Worship-Guidance-Mercy:

Some Reflections on the Surah The Heights in the Quran

Everything happens according to God’s plan.  If a leaf falls or wind blows, if a grain of sand is moved by an insect or animal, nothing is out of the insight and will of God.  For the contemporary secular mind, for one who sees his or her very existence accidental and arbitrary, this is so difficult to be conceived.  They can’t understand it. 

As I promised to myself to ponder the Quran Beyond Fragmentation, I will reflect on the ending of surah The Heights (7:154-206), after the story of Moses, despite its shifts of themes, to see the possible unfragmented essence that holds these different themes together.  This is not a designed writing for achieving a planned goal.  It is the experience of writing and reflection with a critical attitude, though with an open heart and trust in God.  I started from wondering what is the connection of all these diverse themes at the third part of the surah, and you and I will know the conclusion at the end. 

After the worshipping of the Golden Calf and Moses’s anger at his followers, we have a dialogue between Moses and God:

“When Moses’ anger abated, he picked up the Tablets, on which were inscribed guidance and mercy for those who stood in awe of their Lord.  Moses chose from his people seventy men for Our appointment, and when they were seized by trembling, he prayed:

‘My Lord, if You had chosen to do so, You could have destroyed them long before this, and me too, so will You now destroy us for what the foolish among us have done? This is only a trial from You– through it, You cause whoever You will to stray and guide whoever You will– and You are our Protector, so forgive us and have mercy on us. You are the best of those who forgive.  Grant us good things in this world and in the life to come. We turn to You.’

God said:

‘I bring My punishment on whoever I will, but My mercy encompasses all things.  I shall ordain My mercy for those who are conscious of God and pay the prescribed alms; who believe in Our Revelations; who follow the Messenger– the unlettered prophet they find described in the Torah that is with them, and in the Gospel– who commands them to do right and forbids them to do wrong, who makes good things lawful to them and bad things unlawful, and relieves them of their burdens, and the iron collars [Cf. 6: 146. This reference is said by interpreters to refer to the difficult obligations imposed on the Children of Israel.] that were on them. So, it is those who believe him, honor and help him, and who follow the light which has been sent down with him, who will succeed.’  Say [Muhammad], ‘People, I am the Messenger of God to you all, from Him who has control over the heavens and the earth. There is no God but Him; He gives life and death, so believe in God and His Messenger, the unlettered prophet who believes in God and His words, and follow him so that you may find guidance.’” (7:154-8)

Here God talks about two kinds of mercy.  One is that which encompasses all things.  This is the sheer existence and sustenance of the worlds.  The universe stays intact due to God’s mercy.  The second mercy is for those who heed the guidance: who are conscious of God, pay the prescribed alms, and believe in God’s revelations.  After the story of Moses, the Quran declares that Muhammad is a messenger not only for Arabs but for all human beings, whose coming was predicted in the Torah and in the Gospel [I will discuss this point later]. 

In the next part, we have a brief history of Jewish twelve tribes.  But the story is not about Jewish history as much as it is a moral-spiritual parable. 

“They did not wrong Us; it was themselves they wronged.  When they were told, ‘Enter this town and eat freely there as you will, but say, “Relieve us!” and enter its gate humbly: then We shall forgive you your sins, and increase the reward of those who do good,’ the wrongdoers among them substituted another saying for that which had been given them, so We sent them a punishment from heaven for their wrongdoing.” (7:160-1)

And the parable of how wrongdoers lose their path and how God punish them continues in this way:

“[Prophet], ask them about the town by the sea; how its people broke the Sabbath when their fish surfaced for them only on that day, never on weekdays– We tested them in this way: because of their disobedience– how, when some of them asked [their preachers], ‘Why do you bother preaching to people God will destroy, or at least punish severely?’ [the preachers] answered, ‘In order to be free from your Lord’s blame, and so that they may perhaps take heed.’  When they ignored [the warning] they were given, We saved those who forbade evil, and punished the wrongdoers severely because of their disobedience.  When, in their arrogance, they persisted in doing what they had been forbidden to do, We said to them, ‘Be like apes!a Be outcasts!’  And then your Lord declared that, until the Day of Resurrection, He would send people against them to inflict terrible suffering on them. Your Lord is swift in punishment but He is most forgiving and merciful.” (7:163-7)

a This is understood by some as ‘physically turn into apes’ but in fact it is a figure of speech– the structure ‘be apes’ is like ‘be stones/iron’ in 17: 50. Just as the Qur_an describes the disbelievers as blind, deaf, and dumb, here the transgressors are apes.

God’s punishment is the immediate ramification of “doing wrong to oneself”.  Everywhere in the Quran, it is highlighted that the very act of disgracefulness and cruelty, i.e., disobedience to God, affects the wrong doers.  In the Quran, we constantly hear that God guides or punishes whoever God wills, but this is not an arbitrary and whimsical will.  It is clarified repeatedly that it is so because we are unable to understand how our moral flaws affect our body/soul, and we are also unable to understand fully the wisdom of God’s actions.  In each case, everything happens according to the exact justice of God. 

But I ask myself, “Did Quran’s prediction about the Jews not come true?”  It is painful to say that it reminds me of all the calamities that Jewish people went through, including Nazi’s concentration camps.  We have to be careful here, because the Quran clearly mentions that God saves those [including Jews] who obey God and don’t follow their whims.  The Quran always qualify and quantify its arguments and never falls into hasty generalization and never fall into religious and racial bigotry and hatred, if and only if, we pay attention to its consistency:

“We dispersed them over the earth in separate communities– some are righteous and some less so: We tested them with blessings and misfortunes, so that they might all return [to righteousness]– and they were succeeded by generations who, although they inherited the Scripture, took the fleeting gains of this lower world, saying, ‘We shall be forgiven,’ and indeed taking them again if other such gains came their way. Was a pledge not taken from them, written in the Scripture, to say nothing but the truth about God? And they have studied its contents well. For those who are mindful of God, the Hereafter is better. ‘Why do you not use your reason?’  But as for those who hold fast to the Scripture and keep up the prayer, We do not deny righteous people their rewards.  When We made the mountain loom high above them like a shadow, and they thought it would fall on them, We said, ‘Hold fast to what We have given you, and remember what it contains, so that you may remain conscious of God.’” (7:168-171)

This is the consistency of God’s message: the nexus of action falls back on a divine Law.  The divine Law in is inscribed into each one of our cells.  Our body/soul has set to a direction: God-consciousness and righteousness.  This is a very intricate and subtle setting as we might deviate from the Divine Law in the name of God-consciousness and righteousness.  So, the measure of the Law is action, not words.  The Quran tells us that the Law of Justice is enacted in a way that whatever we do can potentially bring about blessings or misfortunes.  Everything happens to us is a guidance.  God’s punishment, as long as we live on the earth and keep on living after the punishment, is a guidance.  If a people are punished to death by God, this is also a guidance for others.  And the wrongdoers will be punished on the Day of Judgement because they have exhausted the body/soul to a deprivation of God-consciousness: the suffering is an immediate just ramification of their action.  On the other hand, if one has ingrained falsehood, disgrace, dishonesty, and the deviation from the Law of God, the Quran is clear that “the good repels the evil”.  Purification is possible only by changing the direction of body/soul to good.  The more we divert our previous misdeeds to the right course of action and mindfulness, to God-consciousness (taqwa), the more we realize our malice and cure the sickness of our soul and heart.  So, the surah The Height (7) continues this way:

“[Prophet], when your Lord took out the offspring from the loins of the Children of Adam and made them bear witness about themselves, He said, ‘Am I not your Lord?’ and they replied, ‘Yes, we bear witness.’ So, you cannot say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘We were not aware of this,’ or, ‘It was our forefathers who, before us, ascribed partners to God, and we are only the descendants who came after them: will you destroy us because of falsehoods they invented?’  In this way We explain the messages, so that they may turn [to the right path].” (7:172-4)

God clearly indicates that the divine Law (God-consciousness) is set in motion from the very beginning.  What is striking about this “seed” is that everywhere the seed of action is extenuated by actions to the extent that we can’t separate seed-action from each other.  Why?  Pay attention to the verses above and the whole Quran.  God could set God-consciousness in us like an instinct or simple biological motor, but the seed comes to awareness by being shown to us by God.  We are conscious and aware of an external encounter as well as an internal predisposition.  If there were no concordance between these inner and outer dimensions, we wouldn’t be able to perceive 1) the divine message and Law, 2) the limits of desire and transgressions of the self against the self or evil, and 3) we wouldn’t have freedom of the will.  So, God comes to us (direct or indirect) and asks us: to bear witness.  Why?  God asks us to say it: “Yes, I bear witness”.  The seed of God-consciousness is activated through an external encounter with God by expressing, saying it in language and in action: “Yes, I bear witness that you are my Lord.”  The Quran takes this as a sufficient reason to reject the claim of any generation in the Day of Judgement to say that our forefathers and fathers or mothers were misguided or believed differently, consequently we lost our way.  The Quran takes each and every individual responsible for accepting, adopting, and following the belief-action-system of one’s forefather, because our forefathers of our forefathers, the offspring from the loins of the Children of Adam, encountered God and bore witness.  It is seeded in us, in our primordial memory and more importantly in our capacity to reason and think:

“Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these.” (17:36)

  

This is one of the strangest thing about us and God.  God treats us individually responsible for all our choices as long as we can reason, think, and heed our heart.  So, this self-reflection is not only an intellectual endeavor, but also a soul-heart-searching phenomenon.  The surah continues:

“[Prophet], tell them the story of the man to whom We gave Our messages: he sloughed them off, so Satan took him as his follower and he went astray– if it had been Our will, We could have used these signs to raise him high, but instead he clung to the earth and followed his own desires– he was like a dog that pants with a lolling tongue whether you drive it away or leave it alone. Such is the image of those who reject Our signs. Tell them the story so that they may reflect.  How foul is the image of those who reject Our signs! It is themselves they wrong: whoever God guides is truly guided, and whoever God allows to stray is a loser.  We have created many jinn and people who are destined for Hell, with hearts they do not use for comprehension, eyes they do not use for sight, ears they do not use for hearing. They are like cattle, no, even further astray: these are the ones who are entirely heedless.” (7:175-9)

I have to confess that this continuity, coherency, and consistency is striking and startling to me.  I feel a shiver of cold in my bones, as I have been that man in the above verses: in 2005, God gave me clear messages and I exactly sloughed it off [slough: a swamp; a state of moral degradation] and I followed my own desires!  I was so lost I couldn’t read it clearly.  I feel a chilling trembling as I was that dog who was panting to receive divine guidance and when I received it, I followed my own desires and became a follower of Satan, consciously and unconsciously, so it makes a lot of sense to me when the Quran says: “We could have used these signs to raise him high, but instead he clung to the earth and followed his own desires– he was like a dog that pants with a lolling tongue whether you drive it away or leave it alone.”

If it was not for my hope and faith in God’s mercy, with a darkened face I would perish now.  But I can’t even perish, because the divine message told me then that I would live into my eighties.  What is the use of this life that I don’t use it to ponder the pathos and ethos of God?  I pray: May God, the merciful and just, the forgiving and the guide, bring mercy to me and guide me, save me.  But the Quran tells me the first step is up to me to separate my path from “many jinn and people who are destined for Hell, with hearts they do not use for comprehension, eyes they do not use for sight, ears they do not use for hearing. They are like cattle, no, even further astray: these are the ones who are entirely heedless.”

And the surah The Heights (7) continues:

“The Most Excellent Names belong to God: use them to call on Him, and keep away from those who abuse them– they will be requited for what they do.  Among those We created are a group of people who guide with truth and act justly according to it.  But We lead on those who reject Our messages, step by step, without them realizing it: I will give them respite, but My plan is sure.  Has it not occurred to them that their companion is not mad but is giving clear warning?  Have they not contemplated the realm of the heavens and earth and all that God created, and that the end of their time might be near?  What [other revelation] will they believe in if they do not believe in this?  No one can guide those God allows to stray: He leaves them blundering about in their insolence.” (7:180-6)

Now, after this description of misguidance and getting lost, the Quran shows us how to find our way: to call on the Excellent Names of God, and keep away from those who abuse them.  The Quran clearly alarms us against the abuse of the names of God.  It is not easy just to say the name, one has to understand how one might abuse those names.  And the measure is inside and outside us, in revelations, and in our own eyes, ears, heart, and reasoning capacity.  “Have they not contemplated the realm of the heavens and earth and all that God created, and that the end of their time might be near?” (7:186) What a difficult task and what a warning!  I must use all my wits and understanding to contemplate the heavens and earth to find my way to God.  But first and foremost, I have to open up my heart to the scriptures and Quran.  Otherwise I am one of losers, losing my soul to Hell.  Then the surah continues:

“They ask you [Prophet] about the Hour, ‘When will it happen?’ Say, ‘My Lord alone has knowledge of it: He alone will reveal when its time will come, a time that is momentous in both the heavens and earth. All too suddenly it will come upon you.’ They ask you about it as if you were eager [to find out]. Say, ‘God alone has knowledge of [when it will come], though most people do not realize it.’  Say [Prophet], ‘I have no control over benefit or harm, [even] to myself, except as God may please: if I had knowledge of what is hidden, I would have abundant good things and no harm could touch me. I am no more than a bearer of warning, and good news to those who believe.’” (7:187-8)

  

The lines are clearly drawn: The Day will come that we will be awakened to God’s Judgement without any doubt.  The consistency and coherency of the Quran and my own personal experience—my eyes, ears, heart, reason—bear unabashedly witness to this truth.  It will come unabatingly and indubitably.  But no one knows the moment and the hour and no one has any control over benefit or harm to oneself.  God saves our soul and my soul!  Then the surah start coming to closure and landing from Heights:

“It is He who created you all from one soul, and from it made its mate so that he might find comfort in her: when one [of them] lies with his wife and she conceives a light burden, going about freely, then grows heavy, they both pray to God, their Lord, ‘If You give us a good child we shall certainly be grateful,’ and yet when He gives them a good child they ascribe some of what He has granted them to others.  God is far above the partners they set up alongside Him! How can they set up with Him these partners that create nothing and are themselves created, that cannot help them at all, or even help themselves? (7:189-192)

It was a strange experience for me to read and reflect on this surah today.  I felt it was talking straightforwardly to me.  In this part, God says we are from one soul, men and women, and our children also are from our soul.  However, our soul is dual: earthly and heavenly.  We can lose ourselves in following our desires (evil) or following God-consciousness (good).  Our children also can go this way or that way.  I prayed to God to give me a good child.  And then I was lost again after being guided!  God clarifies that it is only God and no other source, nature or spirit or jinn, who gives us children, but we always seek partners for God.  Now it is fashionable to say genetic trait embedded in dead particles and matter gives us children.  We can’t see and understand that human spirit, which is distinguishably divine, is created by God, and there is no partner for God’s creative power—everything else, including genes, are tools at the disposal of God’s creation, necessary but not sufficient conditions.  The surah ends with these two paragraphs.  First:

“If you [believers] call such people to guidance, they do not follow you: it makes no difference whether you call them or remain silent.  Those you [idolaters] call upon instead of God are created beings like you. Call upon them, then, and let them respond to you if what you say is true.  Do they have feet to walk, hands to strike, eyes to see, or ears to hear? Say [Prophet], ‘Call on your “partners”! Scheme against me! Do not spare me!  My protector is God: He has revealed the Scripture, and it is He who protects the righteous, but those you call on instead of Him cannot help you or even help themselves.’  If you [believers] call such people to guidance, they do not hear. You [Prophet] may observe them looking at you, but they cannot see.  Be tolerant and command what is right: pay no attention to foolish people.  If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God– He is all hearing, all knowing– those who are aware of God think of Him when Satan prompts them to do something and immediately they can see [straight]; the followers of devils are led relentlessly into error by them and cannot stop.” (7:193-202) 

At the closure of the surah, God enheartens the Prophet that no one can hurt or protect him but God.  So, a real believer endures harm and enjoys blessing as God-given.  It is astounding that the Quran calls upon the enemies of the Prophet to scheme against him, absolutely sure that they can’t harm him!  And the best advice to the prophet and us is to be tolerant and do the right thing rather than reacting foolishly.  Just thinking of God will transform our soul from rash decisions prompted by Satan to see clearly and make a right decision.  And what is the right decision?  To be tolerant and not to be reactive.  The surah ends with a command for worshipping God:

When you do not bring them a fresh revelation, they say, ‘But can you not just ask for one?’ Say, ‘I merely repeat what is revealed to me from my Lord: this revelation brings you insights from your Lord, and guidance and mercy for those who believe, so pay attention and listen quietly when the Quran is recited, so that you may be given mercy.’  [Prophet], remember your Lord inwardly, in all humility and awe, without raising your voice, in the mornings and in the evenings– do not be one of the heedless– [even] those who live in the presence of your Lord are not too proud to worship Him: they glorify Him and bow down before Him.” (7:203-206)

The ending is the confirmation of the fact that the Quran is a revelation from God and an insight-guidance-mercy for those who believe.  In this context, the worship is commanded not only as an authoritarian and arbitrary demand but as an essential component of this insight-guidance-mercy.  In this way, we come to a full circle from the worship-guidance-mercy of God in Moses’ tablets to worship-guidance-mercy of God in the Quran.
   

The Conclusion to "Worship-Guidance-Mercy: Some Reflections on the Surah The Heights in the Quran":

At the beginning of the reflection, I wrote: “As I promised to myself to ponder the Quran Beyond Fragmentation, I will reflect on the ending of surah The Heights (7:154-206), after the story of Moses, despite its shifts of topics, to see the possible unfragmented essence that holds these different themes together. This is not a designed writing for achieving a planned goal. It is the experience of writing and reflection with a critical attitude, though with an open heart and trust in God. I started from wondering what is the connection of all these diverse themes at the last third part of the surah, and you and I will know the conclusion at the end.”

Conclusion

Now I will try to pull all the strings together: we started from the tablet of “mercy and guidance” in the hands of Moses, the ten commandments and the command to love and worship God with all our heart, and it was striking to me that it turned out also that worship-guidance-mercy in the surah The Heights come together. The surah Heights ends with asking the Prophet to remember God inwardly and in humility and awe. God asks the Prophet not to be one of the heedless. Every being worships God even those who live in the presence of God. But the surah cultivates us “why” and “how” this worship is guidance and mercy and in which sense those who don’t worship God and are heedless don’t receive guidance and mercy.

But then, one may ask, how does the world stands as it is for millions on this planet who don’t worship or believe in God? In the next paragraph, the surah says God shows two kinds of mercy: one that encompasses everything, even for those who don’t worship God, God still sustains them to the appointed time of their death and then in the Day of Judgement they will be risen, judged, and rewarded-punished based on their actions. And the second mercy is for those who heed the guidance and worship God.

1) From raising the point about guidance-mercy-worship at the beginning, we move to “why” and “how” these are interrelated phenomena.

2) It starts from how wrongdoers do wrong to themselves. We have to make sense of the fact that there is something inward in relation to what we do: whatever we do, we do to our own soul/body. The similes and stories of Jewish tribes and the generations after them, the Quran declares, says something striking: the later generations have no excuse as they had the scriptures-guidance-mercy and some distort it, hence the punishment and suffering for those who deviated.

3) God proclaims that reward-punishment is the immediate result of the individual’s action. When we hear the words "reward-punishment" in the Quran, it is not an arbitrary act of an angry God. In the Quran, these terms indicate attunement-deviation from the internal working (God-consciousness) of a system (body/soul) with inevitable immediate results. And there is no excuse for anyone not to use one's eyes, ears, heart, and reason to follow God-consciousness for the following reasons:

4) Everything happens to us is a guidance. God’s reward-punishment, as long as we live on the earth and keep on living after the attunement-deviation, is a guidance. If wrongdoers are punished to death by God, this is also a guidance for others. If blessings occur to some, this is also for guidance. And the wrongdoers will be punished on the Day of Judgement because they have exhausted the body/soul to a deprivation of God-consciousness: the suffering is an immediate just ramification of their action.

5) On the other hand, if one has ingrained and internalized falsehood, disgrace, dishonesty, and the deviation from the Law of God, the Quran is clear that “the good repels the evil”. Purification is possible only by changing the direction of body/soul to good. The more we divert our previous misdeeds to the right course of action and mindfulness, to God-consciousness (taqwa), the more we realize our malice and cure the sickness of our soul and heart.

6) God could set God-consciousness in us like an instinct or simple biological motor, but the seed comes to awareness by being shown to us by God. We are conscious and aware of an external encounter as well as an internal predisposition. If there were no concordance between these inner and outer dimensions, we wouldn’t be able to perceive 1) the divine message and Law, 2) the limits of desire and transgressions of the self against the self or following one's desires, and 3) we wouldn’t have freedom of the will. So, God comes to us (direct or indirect) and asks us: to bear witness. Why? God asks us to say it: “Yes, I bear witness”. The seed of God-consciousness is activated through an external encounter with God by expressing, saying it in language and in action: “Yes, I bear witness that you are my Lord.”

7) The Quran takes each and every individual responsible for accepting, adopting, and following the belief-action-system of one’s forefather, because our forefathers of our forefathers, the offspring from the loins of the Children of Adam, encountered God and bore witness. It is seeded in us, in our primordial memory and more importantly in our capacity to reason and think:

“Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these.” (17:36)

8) This is one of the strangest thing about us and God. God treats us individually responsible for all our choices as long as we can reason, think, and heed our heart. This self-reflection is not only an intellectual endeavor, but also a soul-heart-searching phenomenon. And the Quran declares that some can detach themselves from the earth and from following their desires and some can’t. A veil will fall upon the eyes, ears, and heart of those who can't and the Quran analogize them to dogs and cattle or even worse. Hence, they lose worship-guidance-mercy. This is a system set from inside out.

9) Now, after this description of misguidance and getting lost, the Quran shows us how to find our way: to call on the Excellent Names of God, and keep away from those who abuse them.

10) In the end, in the Day of Judgement we will be kept accountable for everything we did and there will be a measure to see whether we have accomplished worship-guidance-mercy. If not, no one is to blame for the punishment—indeed our own body and soul will punish us in the end. And the time of the Day of Judgement is hidden and no one knows when it will come.

11) The best advice to the prophet and us is to be tolerant and do the right thing rather than reacting rashly and foolishly. The Quran declares just thinking of God will transform our soul to see clearly and make a right decision. And what is the right decision? To be tolerant and not be reactive. But one has to reflect on this: how and why does just thinking of God transform our soul? This says a lot about the inner working (ethical-spiritual) and telos (end, purpose) of existence.

12) The ending of the surah is the confirmation of the fact that the Quran is a revelation from God and an insight-guidance-mercy for those who believe. In this context, the worship is commanded not only as an authoritarian and arbitrary demand but as an essential component of this insight-guidance-mercy. In this way, we come to a full circle from the worship-guidance-mercy of God in Moses’ tablets to worship-guidance-mercy of God in the Quran.