 From an obvious fact, there are different reasons why a Christian minister, priest or pastor choose to live Christianity. In one of my videos, I cited the discovery of the higher truth to be one of what could make that possible. But what I actually didn't mention is that Christianity is a bit liberal. So this video will reveal hidden things about Christianity from an ex-bibus scholar of nearly 30 years. Speaking about liberalism within Christianity, it will be pertinent to know that this is not the same as a concept of liberalism in politics. It is just the reality that Christianity offers everybody the opportunity to study and land a fee and what it is not just like in Islam. However, in the process, the individual is indoctrinated with what is known as intellectual nihilist ideology where he or she is required to shut off the intellect when questioning critical doctrines. Doctrines like the Trinity, transubstantiation, that is, mere bread and wine becoming the real body and blood of Jesus Christ, Mary as a co-redeemer, use of images to worship God and Jesus as God himself. Ordinary educated Christians know that all these are false, but they are warned not to question mystery, but to accept them in humility and in faith. To provide you an example, let's look over the shoulders of one of Western civilization's greatest influencer, Saint Augustine of Hippo. This was a man confused about the concept of the Holy Trinity of three persons operating on an equal basis in the Godhead. So one day, he was ruminating about the concept by a riverside. It was at this moment as the fraudulite rushed out that a little boy caught Saint Augustine's eyes. The faecal-faced child had a determined furrow brow. He was clearly up to something, running back and forth, running back and forth between the sea and the tiny hole in the ground. My son, Saint Augustine called over the crushed waves. What are you doing there? I am trying to fit that great big ocean into this tiny hole, the boy responded. The surprised Augustine suddenly dismissed him, saying it was impossible to empty the entire ocean into the small hole. The boy responded as well, telling Augustine that it was impossible for him to empty the mystery of the Trinity into his human brain. Long story short, that was the end of his quest to understand the Trinity in a book he was writing at a time known as the Trunitate. This legend has been used by missionaries over the course of centuries to silence any reasonable probe or quest to understand the concept of the Trinity and others. In today's episode, we would be crushing that world down for good. Assalamualaikum brothers and sisters, welcome to another episode of the Open Minded Thinker Show. Please like and share this video so that others can see it on YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe to help us grow. This is the story of a Bible scholar. Let's get to know who he is. Dr. Matthew Munger is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at MF Norwegian School of Theology. So obviously, Assistant Professor Near Eastern Languages at MF Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo. His main research interests are the languages and text of ancient Near Eastern, including Akkadian, Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic, Ethiopic, and Arabic. The intersections of text in these languages. He's currently working on a book that investigates the names given to the wives of the pre-Abrahamic patriarchs in antiquity and traces their reception history throughout a wide range of text and manuscripts in antiquity and the Middle Ages. He is also part of a lying pin of scribes, also part of the lying pin of scribes project at the University of Agder. Yep, Agder working on describing the material properties of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dr. Munger, welcome. Even the blind can see that the guy is eminently qualified, well read, but then something happened along the line. What could that be? First of all, I just got to say thanks to you, Derek. Like you said, I've never really told my story about where I am today in the terms of faith and all that kind of stuff publicly because it's a bit daunting when you're a Bible scholar to start talking about the fact that you no longer believe in Jesus. I mean, that's the whole thing. I started off as a Christian and I'm not anymore and that's kind of, so that's the long story short version, but we'll go through a bit more. But I really felt over the past year after getting to know you that I've actually come into the community, the atheist community or whatever we want to call it and found that support and the way the community takes care of each other and supports each other has really given me the confidence to be able to own it. And that's kind of why I want to do this is because I'm not really afraid anymore of what it means socially or academically or whatever to own where I am. You know, my institution does have a policy that you have to be supportive of their foundational documents or whatever. And it's an institution that was founded on conservative Christianity. So it's changed a lot over the past 20 years. And so anybody that's Norwegian or in the Norwegian context 20 years ago would be shocked that somebody from MF would be able to talk about their lack of faith or whatever. But things have changed a lot. Now we have a really just studies program. We have a social sciences program and and there's, you know, a lot more freedom to to do what what you want to do. Well, it's awkward to live Christianity and instead of becoming a Muslim, an individual chooses a theism from what these Bible scholars said, he chose not to believe in God. And I feel it is wrong. While I respect his opinion and decision, I am compelled to urge him to reconsider the idea that God doesn't exist. It does exist, at least from a cosmological viewpoint. Everything that exists has a cost and there must be a first cost that initiated the chain of causality. Other arguments can be made of ontological moral consideration on top of the precision and complexity of the universe, which suggests that there was a design by an intelligent creator. After high school, I decided to go to youth with a mission, YWAM, which is a very, very conservative Christian youth mission agency. And so the reason I went, I guess was pretty selfish. I know that now because we went, it was in Hawaii, like they have bases all over the world, but I had always dreamed of going to Hawaii. And so I was like, okay, I can go to Hawaii and I can do it for God and the church will pay for it. It was like everything was perfect. So I went to went to this youth with a mission thing and and it was super conservative. It was like more conservative than I could have ever imagined. And, you know, they brought in people like doing, you know, like doing prophecies over you and speaking in tongues and trying to get you to speak in tongues. And like, this is one of the things was, it was amazing. Like things I look back on, like they did get your tongues go in night. So everybody was going and everybody was, you know, praying and praying. And so I went up and of course, because I was like, okay, God, give me the tongues, give me the tongues. You know, we're standing there and like we're standing there and we're standing there and we're standing there. And it was like, I think probably for an hour and finally I was like started just like screaming because I had to get out of there. Like, and I felt so guilty about that for so long because like I lied about speaking in tongues, but everybody thought it was real. And like, so that was like one of those moments where I was like carrying this guilt, trying to fit in, but it didn't work. Wow. And so youth with the mission works that you go, you go a place for three months and you get some training and stuff like that. And then then you, and so I, I should backtrack a little because I went, yeah, whatever. It doesn't matter. So we go to Nicaragua as part of this outreach thing. Like some people went to Uganda, some people went to Nepal. I ended up in Nicaragua. And that was just really, really weird because like some of the training they did and some of the stuff they talked about was like, hey, okay, we've got to go. This is a country full of Catholics. And like, I don't know if anybody had told them before that Catholics are Christians, but for them they weren't. Like it was, that's how, that's kind of the level of fundamentalism we're in is that it just wasn't, it wasn't possible. And so one of the things that I had to, you know, I feel that was that my grandma was Catholic, right? So we're going out there and then the leaders are saying like, yeah, we got to be, we got to convert these Catholics and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, oh man, this is weird. And so it just so happened that there was this Norwegian Lutheran girl there. And the leaders felt basically the same about Lutherans as they did Catholics. Like they, if you're not evangelical or fundamentalist or whatever then you're, I don't know, you're not, you're not fully saved or whatever. Are you still part of the group that thinks speaking in tongues is the case? Are you back in a Mennonite club? No, so this is, this is, I mean, I don't know where I was. I was all these things, right? I was, I was a Mennonite. I was still belong to the Mennonite church, but I'm out there in this, you know, what do we, I don't know what we want to call it. Like this mixed evangelical-ish kind of charismatic thing. Okay. And, and they're speaking in tongues and doing all this. And it was just, yeah, I mean, it was just a mix of all these things, but most of the people there were super conservative when we were in Nicaragua, right? And, and so I get to know this girl, Maria, who is this Norwegian girl. And, and she's also having a hard time with this because she's like feels condemned by it to, you know, like, what are we doing? Like, we're, why are we trying to convert Catholics? Like standing on street corners, telling people that because of their sins are going to hell and acting out dramas and trying to get people to go to a church that we're never going to be there to ever, ever see again. You know, it was just kind of like we were there for us, not for them is the feeling I have now. But we, you know, we were doing it for God and it was the whole, you do everything for God. So we're still super committed. And then, so after, after that time, like we came back to, we came back to Hawaii and so this girl turned out to be, you know, more than a friend after a while. It was a relationship that was built on a weird situation, like being in Nicaragua and being kind of the outsiders in a group. And so she invited me back to Norway to visit and, you know, basically I never left. So I ended up marrying her. So I like, we stuck it out. But, but the process of moving to Norway was kind of strange. You have to, in Norway, they go an extra year to high school compared to us. And so you have to do a year of university in the States if you want to be able to go to school in Norway or to, you know, get a student visa or whatever. And so I went to Eastern Mennonite University, a Mennonite school in Virginia for a year. And there I studied, you know, I studied some mission, but I studied the Bible a lot. I had a class with Dr. Nancy Heisey who, who taught about, it was an intro to the Bible kind of thing, where she, she let me do actually my project on, on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like, so I was, I mean, I was using translation. We weren't, I hadn't learned Hebrew or anything, but we could, I was comparing passages from the, from the translation of the, of the Great Isaiah Scroll with, with Isaiah from, from like the NIV or whatever. And, and showing differences. And I was like, and I wrote this paper at the end of the paper. I said, like, man, I hope one day I can learn Hebrew so that I could do this for reals. And so I was, it was like, I think that was pretty prophetic. But, but so anyway, I moved to Norway and, and basically what I had to do was, was of course follow God and start studying theology. So I ended up in this, in this school and, and it's the, it's the place where I work, right? So this is, I've been here off and on for the past 20 years. Wow. And so I studied, started studying theology. I went through the first three years of theology and by that, then I'd finished Hebrew and Greek. And while I was studying Hebrew and Greek, I realized that I kept, I kept asking questions like, why? And the teachers would say, it is just that way. There is no explanation. And I was like, there has to be an explanation. There's an explanation for everything. And when I couldn't get answers, I decided I needed to study linguistics because that would give me the tools to answer the questions. And so when my first son was born, I took a break from school. I bought the, the books for the first semester of linguistics courses at the University of Oslo and I read them all. And I was like, I felt like I found my home. Like I was, I was just like, this is amazing. Can you imagine reading stuff that you actually care about? I was like, after three years of theology, that's how I, that's how I felt. Wow. And, and so I signed up to do the university. Just to get in your head, you think learning this stuff. First of all, you already know in your head that this is true. You already know that God is real. This is true. The Bible is correct in your head, of course. I'm trying to get the psychology here for our audience to track along. Yep. You're reading this stuff thinking like I'm only going to like really be able to prove my religion and have an answer for things that nobody's had answers for. Like I can actually solve some problems for many people who are serious about the word of God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, and that's why theology was boring. I mean, so, so this kind of theology that I was exposed to was just kind of like, here's the dogmas and here's the reasons why. And it's just like, but of course it's true. So why do you even need to argue for it? Like it's just silly, like, like it was, so theology didn't, didn't get me going at all. The point who raised here is the bane of Christian theology by discouraging effective exploration of answers from benign Christian dogmas. Christianity created an avenue for the growth of atheism in the West. This is because by discouraging or prohibiting questioning individuals may not fully understand or engage with their faith. Potentially leading to blind acceptance of teachings that may be harmful or generally incorrect. It can also stifle intellectual growth and critical thinking, preventing individuals from exploring new ideas and perspectives. The incentive is a situation where people just work up and abandon the faith. This is a lesson as well for Islam. At the same time, I took a course in the Hebrew Bible where we were going into like the anthropology and the worldview of the Hebrew Bible. And I had to write a term paper on the question of, is there an immortal soul evidenced in the Hebrew Bible? And like my conclusion was, there's no evidence for an eternal soul in the Hebrew Bible. Like that, that's something that shows up later. And that was also a shock for me because then like realize like, crap, what do you do if there's no immortal soul? Why do we have it in Christianity if you didn't have it in Judaism? You know, and that was like, okay, this is this is a bit painful, but whatever it's academic. So we deal with it and move on. So I keep learning linguistics and I get into a get into a program in Semitic languages with Lutz Edzard, who is a submitist who was here in Oslo for a while. And he took really good care of me. I gave me awesome classes. There were like three or four of us all together ever in the program. I mean, it wasn't a big thing, but he took care of us and really inspired me and he taught my first class in Akkadian. And so I remember getting John Hewnegaard's grammar of Akkadian. I've still got it behind me here. He, when I got that in the mail and I opened this book and like this brand new grammar of Akkadian. See, you see the Kenea form things there. And I, it was also, it was just like my head was exploding. It was like, this is amazing. I can actually learn this stuff. And so we started learning. You learn Akkadian and you learn that Akkadian is a couple thousand years older than Hebrew, right? So it, and then you start reading texts and we read Gilgamesh. We read the Enuma Elish. We read, you know, all these kind of the Babylonian theodicy. We read the Hammurabi's Law. We read all these things that are earlier than the Bible. And set yourself up for failure myself up, right? And, and, and, but I'm like, I'm super into the academic side of it. And so every step of the way I'm saying, Oh, that's really neat. I believe that I agree. I agree with the, with the scholarly version. I'm critical. I'm reading. I'm learning, but you know what? I'm learning makes sense. So that's fine. So I'm just like putting that here in my head and still I'm going to church and I'm doing the churchy things. Well, towards the end of my studies, I'm taking a course in, in a West African language that one of our professors happens to teach called Fulfulde. And it's like we, because you have to take these random languages just to get your linguistics degree, right? And, and so I'm taking it. And the, I get a call from the Norwegian Mission Society who wants to know if me and my family could consider moving to Mali West Africa, so that I could be a Bible translator translating the Old Testament into Fulfulde. Cause just recall that almost all the books that existed before the Bible were cast by the church and called heretical to prevent people from exploring them. In fact, some early revolts in the history of the church where those who imagine themselves and reading some of these ultra scriptural ancient writings from a very long time. One more clip from the interview and we are done. I do know this that we, we left for Mali when, when my daughter, my, so my youngest, so I have three kids and my, my youngest was born at the end of 2009 and then August 2010. We went out. So I would have been 28 when we left for Mali three kids. My daughter was just a few months old and make sure to give people. Yeah. Yeah. And so this is, yeah, there we go. This is, this is after we've been there almost a year. And yeah, that's, I mean, that's this is kind of a, this was on Easter the year after we, we got there. And yeah, we, so we, we lived in a, in a city right on the edge of the, of the bush. Oh, nice. Somebody from Balmaco in the chat. Nice. We, we lived there and, and I started working as a, as a Bible translator, but what that means is you have to learn the language, you learn the culture, you, you have to get kind of immersed in everything. And then it was, yeah, it, it, it was just, it was supposed to be perfect, right? But like within two weeks of we got there, my, my one son got malaria, super sick. It was, it was really freaky. I, I mean, the, the doctors came and they gave him an IV and kept him at our house, like with an IV. And, and within the, the first fall we had like malaria, malaria, malaria. It was just like, and, and to us we're thinking, oh gosh, like what's going on, but you know, it's part of the fight whatever. And, but, but even worse, like a few weeks after we got there, the ambassador from, from Norway or the, I guess it was like the assistant because the ambassador was gone or whatever, but somebody came from the embassy to tell us that they were going to close off the area we were living in, in the north of, of Mali because it was too dangerous to be there. And, and so we're sitting there and we kind of have this, this thing with the missionaries and, and he's like, yeah, so we, we, we're going to follow Dan Mark and Sweden and the US and all these other people and say that you all shouldn't be here. And, and one, like some of the colleagues, our colleagues, the missionary colleagues are like, no, but let them take us, let them kill us, like rather be martyrs than be, than be forced to leave. And, and at that point, you know, my head's going like, yeah, no, don't, don't take us, like send, send us home. That's fine. Like, you know, and, and so they, then what they did, they kind of calm us down as they did a kidnapping course, not a how to kidnap, but what to do if you're kidnapped, you know, and like all these kind of things about both like how you should act and how you can keep your faith and all that kind of stuff. Well, what we can drive home from this video is that he was traumatized and eventually given to the idea that there was no God. I urge this man to come to Islam. He had met Muslims. They're very bad ones, but that does not stop him from sipping through the Quran and realigning his objectives. Let draw the curtains there, ladies and gentlemen, like, share, and subscribe. See you in another episode. Assalamualaikum.