A Christian Reflects on the 99 Names of Allah: Who am I?

Who am I that I should attempt such a project? I am certainly not an expert in Islam, nor am I skilled in the Arabic language. I am just beginning to learn to string the Arabic letters together and pronounce the words, and get a beginner's feel for the complexities of Arabic grammar. I am obviously not in a position to read books in Arabic about these names. I will be limited to what I can do in English. This is a legitimate objection. A better blog could be written by someone who was fluent in Arabic, and I am not that person. Perhaps a day will come when I could write that better blog, but for now, all I can say is that I think the time has come for me to make a start at this. This blog will not be what it could have been if I had better skills, but I believe that I have sufficient skills to produce something that may be of some worth regardless. Time will tell whether others agree with my judgment or not. In fact time will tell whether I will agree with this hope or not. But if I never try, I will never know.

I am someone who approaches the love of God with both head and heart. The call is to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind." For me, this call has led me into a combination of academic, artistic and spiritual pursuits. I have studied New Testament Greek and Hebrew. Though I cannot claim to be an expert in either, I can follow arguments and analysis about the text in either language, and I have quite a bit of training in how to use scholarly analytical skills to understand a text more deeply. But for some time now, I have also discovered that when I come before God to worship and to reflect, it awakens in me a desire to respond artistically. I make and use banners in my prayer and worship; I write songs and poems. These two sides come together in my life--my best scholarship is done where I am pursuing God, and certainly my best artwork. And some of my best poems have come out of the things I have learned as I followed out the lines of my intellectual curiosity.

Christians come in a wide variety of "flavors", so it is reasonable to give some account of what kind of Christian I am. I was not raised a Christian, but I have been a Christian since my late teenage years, and over the years I have worshiped and studied with a variety of Christians in a variety of churches. I am a United Methodist in my denominational affiliation, and I agree with most of the theological positions of my denomination, but that does not tell you very much. I am someone who believes that the events recorded in the Bible actually happened, and that the fact that they happened matters a great deal. I think that the people who wrote the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit when they did so, and that what they said is valuable today. It is, in fact, "God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" (2 Tim 3:16). I am a creedal Christian, in the sense that I believe the early creeds of the church, particularly the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed, represent good and important summaries of truths that faithfully reflect both reality and the teaching of the Bible.

Another way to see who I am is to read other things that I write. I have two other blogs: