This morning I started to ponder at the thoughts, questions and then the answers that must have plagued the minds of this young man who all over the world has become different things to different people.
In as much as I may not fully understand the circumstances that led to his choice I can comprehend his thoughts because in the course of time we had all asked familiar questions though our answers were different and thus our action.
As a young man, young Mutallab must have as a devout believer in God asked these questions:
Who is God?
What is His Nature?
What am I to Him?
What does He expect of me?
Oh God, why there so much evil/injustice all around me and in me?
What can I do about it?
Oh God, what is my purpose on planet earth?
Oh God, I feel eternity in my heart but I see death all around, what is my response?
You and I may not be 23yrs old but we had at various times in our lives asked the very same questions, consciously or unconsciously we live every day the summation of our answers.
So Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab on that fateful day boarded the plane with these convictions I believe:
He will attain a joyous eternity
He will advance the course of God
He had to do what he had to do
He had to fight the evil
God expects him to fight
God has enemies.
Looking at these, you and I must attempt to consider the possibility that we could be the one with the explosives that fateful Christmas day given different circumstances.
So I dare to say that my friend Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab is not an evil person per say, He just happened to be a victim of his convictions; Just as you are to yours, whether good or bad, conscious or unconscious.
Ask me, in the maze of young Mutallab’s thoughts and yours, of the sex worker in the streets of Abuja, the corrupt Political Godfathers of Nigeria, her billon dollar Governors, the mind of an assassin, the homosexual priest, the religious demagogues, the monk in the monastery, the everyday people you meet at work, the young girl that is wondering whether it is right to keep her virginity or lose it, abortion doctor, the Wacko Jacksons, drug battered celebrities, breast and stomach infatuated female stars, the physically sexually or emotionally abused individuals, the agnostic, the atheist , your neighborhood imam and pastor. What makes sense? Where is meaning? What is the right thing to do?
Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab looked at all these and concluded that for him it was to climb a plane and go to heaven and send the other 250 to hell on a day half the world marked in remembrance of the birth of the Lord Jesus to earth, in a country that has its motto as “in God we trust”. Young Mutallab looked at these and concluded that he was on the right path and the world today is thanking God that we have the privilege to tell him that he was wrong.
But not the whole world, not the whole world thinks he was wrong, and certainly not the whole world thinks that there is anything wrong with the corrupt office holder, the homosexual priest, the wacko Jackson, our starry eyed celebrities, power crazed presidents and on and on, certainly not the whole world.
So in the midst of this relativism of meaning, you and I must discover for ourselves what is Truth?
And I will summarize it thus:
1. There is a God who is Holy and He is a judge.
2. Man (you and I) are sinful; we are not just unethical, we are by nature lost in sin, the inclination of the human heart is sinful (that explains everything young Mutallab saw)
3. God is still judge but He is also LOVE.
4. God’s Love is not conditional or He wouldn’t! And He loves all of us not only my dear Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab.
5. You and I need salvation ( a deliverance from this sinfulness)
6. God has made a provision ( the proof of His Love),
7. His solution cannot be attained by actions (our good intentions (like young Mutallab’s) could be selfish and He is too holy for our “righteous” acts and rites.
8. His provision is that He has forgiven our sin (the past and future) and He demands we believe in Him (our Savior)
9. He then commands that we worship Him
10. He is not angry or burning in rage at man, He is just bidding His time for judgment day.
What I believe Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab missed (which is easy to miss) is that one cannot worship God without accepting His salvation, and when we accept His salvation we find the meaning of true Love, it is true love that makes me look at young Mutallab and say “Though your aim was to cause disarray on the 25th of Christmas, I still love you brother.” It was for you that Jesus died.
Hear the words of a man with a similar background:
“ I can anticipate the response that is coming: "I know that all God's commands are spiritual, but I'm not. Isn't this also your experience? Yes. I'm full of myself--after all, I've spent a long time in sin's prison. What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God's command is necessary.
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.
My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.
A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it.
And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. “
Mr. Paul the Apostle in Letter to the Romans Chapter 7:14-8:2
Okwonna Nnamdi Nelson
nnamdiokwonna@yahoo.com
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ReplyDeletethats another interesting view
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