This information about the US Army appointing a Muslim chaplain to be in charge of 14,000 soldiers "spiritual needs" is troubling on a quite a few levels.
In January, Lt. Col. Khallid Shabazz received the call every Army chaplain dreams of, the call that validates years of intense study and hard work toward keeping the U.S. military in good spiritual health.
He was offered the job of chaplain for an entire division, an honor for anyone in his field but a milestone in his case. After a ceremony this summer, Shabazz will become the first Muslim division-level chaplain in the history of the U.S. military – a Muslim spiritual leader for more than 14,000 mostly Christian soldiers.
Shabazz, who’s dedicated his life to working across religious lines, found it hard to keep calm as he received the news at his desk on Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington.
“I’m on the phone saying, ‘Thank you, I appreciate it. I’ll serve honorably,’ and then I hang up the phone and I’m jumping all around like a little kid,” Shabazz, 48, recalled in interviews in February. “I was running around the office saying, al hamdulillah, al hamdulillah, praise be to God!”
Shabazz came into the world as Michael Barnes, born into a large Lutheran family in Alexandria, Louisiana, about three hours from New Orleans.
Faith was at the center of the household. His mother took the family to church three times a week and recited prayers with her children each night. Shabazz, a lifelong athlete with a 6-foot-5-inch, 255-pound frame, had to study catechism before he could play football and basketball on Saturdays.
Other kids might’ve grumbled about such a rigorous worship schedule, but Shabazz said he didn’t mind – from an early age, he was taken with the spirit of friendship and service.
“I like people who have a commonality of purpose,” Shabazz said. “We loved each other. If people had rent problems or other problems, the church pulled us together to take care of those problems.”
After high school, Shabazz headed to Jarvis Christian College, a historically black college in the small town of Hawkins in eastern Texas. Upon graduation, he returned to Louisiana and began teaching biology to fifth-graders at an elementary school in his hometown. He said he wasn’t prepared for how despondent he became at seeing so many children whose growth was stymied by poverty or poor parenting; he struggled to accept that he couldn’t help them all.
After just six months, he quit. At age 23, he decided to join the Army, thinking that it would help him mature and make him a better, stronger teacher afterward.
“I thought, ‘I’ll do 20 years in the military and then I’ll teach and coach,’ ” Shabazz said. “But I fell in love with the idea and the paradigm of the military.”
While stationed in Baumholder, Germany, Shabazz worked the motor pool with a Muslim soldier who annoyed other troops with his boasts about the virtues of Islam. Shabazz, who back then was still Christian, grew fed up and decided “to cut him down to size.” He challenged the Muslim to a public debate on the merits of their respective religions.
On the afternoon of the showdown, Shabazz recalled, about 30 soldiers filled a meeting room on base. Shabazz was ready to pounce, but the Muslim opponent “kind of blindsided me with some facts,” launching into a powerful, persuasive defense of his faith that put Islam in a whole new light.
Shabazz, stunned, was down for the count.
“It was all-out cognitive dissonance, depression and shame, honestly,” Shabazz said, recalling his feelings at that moment. “I thought I had a stronghold on the truth. And, for the first time, my confidence was shaken in who I was as a human being and what I believed.”
Shabazz began studying Islam on his own, determined to correct the lack of knowledge revealed in his debate with the Muslim soldier. He’d work all day and then stay up well past midnight paging through the Bible and the Quran. He described it as going into a “cubbyhole.”
After two years, Michael Barnes, the devout Christian reared in a Louisiana church, decided to convert to Islam, taking the name Khallid Shabazz to complete his transformation. He said that there had been no single tipping point in his thinking, just a deep identification with Islamic tenets, such as the lack of a clerical hierarchy and the emphasis on charity.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article135249589.html
So we find out that this guy was raised Lutheran, went to a Christian college and actually started out life with the name Michael Barnes....but he then lost a debate to a Muslim and realized he couldn't defend the Christian faith accurately and ended up converting to Islam and changing his name to Khallid Shabazz. And the US Army LOVES that story!
Nice!!
You see friends, to most people in Western society, it doesn't matter if you are Lutheran, Methodist, Buddhist or Muslim because "as long as you are spiritual"....it's all good!! According to the US Army a Muslim who doesn't believe Jesus is God, who doesn't believe Jesus died on the cross, and who doesn't believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead...that same man is perfectly adept at helping an immature Christian soldier discover that Jesus IS God, Jesus DID die on the cross for our sins, and Jesus DID rise from the dead!!
It's complete and utter lunacy!!
Welcome to the Last Days! Up is down, down is up, 'good" is called "evil" and "evil" is called "good".
Apostle Paul flat out told us that if you don't believe Jesus was raised from the dead, you may as well THROW OUT THE WHOLE CHRISTIAN FAITH....because it would all become complete hog-wash!
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