Muhammad Ali: #EternalLifeMatters

Is it too soon to have an honest discussion about the legacy of Muhammad Ali? Often we are tempted to want to appear overly respectful of celebrities when they die because we want to be popular and cool. Some have very strong feelings and may still legitimately be grieving, but here is my humble attempt to be biblically objective.

As a boxer he was awesome. I saw him fight in person and he owned the arena. He is among the greatest, if not the greatest boxer in history. He did much to call attention to Parkinson disease and that is all good. As a civil rights activist there is much to admire, but apparently out of anger Ali embraced Islam, and not just Islam, a very controversial, racist branch of it. How many young black men have been influenced by Ali’s example?

He was named Cassius Clay after a Kentucky Republican politician who was an abolitionist. Ironically, Ali denounced his “slave name” only to take up the name of Muhammad, who owned and despised black slaves and whose followers practice slavery to this day.

Ali refused to serve in the military and went to jail for it. As an athlete he was a great boxer, as a humanitarian and civil rights leader he was inspiring, but his patriotism was at best marred and sadly his immortal soul is in a place of eternal torment because he denied Christ, the only Savior of the world.

Ali was famous for being willing to sign autographs, sometimes for hours. The reason he said he did it was because he was trying to merit heaven. Sorry folks, but NO ONE will be saved by any amount of good works. We all desperately need Christ to rescue us from our sin and give us eternal life.

Unfortunately, by his example Ali has given Islam and racism cover. Ali abused his international celebrity status to lead many to his own doomed fate. ‪#‎EternalLifeMatters‬.