Transcription
What is your relationship like with God, if there is one, and all that sort of stuff? You know, do the B, the Bible. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." It's not, "You shall believe in something," or "You shall believe what a speaker says on a stage," and then you will force yourself to believe that because you have fear of going to hell, and then that will set you free. No, you shall know the truth.
So, about building a relationship, I mean, only a fool would deny the existence of a Creator. I just happen to align very deeply with Jesus as God. Without going into the entire trifecta of how Muslims think about Jesus, we can go back and forth on this. It'll be an eternal conversation. We can have an argument on the podcast, but I look at Jesus as the most important figure in human history. I align with his values, I align with his principles.
I've yet to hear somebody say something poorly about Jesus, about how he conducted himself, about how he thought about women, about how he thought about society. He was an anarchist against the priests and the temple, and he was an anarchist against the status quo. He preached love and acceptance, love for God, and love for the Father. So, I resonate deeply with him, and I've chosen to believe in his worldview, and it's played out extremely well.
We can definitely have conversations in the future or off the podcast as to what it looks like at a divine level, whether he's God or whether he's a prophet. That's one of the differentiations between Christianity and Islam, but that would be a really long conversation.
Yeah, no, definitely. That wouldn't be for the cast. Tune in for a Godcast coming soon. Yeah, no, but you know what? I'm not going to question you about it on this podcast. We may speak about it off camera, 'cause I know after you've said that, people are going to say, "Why didn't I say this back and forth to Luke?" But respect people.
What I will say is you will never catch a Muslim saying a bad thing about Jesus, of course, as you may know as well. The thing is, I also think people have a terrible perspective in the West about Muslims because it's been propagandized as a bad thing. But here's the thing: a true Muslim—tell me how it's portrayed in the West. I mean, terrorists, basically people that, you know, are out here trying to take over the world and things of this nature, and it's just not the case.
But I can tell you one thing for a matter of fact: a true Muslim that practices the Quran and truly believes in it will never screw you over. Have you had experience with that? I know it to be a fact, and it's true. You will have a brother for life because it's built in the philosophy and in the way that they believe.
So when I do business, I do business with Muslims, and I do it with full confidence because if they're true Muslims—I'm not talking about the ones that say they are but they're not and all that—but the ones that are true believers, they won't screw you over. I've had this firsthand experience, and that's why I trust them.
The reason why I bring up the topic of religion is because I present this question to you: Do you believe that this is all written by God and your destiny was written by God? Yeah, and God's given it to you. Like, do you thank God for where you are right now?
If we think about a divine Creator outside of time, space, and matter, so he operates in past, present, and future at the same time, then it makes sense that there is knowledge as to what is going to happen and what is going to come. But we also have decision-making power. We have free will. We have the ability to choose and determine our actions on a daily basis, what we want to do.
God isn't putting a gun to your head saying, "Hey, you need to come and pray to me. Hey, you need to develop a better relationship with yourself. Hey, you need to stay away from addiction." These are choices that you have the ability to make.
Yeah, God may know the future and the consequences of your actions, and he may know the path that is destined for you, but you still have to walk it. You still have to take the steps. So there's a duality between divine knowledge and human nature that has to kind of come and converge, and that's where the journey of faith comes in, where you trust that God has everything under control.
But under control doesn't necessarily mean that it's not going to be painful, and under control doesn't necessarily mean that life is going to give you exactly what you want. Because what you may think to be good, what you may think to be healthy, what you may think to be right is based off of your finite human mind. But God knows everything.
So God may test you with things that, in the time, they may feel like pain, and they may feel like suffering, and they may feel like hurt. But eventually, they'll flourish, and they will be lessons that will teach you how to become better, how to get closer to him, how to deepen your faith.
It's very interesting what I've come to realize is that suffering is the greatest of teachers. You look at whether it's the greatest of prophets, whether it's Jesus, whether it's the saints, or whether it's the apostles, and you begin to see their life, and their life was riddled with suffering, which is something that we tend to avoid.
But behind suffering is the greatest of lessons, and behind suffering is the biggest growth. Jesus preaches suffering, and he teaches this life of surrendering earthly desires to achieve a higher level of spirituality and closeness to the Father.
So I think, yeah, I'm still figuring it out. I'm a work in progress. There's a saying that God says in the Quran, which I said to Andrew as well when I linked up with him back in February, which is, "God won't burden a soul with more than they can handle."
There may be something like that in the Quran. Sorry, there may be something like that in the Bible as well. Say that one more time. The exact quote is, "I will never burden a soul with which it can't handle." So I will never bring pain or agony upon someone knowing that they can't handle it.
So, for example, let's just say you take a big L in your life. God already knows you can handle it; that's why the L's there in the first place. It's about, as you said, a test of how you come out of that, how that shapes you. Do you go down the wrong path? Do you go down the right path?
Also, in Islam, it's a test of will you stick by God or will you do the wrong thing? Do you know what I mean? I've seen friends around me go broke, and then when they go broke, they turn to drugs, or they turn to alcohol, they turn to women, and all that sort of stuff.
But then I've seen people who go broke who stay on the path of praying and staying by God, and they're the ones who come out of it. There's a very good book in the Bible. The Bible's comprised of 66 different books. It's the Book of Job.
Job is this man that had everything, had all the cattle, all the land, very successful at his time. The story goes that Satan approaches God and says, "Hey, you know, I see your servant Job, and the reason he serves you is because you've given him everything. You've given him all the land, you've given him all the success."
God is interacting with Satan, and he says, "What do you think about my servant Job? Well, the reason he has what he has is because you've blessed him." God says, "Well, okay, well take everything away except his life. You have my permission."
So he strips some of his family, family dies, strips some of all his possessions, strips some of his health. Throughout that entire book, all of his friends, his wife comes and says, "You should be cursing God because he took everything away from you." He said, "I can't curse God."
He stayed faithful to him. In one encounter, he's praying to God, and he questions, "Why is this happening to me?" And God answers, "Who are you to question me? Am I not the creator of everything?"
In the same way, even though I hope not to live a life where everything is stripped from me, the lesson and the moral of the life of Job is that God will test you with suffering. God will test you with challenges. God will test you with difficulties. God will test you with hard times.
But that is when the proof of your faith is manifested—not when everything is given to you, not when it's easy, not when times are simple, but in the challenges. Do you curse God, or do you bless him for giving you the opportunity to experience these challenges and experience difficulties to become better and to get closer to him?
Then the story finishes with God blessing Job with more of everything, which is very interesting, and it's a great story. You should read it.
The reason why I bring this all up in the first place is because sometimes you hear people get very, very successful. They get the money, they get the fame, they get the women, they get the cars, they get everything they want, and then somehow in the end, they're still lost.
They feel like a lost cause; they feel like their soul just disappeared. They don't know what to do in life, and the common trait that you find in that group of people is that they're not a man of God. They haven't got something by their side to look forward to outside of this life.
So it's good to see that you're a man of God, bro. It's good to see that. It's the assumption that the things of the world are going to satisfy something that is finite, that something that is infinite. You're an infinite being. You're not bound to this three-dimensional world.
If you're going to try and satisfy your soul with the things of this world, you will always fail. If you're going to satisfy it with luxury, what the hell is luxury? What, a nicer watch, a nicer house, more cars, more houses, better food, more women? None of these things will satisfy.
They may make you happy for a short period of time, but the void will still be there because the void is a spiritual void. It can't be filled by materialistic things in the three-dimensional world. It doesn't work that way.
That is why any person that desires to build success, that desires to build something in this world, needs to understand that you take none of it with you. You don't take the money, you don't take the success, you don't take the accolades. You take nothing.
But what you will take is, was your devotion to God in check? What you will take is how you treated other people. Did you love God more than you loved the things that God gave you? You will be tested with these things, of course.
But to whom much is given, much is required. So if God's going to give you a lot, he will demand a lot from you. And yeah, I think we're on our way. It's definitely a journey in a path of self-development, so I'm still trying to figure this entire thing out.