Why Series | Why Suffering: Suffering and Jesus | Nabeel Qureshi

[Music] I'm honored that you would come out to hear me there are such illustrious people who are speaking today and it's a privilege I'm usually with the US team and so being able to speak with the UK team is a real blessing thank you Michael and the rest the team for having me at first I was a bit hesitant to to come today because I have my exams at Oxford in a few weeks and so it is a lot of preparing and I said if I come can I can I leave early and they said yes you can you can do that and I said can I speak first and I said no I'm at the time I was like oh that's upsetting but now I figured out after being in Oxford for a while I realized I'm an American and it's really obvious to people who aren't American and I think it would have been a disservice to you to have an American go first jar you from your sleep so there'll be a little bit of passion coming I think in the next few minutes but if you'll forgive me it's just where I'm from I want to I want to start out by saying that becoming a Christian was the most painful decision of my life the most difficult decision I had to make not just intellectually but personally because I knew what it came with was going to be sacrificing everything I had up until that point so a lot of people I heard preaching quite a bit in the u.s. we're saying oh are you addicted to drugs or do you want to be saved or or has somebody hurt you God loves you and if you become a Christian then then it'll be great for your life I knew it was going to be the exact opposite the moment I became a Christian everything would become a nightmare but the problem was for me I had studied the evidence now III saw a lot of people who believed in what they believed because they found it personally compelling they liked the message for example a lot of the people around me who were Muslim loved Islam in fact I did too and that was the reason why they stayed Muslims because they loved the religion or or they enjoyed the culture or their family was Muslim and so for those reasons they wanted to stay most I wasn't just Muslims it's everyone that I knew generally speaking their reasons were not based on theology not based on evidence but just based on either convenience or personal social comfort not pointing the finger those are important issues but for me I wanted to know what was true and there was a certain day in the summer of 2005 when I realized I no longer believe in Islam I hadn't come to that point where I denounced Islam I just realized it had happened I'd studied the evidence enough to where in order to be a Muslim you have to say la ilaha illaallah muhammaden-rasul allah there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger and you have to believe that Allah has sent Muhammad and that Muhammad came with the Quran with the laws divine law and that Islam is the way you're supposed to live your life Sharia which is the how to live as a Muslim that is divinely appointed and after having studied the evidence I realized there was no good reason to think that I'm not here to talk about Islam today I'm just getting you to where I what I came to where as on the Christian side of things in order to be a Christian there there's a lot of trappings to Christianity various views of Christianity believe various things Catholics Orthodox Protestants they all have different traditions but there is a mere core Christianity which is the belief that God Himself came into this world that he died on the cross to save us and that he rose from the dead as proof for his claims but also as the first born risen from the dead now when I studied the evidence on those matters pay attention I am saying evidence because those are all things that would have happened in history right Jesus a man would have lived in the first century it's a historical thing a man living 2,000 years ago you can look at the history and determine is a good reason to believe that did that man then claim to be God does history corroborate that it is a recorded pages in our text show us that he claimed to be God did he then died on a cross if he died on a cross that something that would have happened in history and if he rose from the dead to this event surrounding Jesus death point to as the best explanation that he rose from the dead as a Muslim while I was studying those issues by the way they're all explicitly denied by the Quran the Quran says surah an-nisa ayah 157 well America talut who a massive abu who wa lakin should be Hanna home Jesus was not killed nor was he crucified but so it was made to appear the Quran denies the crucifixion of Jesus but when you turn to the pages of history Jesus was certainly crucified the evidence is very strong if you have questions about that we can talk in the qat did Jesus claim to be God the uniform testimony of the early church is absolutely he claimed to be God and he proved it by rising from the dead the evidence surrounding Jesus death three days later when we look at the historical evidence if you put it on a historians glasses and say how do I explain this event the best explanation by far is that Jesus actually did rise from the dead so I came to this dilemma where I realized my parents as Muslims growing up they had told me Nabil Islam is true that's why you believe it but I came to this point where I realized that evidence is soundly in favor of the Christian faith I love Islam I don't believe it anymore but to take that next step to take that step of saying whatever it costs I will embrace this message do you realize for people all around the world to do that means to give up family to give up friends potentially even give up their lives so we hear about it we see it all the time we can we can read stories about if you just go online and take the time to find out about your Christian brothers and sisters who are being killed for their faith now the suffering that I was staring at was probably the greatest hurdle to becoming a Christian for me I didn't know it at the time I would have given you intellectual reasons but for me deep down I can see this now retrospectively it was actually what I would have to give up I love my parents okay my mom was a daughter of a Muslim missionary the granddaughter of a Muslim missionary my father he came from the Quraysh tribe which is the tribe of Muhammad himself there was a lot of pride in that all that they did in their free time when they came to the West was they they spent time serving Islam by building into the local Muslim community spending their time at the mosque so their whole life centered around Islam and I want you to understand this is a bit of a difficult paradigm to grasp if you've only ever lived in the West but in most places in the world people function on honor and shame paradigms so your reputation is tremendously important it's it's what you've worked for your whole life and if I became a Christian not only would I be endangering my own relationship with everyone around me but my parents who have loved me who have sacrificed everything for me for ever since I was born I would be taking their reputation and tossing it into the mud because oh you're one son became a Christian that tells us a lot about you so not only would I be suffering myself I would make my parents to suffer for this decision was I ready to do that these were the hurdles that I was facing against subconsciously I didn't realize that that was what was keeping me from embracing the Christian faith but I remember reading in mark chapter 10 verse 29 that Jesus knew about this that this was actually a common occurrence even in the time of Jesus himself he says anyone who leaves father or mother or brother and sister or crops and fields for the sake of the gospel will not fail to receive a hundred times as much in this life along with persecution and in the next life an eternal reward mark chapter 10 verse 29 I read that and at this point I already intellectually knew that the evidence was soundly in favor of Jesus being God himself incarnate telling us if you suffer on my sake you will be rewarded tremendously yes you will suffer even more but you will be rewarded tremendously in fact Matthew chapter 10 said that if you want to if you want to serve Christ you have to be ready to suffer you have to be ready not only to give up your family which is specifically what it says he who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me but he also to be ready to give up your life he who does not pick up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me I don't know how the Christian message has been presented to you but I want to sort of rearrange maybe revamp some of the pieces nothing new but I want to align it in a slightly different way for you I don't have too much time I want to make sure we have enough time for questions there's always a problem when they give a guy from a Middle Eastern background a microphone he's not going to be done in the amount of time they suggested but I will try my best by the way I was in medical school when I was studying a lot of these things and most of my friends who were in medicine with me were atheist or agnostic they had been trained up in in a secular environment they were tremendously successful in order to get into medical school you have to be really smart you have to study really hard and be at the top of your class at least that's how it worked with the people around me so they're really successful which meant they were really self-reliant which meant they were trying to explain the world in such a way that they could be in complete control of themselves and and that was the paradigm with which everyone saw the world but the problem with that was how do we explain to someone and I remember doing this when I was doing my psychiatry rotations there was a guy who had crossed the median of the highway and and just ran headfirst into an oncoming truck and we were busy piecing together his body we had the the metal halo that we called it around his head so that everything would be in place and as we were healing him we asked what happened did you pass out were you dehydrated we'll tell us what happened and he said my wife left me and no matter how much we tried to piece his body back together again I knew that unless we addressed his heart in his mind he would go right back out and do the same thing and none of the people I had been trained with had adequate training to address his heart or his mind because why do you tell someone no you should live why do you tell someone no no don't commit suicide what reason can we give them if all we've told them is that life is a sheer accident you just happened to evolve out of chemical mixtures and time and chance that's all you are and all your life is about is a few years eighty a hundred if you're lucky and you will die and it will be over that's it if you're not enjoying that time why not cut it short there's no good response and in fact that was exactly what Jean Paul Sartre said he said I I understand that life is meaningless what I can't figure out is why I haven't killed myself yet from a anything is perspective then suffering becomes a true problem you try to mask it you try to hide from it you try to increase your pleasure but but nothing actually dresses the reality that suffering and as Amy said nothing actually makes that suffering evil if there is no objective morality whatever you suffer doesn't matter which means if you're in the middle of a holocaust you can't call that evil seriously from the atheistic paradigm there's nothing that made what Hitler did truly evil now you might say well we're supposed to let humanity survive and take care of others social contract theory no there's no reason to force people to sign up to a social contract theory we can talk about that in the Q&A if you will so from atheists and an agnostic ISM the problem of suffering is an intractable problem but I wasn't an atheist or an agnostic I was a Muslim and from my perspective what it was that that made suffering bearable for a time is that it was a test that Allah was giving us and if it's his for us to walk through this test and we would pray earnestly for a lot to give us the grace to be able to get through this test some of sometimes you may have heard that Islam is a graceless religion that's a caricature we prayed for Allah's grace all the time and and the point was though to get through this test but the Christian faith is absolutely unparalleled when it comes to addressing the problem of evil not just because of what ami talked about before not just what because of what Vince is going to talk about shortly but what I want to share with you is as a Muslim coming to realize the truth of the gospel I went from believing that God created this world stood back and watched you and judged you and maybe he'd answer your prayers sure maybe he would maybe he would help in those ways but ultimately he was watching you to see how many hoops you could jump through how much you could please him so that at the end of time would you or would you not make it into heaven he will make that call I've got to pray five times a day got it fast during the month of Ramadan gotta make sure I give my zakat I got to make sure I go on pilgrimage I got to make sure when I wake up in the morning I say these prayers and I wash up and do the ones who constantly thinking about how to please God in hopes that ultimately I would be in his good books the Christian faith tells us that God Himself knowing we were not able to save ourselves was willing to step into this world okay this isn't a God who stands back and watches you suffer and jump through hoops this is a God who rolls up his sleeves steps off his throne and says to the Angels any one of which if we saw them would just blow us away by their brilliance and their radiance he says to them who worship Him constantly I am coming into this world as a baby have we thought about this the creator of the universe was able to create it like that we can't even fathom our little corner of the universe he was able to create it by speaking into existence and then he steps into it as a helpless maybe born to whom born to two children who had just been accused of an illegitimate relationship have you thought of that Joseph and Mary had been accused of an illegitimate relationship the moment Joseph did not disobey and Mary was the moment everyone said aha you impregnated her before you were married so from that moment on Jesus was born as an illegitimate child to two parents who did not have any of the social graces that were common amongst people who had honor in an honor and shame society and then as he grows what does he do he lives as a carpenter working with blood and sweat in tears this is the god of the universe taking on a blue-collar laborers job ultimately he befriends fishermen and and tax collectors in people who aren't necessarily the highest in honor and indignity and then he pours into them living with them day and night going place to place with them knowing he is going to be betrayed by them one of them would betray him with a kiss and then he would go to a post to be flogged and then he would be crucified we put crosses up everywhere a lot of us wear crosses not necessarily realizing how rough the image is of a cross do you realize that this was designed to be the most painful the most humiliating way to die ever devised in human history do you know how we kill people now at least in the States how do we execute people we give them a lethal injection and before we do that we sterilize the sight so that they don't get infected when they're dead I don't know exactly why we do that but but that's how humane we've become we want to make sure that even in death they had their dignity not the cross okay Cicero tells us that people's skin was hanging from their body in ribbons that their intestines would have fallen out just from the flogging process that they would be strapped to a splintered piece of wood for every single breath they took they would be scraping their skinless back on that wood the creator of the universe did that for us this is a Christian message and we asked ourselves why because if you you have been born into an illegitimate family you can know that God loves you enough to identify with you and to take your burden upon himself so that if you have had to work day in and day out to make ends meet that God loves you enough to take that burden upon himself to enter into that suffering if you have ever been betrayed by someone who said I will love you forever I will die with you and the next thing you know they've betrayed you even with a kiss God knows he enters into that suffering if you've asked yourself why me why this physical ailment why is my body broken why why am I the one who has to face this kind of suffering God died on a cross out of love for you this wasn't incidental and this wasn't just a meaningless gesture - by the way it's really beautiful a lot of us understand how beautiful this is but the beauty is that it doesn't stop there because he doesn't just say hey I love you and that's it what he says is this is me and you were created in my image so I want you to suffer with me because people are worth it are you following this you were made in the image of Christ Christ suffered for the sake of others he wants you to carry the cross with him it wasn't just flowery language pick up your cross and follow him suffer for the sake of others why because in this world people are killing each other people are dying apart from God and the message of grace the message of love which flows out from the Trinitarian God and only is possible to flow out from the Trinitarian God that is the message unconditional love and grace which will heal this world but in order for you to heal this world for you to be Christ's hands and feet you have to care his burden you have to suffer alongside of Christ how many people are perpetuating the cycles that they have fallen into they abuse their children because they were abused they're alcoholics because their parents were alcoholics they're addicted to sex because everyone around them was how the cycle is perpetuated how is it gonna break by no means except for the hands of God but that's you that's you he's expecting us to walk in as his hands and feet and bring grace into this so the point that I want to make for those of you who are note takers and you're like I I don't know what to write point number one is God suffers with us point number two is God suffers for us he died on the cross so that we could have eternal life point number three is that God invites us to suffer with him let's turn this paradigm around suffering can it's not God's ideal but God is able to use everything for his glory and if we are suffering God can use that for his glory he redeems the suffering oh yeah in Islam Allah would overlook things if he wanted to were you addicted to to sex were you addicted to something pray and Allah may if he wants to overlook that the Christian God redeems it not only does he rescue you from it but then he says now go rescue others with the grace that I have given you he redeems your suffering what you're going through I don't care what it is can be used to liberate people it is for freedom sake that Christ has set us free and he says others free through us we are his hands and feet he suffered for us he's calling us to join him in that suffering I'm gonna end with this we call ourselves Christians most of us in this room anyway the word Christian means little Christ that's what the word means one of the ten commandments is do not take the Lord's name in vain now the Hebrew there carries the connotation of of carry ink so stubbing your toe on something and saying Oh God that's not taking the Lord's name in vain taking the Lord's name in vain is carrying the name of Christ and not living how he lived do not take the Lord's name in vain but I believe you're here today because God has called you to something greater I want us to be able to see suffering as even a tool that God can use for his glory he has used it and he will continue to do so for those of us who heed his call thank you so much okay thank you very much Nabil now I think we're going to get some questions coming up on the screen is that right and here we go so right up there at the top left then how about you want to take that if free will leads to suffering and there's no suffering in heaven does that mean there's no free will in heaven now we that is connected in with an Amy's question but why don't you give it time yeah I want I want us to I want to get through as many of these as we can this is a good question I want us to re-envision what heaven is okay it's I would say it's not as much a place as it is a relationship those who want to have a relationship with God those who seek Him earnestly the Bible tells us over and over and over again he answers their call he meets them Matthew 7:7 ask you to receive seek and ye shall find knock and the door shall be opened for you Jeremiah those who earnestly seek God will find him so time and again we're told heaven God is what we're seeking for and what we're getting now in heaven will there be no suffering we are displaying we are we are acting out the free will that God has given us on in this life and once we and I don't know if your paradigm is Calvinist or a menu but it works in both cases whenever we end up with God at the end of this life he fully sanctifies us by the time we go into the next life so we will be as Christ in the next life you look at the way Jesus was in this life that will be us in the next life could Jesus have sin here on this earth will we sin in the next life I think our will will be redeemed we will be sanctified such that we will not sin in the next life there will be no suffering in that life but that will be an outflow of the decisions we make here your time here on this earth is extremely important by the way the only time that you can fight for others for suffering pour out your life to help others is now if you're a Christian keep that in mind okay great well let's just take one here from the cards here it says what is the eternal destiny of those who suffer if they don't know Christ well God really send them to hell after everything that they've been through interestingly the name on this card is Michael Brown it was born out of my experience of walking with you we are talking about okay this ties on very nicely with the question that we just talked about will God really send them to hell I don't think and then could different Christians have different views on this I don't think God sends anyone to hell I think we choose hell for ourselves if you decide to put God first again whether that's by His grace were your own free whatever you decide to put God first I think God is then what you will receive in the afterlife and God says you wanted me you will get me guess what I am the source of all life I am the source of all joy I am the source of all peace I am the source of bliss you wanted me you get all that but if you wanted something else whatever it is money fame drugs God says okay you did not want me fine you get what you want and that is the exact opposite if you're if you're moving away from the source of life guess where you're moving to death if you chose not to pursue life you have chosen to pursue death if the source of all happiness and bliss and joy is over there and you have chosen to walk here I think he ends up respecting what you have decided so he doesn't throw people into hell I think we choose that for ourselves okay and it is this stay over there that he sent you close you make me look fat this just um I told you we're looking for truth today so um again it's come up to the top left hand corner I think these are the questions that were coming up specifically as you were speaking as an ex-muslim how can we dismiss spiritual experiences had by people of other faiths or should we dismiss this version yes again I I don't think we should dismiss other people's spiritual experiences we should listen to them we should walk with them we should understand what's going on and if it's difficult pray about it I think so when I answer this on two levels one is I think people do of multiple religious backgrounds have spiritual experiences we don't necessarily know where those experiences are coming from might they be demonic well in the book of Acts we do see a girl being able to prophesy because of a demon sounds like a good thing being able to tell the future but it's a demon that's doing it that's one but - God can send his reign on the just and the unjust and if people are sincerely praying to God for guidance he might give them something some kind of spiritual experience so let's not be hasty to try to dismiss other people let's actually walk with them and if we find something that's particularly difficult here's point number two do not be afraid to follow the truth where it leads because if you are really pursuing truth guess who called himself truth I am the way the truth in the life says Jesus if you're afraid of truth you're denying that you believe he is the truth so pursue the truth and I tell you every time I have done it at least I have found Jesus waiting for me at the other end of that pursuit so don't enter into this thing how can I dismiss or how can i you know defeats the the argument here if it's something like this which which legitimately is is a difficult thing pray for God to give guidance rely on the Holy Spirit and let him lead you to the truth which is Christ thank you so now we have a tie here between we've got two seven teams I can see so I would have a preference between two 17s one Jesus is suffering Jesus only suffered for a few years so what's significant about that compared to maybe a lifetime of suffering [Applause] again this was actually one of my questions when I was thinking about you again you know if you want to tackle that know this is a great question again this gets to the heart I was in someone just reminded me of this over the break I was in Johns Hopkins a few years ago with Vince and we were doing a talk on suffering by the way Vince has a fantastic book called why suffering along with dr. Zacharias check it out read it we were the book had just come out and there was a woman who came up to the microphone and she said to us that when she prayed to God for him to give her his heart for people she found out she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis shortly after that when she came to terms with this devastating illness and she started praying to God again to give her his heart she was diagnosed with cancer and she's saying why is God allowing this to happen to me this is very difficult question and it's it's important that we not try to minimize the power of these questions I just want to give you one angle of what I hope will be insight which is that when we have everything we want when everything is perfect we aren't necessarily the nicest people to be around we can become very self conceited we can we can think we have all the answers Jim Carrey I think Nancy Gifford tweeted this out the other day so if you want to follow her Twitter account Jim Carrey who's a multi-million dollar actor he said I hope that everyone can fulfill all their dreams get all the money they want the fame they want because they'll realize that's not the answer the times that I have drawn closer to God have always been when I was on my knees the times that I have drawn closer to people is when we have shared suffering together and so this question Jesus suffering lasted for a few years my suffering seems to laugh that last a lifetime number one you don't know how long Jesus suffered from his birth he suffered for our sake getting off the throne of heaven coming into this earth I think was much more humiliating than the cross but number two he makes us new through our suffering suffering builds us into better people in fact if you stay in your comfort zone you just end up shriveling it's a very clear illustration with your muscles if you never lift if you never push them you become atrophied and weak and unable to do anything that's how we function as people we need to step outside our comfort zones we need you stop seeing suffering as necessarily something evil we can see it as something that God can use for his glory thank you which is why I maintain my relationship okay all right we probably have time although I'm just wondering maybe if we go to number 12 because I know given your background also this is a part of the world I've visited too and dr. zakir naik for those who are familiar very very well-known it's Lama apologist Pakistani background he's studied both Islam and Christianity he chose to be a Muslim he debates Christians he seems to win you know what what are your thoughts this is a very specific person zakir naik is in india and he has a following of millions of muslims he has been challenged by many Christian debaters and scholars to debate and he says no every single time I've personally challenged him to a debate and he has said no the people he chooses to debate are people who don't know anything about Islam if you watch the debates he's had there are people who don't know what they're talking about and the way he wins is by reciting facts he just says okay this verse of the Quran says this this verse the Bible says this he just recites stuff it's not exactly a pursuit of truth which is why I'd like to challenge him so that he could you know this so that this chicanery could be seen by many don't don't be taken by people okay people have an ability of fool many even in mark chapter 13 Jesus says that there are those who would fool even the elect if they could and they will do miracles don't be taken by people pursue God pursue truth follow the argumentation ask the Lord to lead you but zakir naik poses no threat to christian scholars and debaters who actually are willing to Jim see online by the way we put up a video of all those Christian scholars who wish to debate them that he's rejected and I was one of those okay well next time Nabil comes to share next year the training day he'll be speaking on how to handle rejection great it's gonna be a great court we make videos every time someone rejects us video okay um well up instead of going to the top left how about we go top right cuz I know this is the question probably come back again in the panel time is a very thing why did Jesus have to suffer in order to conquer death I mean why not he is who he is why just do it this was a difficult issue for me when I was a Muslim by the way a lot of these issues that have to do with Islam and Christianity I've addressed in my book seeking Allah finding Jesus and in one that I specifically focus on all these questions know God but one which comes out in the summer but you can find it for free online too anyway why did Jesus have to cut and suffer in order to conquer death God is absolutely amazing it looks like at the word absolute in there in order for God to be God by definition he has to be the greatest not just in reality but the greatest that we can envision are you with me so far God has to be conceptually the greatest being that's how we define God now if I if I came up with an idea of someone who's absolutely just what would that mean let's picture a judge who punishes every single crime that would be an absolutely just judge he punishes every single crime he makes sure that everything is paid for but he wouldn't be merciful at all the complete opposite of merciful if we picture a judge who's completely merciful and forgives everyone their crimes he might be absolutely merciful but he's not absolutely just he's overlooked all these crimes the difficulty then is reconciling this if God is just and God is merciful and he's both absolutely just and absolutely merciful how can he do that how can he forgive everyone and punish every crime at the same time most religions don't have an answer for that question slobs answer is innallaha ala kulli shayyin qadir isn't allow able to do anything that he wills whatever he wants we don't know Christianity has an answer to that question it's every single crime who has been paid for because God took it upon himself and everyone has been given mercy because he's offering everyone mercy through a relationship with him how does that work by the way I'm gonna end with this I think because many Muslims then push back and they say well in the bill that's not just how is someone else able to take your your punishment or how does that work we do it all the time when when you go to get your first major loan whatever that is after your university studies you go to buy a house so do you go to buy a car who do you have to have sign with you on that contract usually your parents there are co-signers and what they're saying is if my child defaults on their loan if they can't pay this I will and that's perfectly legal it's perfectly just and we can transfer our debts to our parents who love us enough to pay them for us God is perfectly able because he became man to say as a man who is able to bear the punishment of other men and women I am cosign with this person their account is my account unbelievable that God and His righteousness would do that for us knowing that we have defaulted already but then he takes our sins upon himself perfectly just our amazing God has managed to both hold absolute justice and absolute mercy intention that's why Jesus has to suffer because he takes our suffering and pays it for us thank you to be links really this give [Applause] [Music]

Channel: RZIM HQ

Views: 525,700

Keywords: RZIM, Ravi, Ravi Zacharias, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, apologetics, evangelism, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ, Christianity, Christian, Christian Apologetics, philosophy, God, truth, Bible, gospel, Lord, salvation, Islam, Suffering, Orlando, Why Series, Why Suffering

Id: psrvQZj68h4

Length: 37min 35sec (2255 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 16 2016