Hello fellow brothers and sisters,
I am a young Egyptian/Syrian Muslim female living in the US. I was born into a Muslim family, however my family and myself never really practiced it. So growing up, I did believe in God, the right and the wrong, but I didn't have much faith.
I ended up losing my virginity and I felt disgusted and ashamed of myself. I cried many nights and prayed that God would forgive me. I told myself that if I had a stronger faith this wouldn't have happened. I started to read the Quran and just got confused. I saw a lot of very hypocritical verses, which I wont get into too much detail. And I also started thinking to myself how can Islam be a religion of peace if even our own prophet used violence and aggression to spread Islam. He also married numerous women and some even claimed he raped. He condoned everything I had believed Islam was not.I started reading into more things and just got confused even more
Anyway, one of my fellow Coptic friend, sent me a link to watch a video by Abouna Boulos George and I loved what he saying, using the Christian values and teachings. I felt at peace a little. I started reading the Bible and things make sense to me.
But I am scared, I know I still have a long spiritual journey ahead, but I feel guilty for doubting my own religion and finding answers in a different one. I'm scared of how my family and friends would view me if I convert into the religion. And just thinking ahead into the future, I am worried that no one would wanna marry an ex-muslim who isn't a virgin.
Also, I am very confused about the idea of the Holy Trinity. None of my friends have been able to explain to me well. I understand that by saying Jesus is the Son of God, it is supposed to be a representation symbolically, but why is he still refered to as God & Son of God. I can't seem to grasp this.
If someone could help, i would really appreciate it!
Thank you and bless you all
Comments
You should do ur research. Also, there are TONS of sermons about all these topics ....for English, I recommend u listen to Abouna anthony messeh.
I definitely recommend Pope Shenouda books and you may find whole books as answers to some questions you may have. This is a link for some of the books as PDFs, if you need more, let me know. https://www.stgr.org/books-by-his-holiness-pope-shenouda-iii-in-english/
God bless you.
> I have been repenting and asking for forgiveness and I am working on bettering myself as a person in all aspects, including spiritually. <
"Opposing the teachings of Arius was Athanasius, a deacon also from Alexandria. His view was an early form of Trinitarianism wherein the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were one but at the same time distinct from each other."
Hi:
The trinity is simple: God, His Word, and His Spirit. He is One, cannot be separated, but He has a Spirit and a Word, that’s how He is. And that’s how He revealed Himself. A god without a word and without a spirit is a dead god.
God bless you,
1- Just as I would say my fingers are distinct, with their own function and identity, but still all my hand, so is God: 3 Persons, unique, but all still God.
2 (this one is really difficult even for me, sorry)- Just as the sun is heat and light, so is God. If the sun did not have heat, is it still the sun? No, it is just a bright thing in the sky, and we are all popsicles. No light, it is an unknown heat source, and nothing more. But are heat and light the same? No.
In the same way, God is incomplete without either the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is a fundamental idea of Christianity but it is by no means simple or easy to understand or explain! It is a “mystery”- something we know is true, but whose inner workings are beyond humans. Our minds are small and weak compared to God’s infinity, and lots or heresies arise by trying to make God follow our small, weak minds’ ruleset. This is the case with Arius.
He tried to take our mortal sense of time and impose it on God: sonship means younger.
However, the Trinity is beyond human minds- nothing you can think of can describe the Trinity perfectly in all its nuance. Sonship, for us, means younger, but God does not follow our rules. God does not even follow time’s rules! We are all temporal- subject to time- while God is time’s master. “After” or “younger” are all words that depend on TIME, and as I just said, God is outside of time.
I really hope this helped, as the Trinity is one of the hardest to explain and understand mysteries of the Church.
Hi:
> To believe the idea of the Trinity you have to be born into it and you have to blindly believe it. Otherwise you can not, "grasp the idea" <
If God wanted all people to believe in a certain way, He would have made them to. But there is a multitude of beliefs, religions, and anti-religious philosophies around us. Of this menu, people are free to choose.
God gave people free will because what He wants is to have a free relationship with them. The Lord Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." And, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will also know my Father."
Obviously, love cannot be imposed on a person with free will and not everyone will follow the Lord.
Grace,
Although the term “Holy Trinity” is not used in the Bible,
there are several passages that mention the Holy Trinity: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One
God.
From the very beginning of the Holy Scriptures, the first
So here we see God the Father, the Holy Spirit (whoverses in the book of Genesis say: “In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the
waters. Then God said…” (Gen. 1:1-3).
was hovering over the face of the waters) and the Son, the Word of God, who speaks.
In Hebrew, God is written as Elohim, or the plural of God, referring in the
same context, to the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.
And it is clear that this God that Moses wrote about at the time of creation is
the same God spoken of when he wrote in Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The
Lord our God, the Lord is one!” So there is One God who is the Father, the
Word, and the Holy Spirit.
There are multiple other verses in the Holy Bible that speak
about the One God. There are a few verses in the Holy Scriptures where God, or
the Lord, is used in the plural but still referring to the One God. For example, when God created man and woman,
He is referred to in both the singular and the plural at the same time: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our
image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and
over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His
own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”
(Gen. 1:26-27). After the fall, it is
further written: “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one
of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also
of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’— therefore the Lord God sent
him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He
drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the East of the garden of Eden,
and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of
life” (Gen. 3:22-24).
The same occurs in the story of the tower of Babel: “And the
Lord said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this
is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld
from them. Come, let Us go down and
there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s
speech’” (Gen. 11:6-7).
There are also several other references to the Holy Trinity
in the Holy Bible. Isaiah refers to this
mystery in his book when he writes concerning the sending of the Messiah, the
Son of God, by God the Father and the Holy Spirit: “Come near to Me, hear this: I have not
spoken in secret from the beginning; From the time that it was, I was there.
And now the Lord God and His Spirit Have sent Me” (Is. 48:16; see also Is.
61:1).
There is also an explicit reference in the Gospel according
to St. Matthew speaking of the faith and formula by which one is baptized: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit…” (Matt. 28:19). We also
have the Divine Manifestation (Theophany) at the time of the baptism of our
Lord Jesus Christ where the Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove and
the voice of the Father was heard from heaven (Matt. 3:16-17; Mark 1:10-11;
Luke 3:21-22).
St. Paul also gives us this apostolic blessing: “The grace
St. Peter in his first epistle also mentions theof the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy
Spirit be with you all. Amen” (2Cor. 13:14) amongst other verses where he
mentions the Holy Trinity (Rom. 8:1-4; 1Cor. 12:3-7; Gal. 4:4-6; Eph. 1:3-14;
2:18; 4:4-6; 2Thess. 2:13-14; Tit. 3:4-6; Heb. 9:14).
Holy Trinity: “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in
sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ” (1Pet. 1:2).