Paul Calvert spoke with Bassam

Paul: Do you also have your own language as well?

Bassam: As far as I know their mother language is Arabic and they speak the mother tongue of the natives, so here in Israel it's Hebrew. They speak English in other places.

Paul: How did you become a believer in Jesus?

Bassam: Well, my mum was really angry with me about leaving the Druze religion. When I was young I came and asked, 'Who can go to heaven'? My mum told me that only Druze can go to heaven. We moved to the city and I met Jewish and Christian friends, so I asked, 'What about them'? She said, 'Well, they go other places.' I said, 'They are really good people can they become Druze and join us?' She said 'No, you can only be born Druze.'

In my eyes, I felt that's really not fair. It didn't make sense in my eyes. Why would God do such a thing like open a door for some and close the door for all the rest and nothing can be done about it? Then I looked at my mum and said, 'You know what mum, if we had been born Jews you would have said that all the Jews go to heaven. If we were born Christian you would have said all Christians would go to heaven. Every religion is sure that they are holding the truth.' I started really searching and praying. I was about 5 years old at this time.

I would pray in a small room in my house and I would sit and close the door. I would pray, 'God I'm confused; I pray to you through Jesus, I pray to you through Mohammed, I pray through Buddha, I pray through Moses and I pray through anyone in the book. I pray to you God. I don't want to be born on the wrong side. I want to know you.'

Then I came back to the city and I met believers and there was something that really touched my heart. I was really anti-religion. I didn't think the answer was in religion. I saw religions but I didn't see the love in religion. I met believers here, looking like me and you; taxi drivers, lawyers, bank workers; people just like me and you. I saw they have a real genuine faith in God and they were really serving and doing what they were doing because they love God; it's not because of the fear of man or anything. When I saw that, it really touched me. My hypocrisy radar sort of showed me that there was no hypocrisy here. I remember I was really getting confused and I was starting to know and learn about this God and I said, if I want to know God then I should go to the original, go to the Bible, the Old Testament; that's where it all started. One day when I was about eight or nine and I just realised its Jesus and that's the way. I remember it was not a day when I got to my knees and cried to the Lord. It was a process, but I came to this conclusion really understanding my faith and this is what I believe in.

Paul: When you were 18 you joined the army didn't you?

Bassam: Yes, but I was a trouble maker. I didn't really follow the Lord in everything I did in my life. The day of the army came and I was looking forward to doing that. I had grown into the reality that we've been here for more than 60 years and we have had more than six, seven, eight maybe nine wars coming upon us. Many of them were to destroy us, so you grow up in this reality that your uncle served in the army to protect you, your father, if you have older brothers they have all served, so for me it was obvious; I'm going to go now and do my duty. I wish I didn't have to, but that was the reality so I was really looking forward to it in a way and I was really trying to aim high and I got to really high places.

What happened to me through the army though, was the Lord really touched my heart and I changed and He taught me, because in a way the army was a desert. It was a hard situation, in far away places surrounded by unbelievers, facing very inhuman dilemmas many times. In my faith it was either you go down or up.

I was no longer living with believers in a church where you can blend in and just go in the middle. I either had to go up and become stronger in faith and trust the Lord more and serve him in the hard situations or go down and fall from the Lord. In the beginning I was falling, but then God really gave me a few slaps and I almost died in one of them and I came to the conclusion that it's the most important thing in life.

Paul: Is that a challenge for any believer who joins the army today?

Bassam: In many ways yes. Personally I work with some friends here in Israel and we train young believers before they go into the army and we take them for camps. We travel with them and we teach them from the Bible. The hardest thing, is first of all you grew up in a congregation where everything is fun and good and you have youth group and you're surrounded by this Christian bubble; but then one day you're thrown in to really deep water and suddenly you're in a combat company somewhere with no believers around you. You have hard situations and face hard dilemmas in places where most units don't get to see in their lives, like poverty and hatred and you've got to be prepared for these sorts of things. Many believers, especially my age, find it a struggle; but now we are becoming more adapted in the Israeli Christian body, preparing our young ones to go there and actually the army becomes a spiritual place. It was my Bible School. I was an officer in the army and I had all this training. I came out as a mature believer after what I had been through.

Paul: Is it easy to have a relationship with God when you are in the army?