Along those lines...

here's the beginning of a profile of Kabeel. For the rest of the story, click here.

Like most people, I was a product of my childhood. My parents came to the United States from Nigeria. My dad, who was a Muslim, had a quiet strength. He was a strong, big man, who lived his faith, and had great integrity. He said something, and then followed through. I respected him, and wanted to be like him.

My views of Christianity came from my Dad, who said that Christians didn’t really live their faith. Those views always seemed to be played out by the Christians I knew. It seemed that Christianity was a religion that had no discipline. The professed Christians that I saw, even my mother, didn’t seem to have that same strength and discipline I saw in my dad.

Whenever I had encounters with Christians, I would ask them questions they didn’t have answers for. My goal was to cause them to stumble – to point out the inconsistencies in their faith. I went to chapel at San Diego State even though I was a Muslim just because I wanted to listen. And everything I heard confirmed the views given to me by my Dad – Christians were weak. They said one thing and did another. They were full of contradictions. Even when I started reading the Bible, I did so for one reason – and one reason alone – and that was to prove it wrong. In my pursuit to fault Christians, something else happened…

All along, I was struggling with integrity issues of my own. The very things I was critical of in the Christians I knew were the same things I was struggling with. I thought they didn’t seem to have integrity, and yet I was fighting the same battle inside myself. I did and said all the “right things”, but behind closed doors, I was no different than anyone else. I realized I wasn’t really a man of integrity. . .

Continued here