Finding God, Not the Image: When Spiritual Awakening Becomes Christianised

A quiet shift is taking place across the West where I live. After decades of disbelief, distraction, and digital noise, many are waking up to something greater; a presence that cannot be reduced to pixels or policies. Yet as hearts open again to the sacred, a familiar pattern emerges: people feel the touch of God and then conflate that experience with Jesus. For many, the return to Christianity feels like coming home. But what is really happening beneath the surface?

The Return of the Sacred

The modern world has exhausted its material promises. Consumerism has failed to feed the soul, and technology cannot fill the silence of meaning. When the spirit begins to stir again, it naturally searches for language; a way to name what it feels. For Western seekers, Christianity is the native tongue of transcendence; it is where their cultural memory points when the invisible becomes real again, but what they often rediscover is not God Himself; rather, the idea of God through a personality. It feels intimate and safe; a divine made human, love made visible. Yet it remains one step removed from the Source.

The Need for Tangibility

Humans long for what they can see, touch, and love. The image of Jesus provides something emotionally concrete; a focus for devotion in a world allergic to abstraction. It resolves the unease of relating to the Infinite. Saying “I love Jesus” feels easier than “I submit to the One beyond form”, but this is where the illusion begins; mistaking the reflection for the light, the mirror for the sun.

When Books Become Comfort Blankets

After awakening, many seekers surround themselves with Christian materials; Bibles, psalms, podcasts, and devotional writings; hoping to find consistency and clarity. At first, they feel warmth and comfort; yet soon comes the inevitable dissonance. They encounter contradictions, obfuscations, and verbal fog. The words both invite and confuse, alternating between poetry and polemic and the more they seek coherence, the more they encounter layers of human editing; the fingerprints of councils, translators, and theologians. Yet, still, they cling tighter; they turn to preachers who do the same, who soothe rather than challenge. So faith becomes therapy; a balm for anxiety rather than a crucible for truth and the appeal shifts from awakening to belonging; a shared community of comfort rather than confrontation with the Real.

The Psychology of Conversion

The convert or reawakened believer often becomes evangelical in tone: “Jesus this, Jesus that, God this, God that.” They use the names interchangeably, not realising the distinction. They speak of Jesus and God as if they were partners in divinity, unable to see how even their speech betrays a divided allegiance. Then comes the Old versus New Testament tension; the uneasy junction between Judaism and Christianity. They feel the rift but do not probe it because it is safer to build emotional walls than face theological fractures, so they defend contradictions instead of seeking resolution. In truth, many have merely rebranded their old attachments. They have left atheism, consumerism, and materialism; systems once held sacred; only to cling to Christianism, another system of belonging, another collective identity. The form has changed, but the dependency remains.

The Substitution of God with the Son

At the heart of Christian doctrine lies a profound confusion. The Creator has been replaced by His servant. The Infinite has been personified into flesh. Humanity yearned for a relatable deity, but in seeking that emotional nearness it sculpted a god out of man. The doctrine of the “Son” was never revealed by Jesus himself; it was imposed later to humanise the divine and centralise authority through a mediator. The Qur'an corrects this distortion in a few perfect words:

“Say: He is God, One; God, the Eternal; He begets not, nor is He begotten.” (112:1-3)

True divinity cannot be born, nor can it die. God has no image, no genealogy, and no need of intermediaries.

The Myth of Sacrificial Substitution

“Jesus died for your sins.” This phrase has comforted billions, but it hides a contradiction because it portrays a God who demands blood to forgive, as though the Creator of the heavens and the earth were bound by the logic of a courtroom. The Qur'an dismantles this notion with clarity:

“No bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another.” (6:164)

Forgiveness cannot be outsourced and redemption is not purchased by another’s pain. God forgives directly; without sacrifice, priest, or intercession. The Christian model of salvation offers emotional relief, but not truth. It keeps the believer dependent, forever indebted to an event rather than aligned with the Ever-Living.

Ritual Cannibalism: The Holy Communion

The Eucharist, or Holy Communion, is often viewed as sacred intimacy, yet it symbolically re-enacts the consumption of flesh and blood; a ritual more reminiscent of ancient paganism than divine revelation. What began as metaphor, remembrance of spiritual teaching, became literal consumption. It is a powerful inversion, that instead of remembering the living God, believers perform a theatre of death. They eat symbols of mortality rather than taste the sweetness of remembrance (dhikr). It is nourishment of flesh at the expense of soul.

The Trinity and Cognitive Dissonance

The doctrine of the Trinity attempts to turn paradox into dogma; it tells believers that three distinct persons are one God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, co-equal and co-eternal. Yet no prophet before Jesus, nor Jesus himself, ever taught this. This construct breeds cognitive dissonance; faith becomes an act of mental gymnastics rather than surrender. The simplicity of monotheism, the axis of tawhid, is replaced with theological complexity that alienates reason and divides devotion. God does not require explanation in threes. He requires remembrance in One.

The Eschatological Distraction

Christianity’s obsession with “End Times”, “rapture”, and the “second coming” externalises salvation. Instead of purifying themselves, followers wait for a rescuer. It is a psychological deflection; a hope that someone else will fix what they have corrupted. Traditional Muslims (not to be confused with Qur'anically defined muslims) are no different in this regard. The Qur'an calls this folly:

“The Hour will come suddenly; no soul shall be wronged.” (16:77)

The return to God is not a spectacle; it is a reckoning of the soul and true preparation is not speculation about apocalypse but remembrance and righteousness in every moment.

Church as System, Not Spirit

Where the Qur'an calls for direct relationship with God, Christianity evolved into an institution where the clergy became gatekeepers and faith became hierarchy. Through councils, creeds, and rituals, revelation was bureaucratised. Like fossilised Islam, which buried spirit under ritual, the Church replaced revelation with ritual power. It feeds on devotion redirected toward itself; an egregore sustained by dependency and guilt.

The Book Problem

When seekers turn to the Bible expecting divine consistency, they find contradiction. Multiple authors, councils, translations, and redactions have produced a text that reflects centuries of theological struggle rather than a single, preserved voice. It contains fragments of truth but also layers of distortion and its contradictions are papered over by emotional insistence. The Qur'an, by contrast, speaks in one voice throughout time, preserved, self-authenticating, and never revised.

Jesus the Sign, Not the Substance

The Qur'an restores Jesus to his rightful place. He is Isa ibn Maryam; a Word from God, a Spirit from Him, but not God Himself. He is a signpost; not the destination.

“The Messiah said, ‘O Children of Israel, worship God; my Lord and your Lord.’” (5:72)

Even the Gospels testify that he prayed, ate, and slept; all signs of created nature. He called the Father his God, and ours. So the Qur'an rightfully liberates him from the prison of divinity; restoring his humanity and his purity.

The Emotional Economy of Christianity

Christianity is built upon emotional trade; guilt, love, and debt. “He died for you” becomes the eternal burden of repayment where believers live in a cycle of guilt and gratitude, oscillating between self-blame and emotional highs. It is powerful conditioning; the heart becomes enslaved to sentiment rather than elevated by knowledge and true love of God is not founded on debt, but on awe and gratitude for existence itself.

The Egregore of Comfort

Centuries of devotion to the image of Jesus have created a vast energetic construct; an egregore powered by emotion, ritual, and repetition so when someone “meets Christ”, they may be entering this field of collective thought rather than direct communion with God. It feels holy because it borrows holiness; it feels real because millions believe in it, but it diverts worship from Creator to creation; from reality to representation.

The Unreached Destination

The ultimate goal is alignment with God; tawhid. Most never reach it because they stop at shirk, the worship of Jesus, when Jesus himself declared he was a man, a messenger, and servant of the Father.

“The Father is greater than I.” or “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Even by their own canon, he consistently redirected worship upward. Christianity halts at the messenger and calls it arrival.

How to Guide Without Condemnation

Those awakening through Christianity should not be dismissed, as they are tasting what most have forgotten, the nearness of the Divine. But the task is to help them lift their eyes higher, not crush their steps. The gentle approach is simple:

• Affirm their awakening: “What you feel is real; that peace, that light, that love; that is God drawing you near.”

• Clarify the channel: “Jesus was a messenger of that same God. The One he worshipped is the One you now feel.”

• Encourage direct connection: Invite them to call upon God alone, even once. ‘God, guide me to truth.’ Sincerity will do the rest.

This reframes Jesus not as a barrier, but as a bridge; a signpost pointing beyond himself.

Beyond the Image

The modern convert does not truly turn toward Jesus; they turn away from meaninglessness. Their souls ache for authenticity, but they mistake nostalgia for revelation and the One they seek is not in the statue or the song, not in the cross or the creed. He is the unseen source of every heartbeat, every breath of awakening, every whisper of conscience.

Let them feel that Presence, and then remind them softly: the light they call “Jesus” is only a reflection of the Light they have always sought;
the Light of God Himself, the Light of Worlds.