A Brief Reflection on The Mercy and Justice of God in the Surah The Bee (16) in the Quran-Part I

“It is God who brought you out of your mothers’ wombs knowing nothing, and gave you hearing and sight and minds, so that you might be thankful.  Do they not see the birds made to fly through the air in the sky? Nothing holds them up except God. There truly are signs in this for those who believe.  It is God who has given you a place of rest in your homes and from the skins of animals made you homes that you find light [to handle] when you travel and when you set up camp; furnishings and comfort for a while from their wool, fur, and hair.  It is God who has given you shade from what He has created, and places of shelter in the mountains; garments to protect you from the heat, and garments to protect you in your wars. In this way, God perfects His blessings on you, so that you may devote yourselves to God.  But if they turn away [Prophet], your only duty is to deliver the message clearly.  They know God’s blessings, but refuse to recognize them: most of them are ungrateful.” (16:78-83)

God's Mercy

In this reflection, I will briefly discuss God's mercy in the surah The Bee (16), and in the next one I will discuss God's justice.  But before I start reflecting on the expressions of the mercy of God in this surah, I wish to remind you of the following verses, where God declares despair of God's mercy is evil:

“Say, ‘[God says], My servants who have harmed yourselves by your own excess, do not despair of God’s mercy. God forgives all sins: He is truly the Most Forgiving, the Most Merciful.” (39:53)

“My sons, go and seek news of Joseph and his brother and do not despair of God’s mercy– only disbelievers despair of God’s mercy.’” (12:87)

"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– ” (7:154-5)

“When those who believe in Our revelations come to you [Prophet], say, ‘Peace be upon you. Your Lord has taken it on Himself to be merciful: if any of you has foolishly done a bad deed, and afterwards repented and mended his ways, God is most forgiving and most merciful.’” (6:64)

We wonder about the relation between mercy and justice in the Quran.  If we just read the parts about God’s punishment, without understanding how this punishment works as justice, we would be misguided to think God in Islam is not merciful.  But surely, this is a false judgement if we read the Quran consistently and don’t fall into too much or too little of contextualization.   Too little contextualization deprives us from understanding the concrete message and how it might be applicable differently in different times.  And too much contextualization robs the universality of its message of the Quran. 

The fact that we breathe and have food, shelter, and sustenance in our lives, the Quran declares, is God’s mercy.  God repeatedly exclaims that God’s mercy include everyone and as long we live on the earth, we have the chance to change our ways for better to avoid the ramifications of our own actions in the Day of Judgement.  

“If God took people to task for the evil they do, He would not leave one living creature on earth, but He reprieves them until an appointed time: when their time comes they cannot delay it for a moment nor can they bring it forward.” (16:61)

In simple words, understandable to everyone, God explains God’s favor and mercy to all, believers and disbelievers, alike:   

"In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy"

"God’s Judgement is coming, so do not ask to bring it on sooner. Glory be to Him! He is far above anything they join with Him!  He sends down angels with inspiration at His command, to whichever of His servants He chooses, to give [His] warning: ‘There is no god but Me, so beware of Me.’  He created the heavens and earth for a true purpose, and He is far above whatever they join with Him!  He created human from a drop of fluid, and yet human openly challenges God.  And livestock––God created them too. You derive warmth and other benefits from them: you get food from them; you find beauty in them when you bring them home to rest and when you drive them out to pasture.  They carry your loads to lands you yourselves could not reach without great hardship––truly your Lord is kind and merciful–– horses, mules, and donkeys for you to ride and use for show, and other things you know nothing about.  God points out the right path, for some paths lead the wrong way: if God wished, He could guide you all.” (16:1-8)

God's justice and mercy are intertwined. Sending scriptures and prophets are God's mercy which is part of God's justice. In the Quran, God repeatedly mentions that God will not punish a people before sending them the mercy of prophets and scriptures to warn them. This mercy is part of God's justice. After all these blessings, scriptures, prophets, and warnings then those who do evil, corrupt the earth, to be unjust and transgress people's and God's limits will be punished both in this world and in the world to come.

God invites us to forgive, while asks us to be just. God loves those who are patient and don't implement lex talianis, quesas, eye for eye, while God makes it lawful for them to do that. Indeed, God puts a higher value on mercy in justice than retribution: “Far better and more lasting is what God will give to those who believe and trust in their Lord; who shun great sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry; respond to their Lord; keep up the prayer; conduct their affairs by mutual consultation; give to others out of what We have provided for them; and defend themselves when they are oppressed. Let harm be requited by an equal harm, though anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God Himself—He does not like those who do wrong. There is no cause to act against anyone who defends himself after being wronged, but there is cause to act against those who oppress people and transgress in the land against all justice—they will have an agonizing torment—though if a person is patient and forgives, this is one of the greatest things. (42: 36-43)

Dispositional Difference between Those Who See the Gift of Life as the Mercy of God and Those Who Take it for Granted

The point of mercy is providing sustenance for us even if we are not thankful.  Now we take it as the survival of the fittest, a sense of arrogance that as if the so called "autonomous subject"—human being—is the most powerful, not being able to see that it is the Mercy of God that endowed us with the viceroy, the shepherd of other living beings.  Moreover, God’s mercy comes as revelations and scriptures to guide us, but it is “we” ourselves who ought to choose the right way, as I argued before, otherwise we would be automaton, not creatures with freedom of the will.  In the surah The Bee, named after the creatures which are now on the brink of extinction due to our own excess and greed, God continues to remind us of all good things that God has granted to all of us, believers as well as disbelievers, which we take for granted:

“It is God who sends down water for you from the sky, from which comes a drink for you, and the shrubs that you feed to your animals.  With it God grows for you grain, olives, palms, vines, and all kinds of other crops. There truly is a sign in this for those who reflect.  By His command God has made the night and day, the sun, moon, and stars all of benefit to you. There truly are signs in this for those who use their reason.  God has made of benefit to you the many-colored things God has multiplied on the earth. There truly are signs in this for those who take it to heart.  It is God who made the sea of benefit to you: you eat fresh fish from it and bring out jewelry to wear; you see the ships cutting through its waves so that you may go in search of His bounty and give thanks.  God has made mountains stand firm on the earth, to prevent it shaking under you, and rivers and paths so that you may find your way, and landmarks and stars to guide people.  Can God who creates be compared to one who cannot create? Why do you not take heed?” (16:10-17)

There is a difference between the internal state of a person who takes things for granted, sees himself or herself as random selection of particles in nature, and loses any sense of reverence for water, animals, and trees and focuses on appropriating them as sheer resources for survival, and a person who appreciates and is grateful for water, animals, plants, and for the beauty of the world, and sees them as gifts of mercy from God.  Who are we after all?  Who am I?  A frail body and a speck of dust, who has been wired into biosphere, water, food, graciously aware of my being in the world, and the responsibility of being the guardian and shepherd of God’s blessings that sustain us on the earth.  This awareness of my absolute dependence is the first step to understand the Quran, and in general religion, for me.  We are living in the delusion that as if we are “somebody”, because we could develop the capacity to exploit the earth; this is the satanic hubris, and this “somebody” forgets its dependent origination and how like a mad man has been sawing the branch upon which he sits and sustains him.  Now, everything is coming to surface: the sixth mass extinction and destruction of more than 20% of species and consequently ourselves is the immediate result of our ungratefulness.    

“If you tried to count God’s blessings, you could never take them all in: He is truly most forgiving and most merciful.  He knows what you conceal and what you reveal.  Those they invoke beside God create nothing; they are themselves created.  They are dead, not living. They do not know when they will be raised up.  Your God is the One God. As for those who deny the life to come, their hearts refuse to admit the truth and they are arrogant.  There is no doubt that God knows what they conceal and what they reveal. He does not love the arrogant.” (16:18-23)

We disconnect from ourselves, the earth, and God, when we see the world as random collusion of dead atoms and particles.  Late Heidegger, in his own way, could rightfully see this fact that we are more than our reductive sciences:

“Ek-sistence [standing-out in understanding-clearing of Being] can be said only of the essence of the human being, that is, only of the human way "to be."  For as far as our experience shows, only the human being is admitted to the destiny of ek-sistence. Therefore ek-sistence can also never be thought of as a specific kind of living creature among others - granted that the human being is destined to think the essence of his being and not merely to give accounts of the nature and history of his constitution and activities. Thus, even what we attribute to the human being as animalitas on the basis of the comparison with "beasts” is itself grounded in the essence of ek-sistence. The human body is something essentially other than an animal organism. Nor is the error of biologism overcome by adjoining a soul to the human body, a mind to the soul and the existentiell to the mind, and then louder than before singing the praises of the mind - only to let everything relapse into "life-experience," with a warning that thinking by its inflexible concepts disrupts the flow of life and that thought of being distorts existence.”

“The fact that physiology and physiological chemistry can scientifically investigate the human being as an organism is no proof that in this "organic” thing, that is, in the body scientifically explained, the essence of the human being consists.  That has as little validity as the notion that the essence of nature has been discovered in atomic energy. It could even be that nature, in the face it turns toward the human being's technical mastery, is simply concealing its essence. Just as little as the essence of the human being consists in being an animal organism can this insufficient definition of the essence of the human being be overcome or offset by outfitting the human being with an immortal soul, the power of reason, or the character of a person.  In each instance its essence is passed over, and passed over on the basis of the same metaphysical projection.” (Letter on Humanism)

And in releasing himself from the dominant nihilism and reductive thinking, he is capable of seeing that we are here for a purpose, we are the shepherd of Being:

“The human being is rather "thrown" by being itself into the truth of being, so that ek-sisting [standing-out in understanding-clearing Being] in this fashion he might guard the truth of being, in order that beings might appear in the light of being as the beings they are.  Human being do not decide whether and how beings appear, whether and how God and the gods or history and nature come forward into the clearing of being, come to presence and depart. The advent of beings lies in the destination of being. But for humans it is ever a question of finding what is fitting in their essence that corresponds to such destiny; for in accord with this destiny the human being as ek-sisting has to guard the truth of being. The human being is the shepherd of being. It is in this direction alone that Being and Time is thinking when ecstatic existence is experienced as “care" (cf. section 44c, pp.224).” (Letter on Humanism)

The Quran constantly reminds us—and this reminiscence is God’s mercy—that we should not, ought not to take the earth and its gifts for granted, we should not and ought not to take our life for granted and as the pleasure machine.  The Quran systematically reminds us that everything we gain and sustain us in our lives is the mercy of God and we have been given the chance of time in this world to rectify our thoughts, words, deeds, body, and soul, because surely there is another world to come and we will be judged—or more accurately our own body, skin, eyes, ears, lips, nose—will judge us.  And the Quran sees it as a physical-bodily resurrection, we are as well embodied in the world to come.  So, God constantly reminds us that whatever that we do, we do it to our own body/soul, and similar to a healed or progressive cancer, we can’t avoid the inevitable consequences of our actions on our own body and soul.  Could we ever escape them?:

“Are the disbelievers waiting for the angels to come to them, or your Lord’s Judgement? Those who went before them did the same. God did not wrong them; they wronged themselves.  So, the evil they had done hit them and they were surrounded by the very thing they had mocked.” (16:33-34)

“It is God who sends water down from the sky and with it revives the earth when it is dead. There truly is a sign in this for people who listen.  In livestock, too, you have a lesson– We give you a drink from the contents of their bellies, between waste matter and blood, pure milk, sweet to the drinker.  From the fruits of date palms and grapes you take sweet juice and wholesome provisions. There truly is a sign in this for people who use their reason.  And your Lord inspired the bee, saying, ‘Build yourselves houses in the mountains and trees and what people construct.  Then feed on all kinds of fruit and follow the ways made easy for you by your Lord.’ From their bellies comes a drink of different colors in which there is healing for people. There truly is a sign in this for those who think.” (16:65-69)

The venerable Huston Smith, the great teacher of religions, just died at the ripe age of 97 (12/30/16).  To the last day, every day, he opened his eyes and called out “Good”.  There is a difference between the one who follows one’s whims and principle of pleasure (hedonism) and finds no other meaning in life and in the world, and the one who sees one’ thoughts, words, actions, body and soul are related to the divine and has made one’s awareness of God as one’s internal disposition, which we call it “taqwa”--God-consciousness.  This has been the quest and the question of all the East and the West: How could I conduct myself ethically, if I had the Ring of Gyges to be invisible, as Plato asked in the Republic?  All our secular answers have failed; our egoism, utilitarianism, psychological evolutionary ethics! Our worshipping power and pleasure, all of them have failed and brought ruin to us.  When I see my existence here, the thoughts I engage with, the words I employ, the ways I act ought to come to oneness of my conscience and only under this condition I can be happy and content, I will realize in this oneness, even if I had the Ring of Gyges, resides God and I experience connection to my divine source and say: “It is all good”, “It is all God’s mercy”.

“But when the righteous are asked, ‘What has your Lord sent down?’ they will say, ‘All that is good.’ There is a reward in this present world for those who do good, but their home in the Hereafter is far better: the home of the righteous is excellent.” (16:30)

I end this brief reflection with what I started:

“It is God who brought you out of your mothers’ wombs knowing nothing, and gave you hearing and sight and minds, so that you might be thankful.  Do they not see the birds made to fly through the air in the sky? Nothing holds them up except God. There truly are signs in this for those who believe.  It is God who has given you a place of rest in your homes and from the skins of animals made you homes that you find light [to handle] when you travel and when you set up camp; furnishings and comfort for a while from their wool, fur, and hair.  It is God who has given you shade from what He has created, and places of shelter in the mountains; garments to protect you from the heat, and garments to protect you in your wars. In this way, God perfects His blessings on you, so that you may devote yourselves to God.  But if they turn away [Prophet], your only duty is to deliver the message clearly.  They know God’s blessings, but refuse to recognize them: most of them are ungrateful.” (16:78-83)