Free Christianity in the Near East and the West 9
by cmiphilos1 on February 14, 2022
When therefore a well-meaning Lebanese or foreigner comes along and says to me, ‘Forget about your religion which is the deepest you know, and adopt with me a new deepest based on economics or politics or philosophy,’ I tell him: ‘I have the highest respect for these things and we desperately need them in Lebanon and the Near East, but do you realize what you are asking me? Can I be ashamed, need I be ashamed and embarrassed, about the deepest I know when this deepest matured in these lands and when this is its status throughout the world? When people in Pakistan and India and Africa turn to Mecca in their prayers, and when people in Paris and Rome and London and Berlin and New York turn to Bethlehem and Nazareth and Jerusalem in their deepest adoration and love, are you seriously asking me to be different from all these men—me, me, who come myself from Lebanon and the Near East? No, my friend, I have the greatest possible honor of sticking to my deepest, and of adjusting every other deepest to the deepest I know.’
