Let me try to explain this as best I can. Ever since I was a child listening to the Bible readings and the sermons in church, there were many things that just didn't make sense or sit right with me. Here I was, a 10 year old pondering the mysteries of the trinity, the holy communion and the divinity of Jesus, as well as many other issues. I tried to make some sense of them, but failing, left it to faith assuming that God would provide answers in time.

As I matured, I read the Bible entirely at least once and the New Testament several times. The Gospels themselves I have read more times that I can count, pondering every line, every phrase. I read different translations. I read books about literary interpretations of the Bible. I read books on the history of the Bible as well as the early Christian era. I read about the gnostics in Egypt and how they were repressed by the early church. I learned how the early church fathers suppressed and destroyed versions of the Gospels that they didn't agree with.

I came to the conclusion about 18 years ago that much of the New Testament as we now know it has come about due to political and social reasons. For instance, Constintine, in the 5th or 6th centuries, decided on which Gospels would be included in the New Testament. He also insisted that Jesus be referred to as the Son of God, not just a servant of God, as most of the Gospels up to that time had stated. He also decided on the concept of the trinity. This from a man who wasn't even a Christian at that time. These changes were made at his insistence. If these changes were made, he told church leaders, he would accept Christianity. If not, he would crush it in his empire, which at that time included most of eastern Europe and part of Asia.

This is a summation of what happened. I can't remember the details, but this is the upshot of it. I tried to find Jesus' true message, but there is much to filter out. Much of the writing was slanted to suit the community that the authors were writing for. You can see the differences in the letters of Paul and Peter. Peter's views are much closer to traditional Jewish thought at the time, which is no surprise since they all were Jews. Paul's on the other hand, broke dramatically from the Jewish traditions to the point that there was a great schism in the early church that almost destroyed it. Paul's views won out.

Even after coming to this realization, I still felt comfortable being a Christian because I decided to find in the morass of the New Testament what I believed to be Jesus' true message. This became harder and harder as time went on. Even things that Jesus supposedly said and did are not clear from one Gospel to another and there are contradictions between the four in many places. I prayed and prayed that God would help me to see the truth and answer these questions that I have had all my life. For a long time, I considered myself to be what I would call an agnostic Christian. I believed in the message that Jesus preached and I believed that Jesus had a special place in God's plans for mankind, but I also believed that his message had been twisted and perverted for the benefit of man. I found myself constantly wondering why Christianity had so removed it's self from the laws that had been set down by God to Moses and the other prophets. I felt that we were missing an important component in our worship of God that had be discarded early on in the history of Christianity. My conviction of this is that, in carefully reading the Gospels to sort out what Jesus most likely REALLY said, I found nothing at all that indicated that Jesus ever deviated or intended others to deviate from these practices. There are other things involving the first communion, and certain sayings attributed to Jesus that just don't hold water that I won't get into here.

I started to attend church regularly and teach Sunday School within the past year. While I have enjoyed this immensely, I was disturbed by the realization that I didn't believe in many of the things that I was teaching and practicing in church. I didn't know what I would do about this. My reaction was to mentally distance myself from it, to basically ignore my feelings. But each time I was in church, while I loved the ceremony and found it beautiful and inspiring, I also found it harder and harder to participate with an open heart. I began to feel like a hypocrite because I was practicing something that I didn't believe in. As I had done before, I prayed for guidance and left it in God's hands, but still, I felt like an impostor when I participated in church. Through all this, through my whole life, the one unshakable truth that I knew was that there was only one God and he is the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

I wasn't searching for any profound answers, just an answer to my question about the appropriateness of a gift for Ramadan for a Muslim friend. This lead me to read an introduction to Islam on one of the web sites I visited. As I read one line that said "According to the teachings of Islam, Almighty God is absolutely One and His Oneness should never be compromised by associating partners with Him - neither in worship nor in belief. " At that moment, I experienced a white flash of pure light. A voice inside me said, "This is your answer". Something profound had happened. I was filled with joy, but also terrified. This would mean such a change in my life.

I decided to learn more about Islam and figured the best way to do it would be to read the Qur'an. I am going though verse by verse, in the same way I had approached the Bible, seeing if there are inconsistencies, if there are things there that "just don't sit right" as things in the Bible have. I am not even a 1/4 of the way though, but so far I am impressed by what I have found and have seen nothing that makes me uneasy yet.

I am also talking to a Muslim friend of mine at work to find out how being a Muslim fit into her life. What it means to be a Muslim on a day to day basis. By the way, the word Muslim literally means, "those who submit to God", but also carries the meaning of "believers" and "believers of The True Way" and "believers in the One True God".

Where will this lead? I don't honestly know. I refuse to act on impulse since I own it to myself to closely study the Qur'an in the same way I studied the Bible.