thing and then for some reason it was when I was reading that news on that ticker all of a sudden it kind of comes to me and it's like all those memories of like the guy speaking sedition the apostate conversation 9/11 making us making us guard the camp from the phantom enemies all of it hit all at once yeah and I realized that like okay yes we were very much practicing Islam but these guys are also practicing Islam because Mohammed had a very complicated a complex life and that like you know at some point at the early on in his ministry when the community was small it was expedient to be very peaceful and to be a very peace-loving person but then you know at some point that community grew and grew and grew or it's like okay to the point where well we can actually make conquests type thing and it might be like some man who was actually a spiritual genius all of a sudden gave in the temptation to have to hold that power and you can't I don't see Muhammad as a bad person for doing that I just see him as a person because you know if you could see all the cities in the world and so someone said that can be yours like Christ temptation exactly and it's like well doesn't that sound great can you really blame a man for giving in to the temptation and it's it's you have to have incredible strength not to give in to that temptation actually a religious figure because for us and you know personal principle because the temptation is I can do good with this power if I have the power I can I can make it better you know that's that temptation is almost more so for one who has the temptation to be yeah I'm a man of God that dictation increases yeah but I mean that's why at some point you see revelations in the Quran where it's like okay there's this very peace-loving verses but then there's also these ones that you know a lot of us it doesn't settle very well with or it's like go out and conquer them all right type thing and fact is yes we were Muslim but these guys doing these terrible things they're also Muslim it really depends on which part of Muhammad's life you want to focus on yeah and and live by and he's Linda complex enough life where it's like you can have either one right but these guys are Muslim too and all those memories rush back and it's like those Sunday school instructors that I thought were so harsh they were actually Muslim too and that was the point where I just told myself I don't want to be Muslim anymore yeah that's it I'm done mm-hmm and so I still believed in God right that thing but it was kind of a probably closer if I was gonna read a book about God it's probably something I would pick out from the shelf from self-help or a new-age type thing kind of like you know a hippie version where there's not really any sin yeah and at the same time I'm working for this marketing company for a man who's just left and right I don't want to get into too many details but doing engaging in a lot of unethical practices a man who he liked much younger guys and was like making passes at some of us including myself at the office type thing which made for a whole awkward situation and then and at the same time you know he's the type of person who could throw a tantrum one day and then recollect the next day how super call him he wasn't how he had he had to make sure all of us were called and we all looked to him for leadership and he believed it and someone who would throw someone under the bus and like you know it when that happens it's like okay well this is a job that's helping me get on my way to where I want to be and it's like so and it's you'd be hard-pressed to find another job like that with these opportunities and at the same time it's like I have to look away and it's like when someone gets thrown on the bus just have to go along with it and and at the same time constantly I'm worrying it's like well at what point am I gonna be the one that gets thrown under the bus type thing and the fact is I had no spiritual rudder mm-hmm anymore to to make sense of it yeah I think I took a trip back home to North Carolina for a week sometime I think it was in July or August of 2006 and then I dreaded I was depressed that whole week because I knew I was going to go back to New York and I mean and have to deal with this environment right so then eventually it was in January 2007 and I'd become this really spineless person and you know I and the friends I had were like you know anyone could be my friend I wasn't very selective I had things I wasn't keeping the best company I probably done more hard partying early on in New York than I ever did in college typing yeah and I was as 24 years old and just kind of walking along the Hudson River and thinking to myself like you know I don't like my life I don't and I'm gonna have to live the rest of my life like this it's like that's something I don't want yeah it's just kind of walking along the Hudson with some January day I hated the person I'd become hurling myself in the Hudson River seemed to be like a good idea or something and then emits all those existential type thoughts all of a sudden the idea born again popped into my mind I think it's okay yeah I had enough crisp contact with like those crazy preachers on the on the street yelling yeah on their mega phones and whatnot and it's like okay I want nothing to do with them right but just idea flash yeah and it's like I thought where the hell did that idea come from and for the first time it's actually something that had appeal because the idea of a fresh start you had thing I don't have to be this person I can be someone with a clean slate a fresh start it's just sounded so good that thing so I went to Barnes and Noble I picked up a book and you know I even though I'm usually pretentious with what I yeah or the books I select it was The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren that thing and I figured like okay what's this born-again stuff all about so I began reading that book and it kind of encouraged it encouraged me to read the Bible and it's like well you know what I've read so many books and so much of Western literature is so influenced by the Bible like even from a secular standpoint it makes sense to read the Bible and see what it's all about and I also picked up mere christianity by CS lewis and it's like okay i want to learn the basics yeah and it was in that book that I saw encounter for the first time a very very bluntly stated Jesus is God and then it's like oh yeah I'd always heard the son of God son of God's Son of God and always heard this weird three person one person bad math thing but it was the first time that it was just stated that boldly and I just kind of like jump back it's like no no no how can a man be God that thing and it was sometime in April I was like I was kind of going on in my studies and I was I remember walking somewhere on some sidewalk in New York sometime and I think it was around April of 2000 2007 and I kind of realized I leave Jesus is God and the thing is I've I think I've actually believed this for some number of weeks now and I'm still reading the Bible it took three months to get the whole first reading done but yeah I have no idea when that switch might have happened you read that or you experienced that but then you just you begin to find that that resonated it in some deep way I mean um I knew what the next thing next step was I guess I got to get baptized yeah and I began to attending church services well a mass actually I'd st. Patrick's Cathedral I don't really know any other churches to go to but there's a big one right there in Midtown so I would go to the Sunday noon Mass and then if you're like okay okay I gotta get baptized I things I didn't know anything about are CIA or I didn't know I knew that there was some difference between Catholics and Protestants yeah and I but I I knew that okay for some reason there's a pope there's their leader yeah I don't really know the actual theological differences so one church is as good as the other yeah and I did a good google search and I looked for a church that would baptize me as soon as possible yeah that thing our CIA is a long process but here's one where I could just go to the baptism one our baptism class show up that day good I'm a Christian that thing so I uh I impulsively got baptized in June of 2007 a thing and eventually I did leave that company on extremely very hostile terms and the next year and a half this was October 2007 was when I left and the next year and a half was a real financial struggle where it's okay my employer for two years I can't get a glowing review and it's a round of time where like a lot of companies aren't really hiring we just had a bit of a financial glitch mm-hm and so I was kind of struggling financially and I was also kind of at the same time you know learning more and more picking up more and more books yeah about my about the religion I had just joined and barely knew anything about that thing and that was actually the at some point I'd encountered some tidbit about how CS Lewis read this book the everlasting man by GK Chesterton and it's like and it was actually kind of one of the books that baptized his mind he would say that made him realize that like okay Christians are very intelligent people so I have figured like okay well I guess I had to pick this book up which I did and I went through a reading and it was like the first time that a really sunk in that it's like okay a lot of what Christianity has to say is actually a very intelligent position from a very intelligent position yeah and and never lasting mad it's a book uh pretty much in response as I understand to HG Wells outline of history but as in which is a very secular telling of history but this is one that puts Christ the center and this is like a way to look at so many the paradoxes within the Christian faith and just to even look at events things that you would never have realized to give a second thought to and there's a mind jumbling mind jumbling book it tends to be the experience of reading chest yeah but eventually I joined a presbyterian church Redeemer Presbyterian and because they had a great speaker it's there's one Sunday where it's like I didn't I wasn't available at noon to go to the st. Patrick's so I'll go to this church Redeemer Presbyterian that a lot of my friends had talked about and they had this great speaker Tim Keller I I saw his sermon for the first time and I figured okay I'm gonna go to this church I found my church home yeah that thing I was also going to a worship service and it was a January 2008 it was a worship service followed by a Bible study a group called the Haven of pretty much like you know Christian artists that would meet every Monday and you know I had impulsively become a Christian I was learning more and more about it but there was a moment there where I realized that like okay this change of heart is actually going to be sinking as sinking in much more than I realized at some point there was a young man like myself maybe 25 26 years old and between the songs the worship songs he read from John 15 and it was I am the vine you are the branches thing and eventually Jesus says like you know I call you my friends and a lot of the things this this yeah that just fascinated me drew me so much in his Sufism the the fascination with Sufism was exactly that that's like great we can be near to God yeah because and it's be a the Incarnation is the in that we can be and I heard those words and I began crying and I knew then at that moment that it's like okay this is actually something that's going to really change me yeah I made such a great community at Redeemer Presbyterian but eventually it was in New York yeah and what happened was what was inevitably going to happen yeah so many people move in and out of the city I moved out of the city last year I was one of those people it's such a transient place and like so many the friends I had made only moved off to different different places or they went off to different churches I produced it I was by myself at Redeemer Presbyterian and I noticed a lot of things I know it's like okay Tim Keller is getting up there and the in the a and the years and you can kind of see that a lot of the the preachers the pastor's there we're trying to scramble and figure out like okay what are we gonna do what are we gonna do yeah when he's retired because we could be in big trouble once we have this charismatic speaker Lee retire our attendance could take a nosedive and then so I was thinking like well wouldn't it be nice if you had like a consistent priest to it maybe one that goes all the way back 2,000 years right type thing which could just you could just keep going yeah keep the church running no matter no matter who how charismatic a speaker happens to be at the same time a lot of the reading I continued doing the ones that real a lot of the books that got me thinking books by guys like Walker Percy more by GK Chesterton EF Schumacher Peter Kreeft yeah I and I noticed that the vast majority of cases the author that really draws me happens to be Catholic and in fact this G K Chesterton guy converted to the Catholic Church right I began noticing like okay when I went to a Catholic Church I had a lot of discomfort with with statue being there but lino like as I was attending the Presbyterian Church eventually that condition discomfort left and I began appreciating a lot of the beautiful art that which the Catholic Church again and again kept maintaining and so eventually I was kind of at a point where it's like N+ what I was hearing at the Presbyterian Church about salvation I learned all about salvation but then I was wondering what's beyond salvation is there something more and a change was coming and I remember the moment I would bet I was thinking like should I become a Catholic and at the moment I became I finally made the decision I'm going to become Catholic was in September 2010 I went to a church to pray mmm the great thing about Catholic churches is that they keep their doors open so you can pray but this particular day I wanted to you know have some quiet time with God and I went to the pews but there's this woman in the back of the church and she's just crying I was like a homeless woman crying crying crying make so much noise and I said the church trying to pray but I have this big distraction it's like well is anyone gonna shut her up and eventually the man with security came up to her and I was kind of watching from the corner of my eyes like I wonder what he's gonna do that thing any what he did what he hugged her and she went quiet just like that and there's all just like that and I'm kind of watching it from the corner of the eye and it's there's this question should I join the Catholic Church there's so many things I've actually learned to love about it and that was the moment where it's like watching it from the corner of the eye and where it's answered it's I guess I'm gonna be joining the Catholic Church interesting yeah of course like you know this was a lot of the Protestant friends had kind of some a lot of reservations about the Catholic Church I had heard early on from one of the the junior pastor is at Redeemer it's like this this fun facts like human the Catholics when they do their communion they actually believe that there assuming the body and blood of Jesus and I heard that it's like oh that's rude that's really bizarre then they would believe that yes and there's allegations there it's like okay Catholics worship Saints the Catholic Church is not biblical type thing only problem was I was reading the Bible I think his end I was actually encountering like some of these so many of these sacraments and then the case for the Pope I realized was actually quite strong where it's very clear that Jesus gave a leadership role among the Apostles to st. Peter but then you know for us it was like a one time thing yo yeah he was the leader among the Apostles but the apostles were just these once in a lifetime this once lifetime guys but then like if you read the book of Acts the first thing that the Apostles do was that well they're drawing lots to figure out yet they have accounts who's going to be the replacement for Judas right and okay well if they're doing that then it seems like they're actually not just one-time guys that they're actually establishing offices and then if they were establishing offices then who holds the office of st. of Peter yeah and okay every Catholic knows that it's like oh yeah of course today would be Pope Francis right I think I realize I got a lot of the allegations about the Catholic Church like that we worship Saints and Mary yeah read into that it's like no the Saints are not that's actually very flimsy I think that can be broken down explained very quickly it's like no no worship Mary I don't worship the Saints in that sense they're not part of the Holy Trinity but just as I can go to you and say hey John mark I'm really hoping for this or I'm really struggling with this would you please pray for me you can do the exact same thing with with these people who are in heaven and and even with the mother of God the sacraments like that really bizarre thing where he holds up holds up the bread and says this is my body this is my holds up the chalice says this is my blood drink from it well maybe it should be taken literally as my thought because for some reason if I could ask like okay do we believe that Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding at Cana yes do we believe that Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes yeah yes do we believe true God and true man you know yes yeah and then do we believe do we believe that he actually meant he he meant just that when he held up that bread and wine it's like oh uh no no no no no yeah and then all of a sudden it's like why not yeah why don't we believe that why do we take all this literally but then all of a sudden it's like okay okay we're putting that to a standstill here and I started realizing the case for this this bizarre thing where they actually believe they're consuming the blood and the body and blood of our Lord it's actually right there in the Bible right that thing and then that's kind of the idea it's like wait I've been going to the Redeemer Presbyterian because they have great warship and it makes you feel good because they have an outstanding speaker who makes you think and it's great to feel good it's great to think but at that mass it regardless of what worship what the worship service is like if it's like tone-deaf choir where the music only sounds good when it finally makes its way to heaven or you know if like the the homily the the priest has nothing that says nothing that really makes jogs jogs the gears up there you know that's not the point the point is that that meal we share that meal and the feeling and thinking are great but in that meal we become we get to become what we consume and the being that the Catholic Church is aiming for is something far far greater more profound like so much like the incarnation of you that we have the Catholic Church in the sacraments is pushing it so much further and in the writing it's the the books that I'm reading and the writings the authors that that have been drawing me over and over that I could read in those words some elevated sense of the sacred as like where does that come from and it's like actually it's because in that Catholic worldview we're pushing you push the Incarnation even further with the sacraments like there's there's a miracle happening each time we know about all these miracles in the Bible yeah but then for some reason it's like take we can easily take for granted that like each time the priest holds up that host and says the body the body of Christ the miracle is happening right there Zubair what an amazing journey you know we can cover so much you've you've come from such a long way so many interesting things we have to have you back because there's just so much not we're digging - I would love all those authors Chesterton somebody need topics thank you so much for sharing your story thank you thank you for having me I hope you've enjoyed zoo bears story I hope it's been an encouragement and inspiration to you and yeah I hope you know thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home program god bless [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 13,295

Rating: 4.9031143 out of 5

Keywords: jht01701, ytsync-en, jht

Id: yzHbhwD6daY

Length: 55min 52sec (3352 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 02 2020