“I can’t say that. For us it’s forbidden.”

I had given my language tutor, Noah, a printout of the Creation story in the Jesus Storybook Bible to read and then tell me in his own words in Arabic. This is one type of activity in Phase 3 of our language learning method, which I had just begun. He tells me the story in his own words as I record it. Then I can go back and listen over and over until I understand it well.

“This page is good, and this page and this page. But this page, please excuse me but I can’t say this.”

The page he was referring to tells the story of the creation of man and woman, and says that the first thing the saw when they opened their eyes was God’s face. It also says that God looked at Adam and Even with great joy, like a new father looks at his child. This was too much for my Muslim friend. To say that they saw God’s face, this is impossible. No one can see God’s face. And to call God a Father, this is explicitly forbidden in the Qur’an. Of the 99 names of Allah that Muslims can be found reciting, Father is missing. The Qur’an explicitly states multiple times that “Allah has no son”. For Muslims, Jesus is not the Son of God and neither are we children of God. It’s absurd in their eyes.

I wonder if we’ve become so comfortable with God as our Father that we’ve lost the wonder of it. Humanly speaking, it is absurd to think of God as our Father. He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, but we are just omni-sinful. He is glorious beyond words and we were made from dirt. He is worthy of all praise and we are worthy of eternal damnation. What arrogance to call him “Father”!

Unless he is. Unless the Eternal Son became sin (2 Cor. 5:21) so that we could become sons and daughters. Then to refuse God as Father is to refuse the gift in His outstretched hand, to snub Him. And that’s the most absurd thing of all.

After a long discussion of Islam and Christianity (and me trying in vain to explain the Trinity in a mixture of Arabic, French and English), we continued our lesson. But I told him I would pray that God would grant him understanding of the truth.

Would you pray the same for my friend, that he would know the Truth, and that in Christ he would be set free from man-made religion?