My Role Models and Christianity

Now the immediate question in mind may be, "How's this post going to help me with academics?" First things is, not everything I share may directly help improve your academics. But I know that with anything including academics, a healthy orientation of your mind can help you immensely. It also gives a clear purpose behind your studying and often provides you with overarching wisdom that can both directly and indirectly help with academics. Thus, I want to discuss with you some of my Christian role models who have helped me tremondously in orienting my mind in a healthy way especially within the last couple years.

As I embarked on the spiritual journey (a more devoted one) since July of 2022, I began to search more Christian-related videos and my feed became filled with more of those than any other videos. I realized that this journey is particularly difficult because you're technically dealing with the unseen. At times, you really feel the presence of God but other times God feels so distant to a point you start to doubt his existence. This is when I needed other fellow Christians to show me and convince me why they know God to be real and true (I admit my faith is quite feeble). Of course, it becomes ever more helpful if it comes from my own role models and if they themselves discuss why God is true. And I came across several of those people who have helped me grow my faith and they are Jordan Peterson, Nabeel Qureshi, Sam Shammoun, Frank Turek, Charlie Kirk, John Lennox, and Gideon (more recently).

I've watched Jordan Peterson for a while and he has been doing biblical lectures from the past, but I felt as though he has been explicitly forthright with his faith within the past year or two when I had just begun to re-establish and re-develop my faith. This helped tremendously with my journey knowing that there is my role model who believes and practices the same faith as me. I felt more confident.

Frank Turek and John Lennox who are also quite big on social media have helped me study the historical evidence behind Jesus' death and resurrection. They had debated thousands of other non-believers so by watching those debates, it has helped equip me with ways to communicate the existence of God in as logical ways as possible to non-believers.

Sam Shammoun is where my confidence lies when it comes to both evangelizing and defending the bible and Christianity. He is a person well-versed in both the Quaran and bible with which he debates many Muslims and other religious groups that don't believe in the bible. With him and David Wood (a person who's helped Nabeel Quereshi convert to Christianity), they operate a Youtube channel that showcases both debates and breakdown of the bible and Quaran. They've certainly taught me a lot more about the bible than I had previously known.

I've also engaged myself in videos of an ex-muslim physician named Nabeel Qureshi, whose lectures have given me so much peace and assurance. He is no longer here with us due to stomach cancer, but his videos of how he had come to believe Jesus from the Muslim background were just astonishing and move me still to this day. I will discuss some important things he's discussed in his sermons on my blog so stay tuned.

I knew about Charlie kirk a while back when I used to watch a lot of Ben Shapiro videos on him "destroying" certain people on debates. Charlie was also considered an inflammatory figure and public speaker, but I actually agreed with pretty much everything he said and I've grown to like him because our values aligned quite well. I found out recently around Nov 2023 that he was a pretty devout Christian as well who unhesitantly speaks out about his faith in Jesus Christ, and I was very pleased to see that such was the case.

Last but not least, Gideon is quite a special one. I've known him starting 2022 for his outrageous prank videos that have genuinely given me laughs. It gave me at least that temporary sense of peace especially given he was constantly putting himself at so much risk like there was no tomorrow. I loved his ruthlessness.

It was only recently around November of 2023 that his Yotube channel disappeared and with all his videos gone with it. I was quite sad but only for a moment because he's made another channel that was purely devoted to Christianity and Jesus Christ. I was genuinely shocked because he was the last person I thought would convert this way but regardless, he's added lots of motivation and hope in my journey as well.

I want to share my spiritual journey with you all on top of academics because both have been a big part of me and one has helped consolidate the other and vice versa.