The Evil of Their Deeds Will Become Plain to Them 

Four points in the passages below, from the Quran, the last stark warning of God to humanity, keep me thinking. 

First, during my life I have gone through and seen people with different outlooks go throw deluding themselves about their death.  They hope they may be able to reverse it and to become younger and the whole industry of genome project and cloning hopes for immortality for human beings on this planet—or after trashing the earth—on some other planet.  But there is no delusion for the prophet: 

“YOU [PROPHET] WILL CERTAINLY DIE, AND SO WILL THEY, AND, ON THE DAY OF RESURRECTION, YOU WILL DISPUTE WITH ONE ANOTHER IN THE PRESENCE OF YOUR LORD.  So, who could be more wrong than the person who invents a lie about God and rejects the truth when it comes to him?  Is there not ample punishment for the disbelievers in Hell?  It is the one who brings the truth and the one who accepts it as true who are mindful of God: they will have everything they wish for with their Lord. Such is the reward of those who do good: God will absolve them even of their worst deeds and will reward them according to their best.” (39:30-34)

Second. Remember that the whole narration is around the last warning to humanity and the pending Day of Judgement.  The Truth is expressed as God declaring the end of evil and time.  And the faith that thanks to God that I arrived after long time of being lost and sinful, through enquiry and the grace of God to know that:

“IS GOD NOT ENOUGH FOR HIS SERVANT? Yet they threaten you [Prophet] with those they worship other than Him. If God allows someone to stray he has no one to guide him; if God guides someone no one can lead him astray. Is God not mighty and capable of retribution? 38 If you [Prophet] ask them, ‘Who created the heavens and earth?’ they are sure to answer, ‘God,’ so say, ‘Consider those you invoke beside Him: if God wished to harm me, could they undo that harm? If God wished to show me mercy, could they withhold that mercy?’ Say, ‘God is enough for me: all those who trust should put their trust in Him.’  Say, ‘My people, do whatever is in your power– and so will I. You will find out 40 who will suffer humiliation, and on whom a lasting torment will descend.’” (39:36-39)

Third, I came to understand it clearly that my gratitude and prayers, in attuning myself to the will of God, is my salvation and peace whether in this world or in the world to come.  I am and will be benefited from my gratitude, not God.  In loving parents, siblings, family, strangers, people, the poor, the destitute, and God it is me who am released from the rigid boundaries of ‘I’ and become free to a richer life and salvation.  It is me who find my way from dark to light, not God.  Giving and Forgiving is the essence of God, who doesn’t need anything.  And it is me who by lack of gratitude to God attract and draw darkness into my soul and body and write my destiny for Hell, not God.  God has given us a choice to decide for our destiny.  One can choose the path of cancer cells or life:

“We have sent the Scripture down to you [Prophet] with the Truth for people. WHOEVER FOLLOWS THE GUIDANCE DOES SO FOR HIS OWN BENEFIT, WHOEVER STRAYS AWAY FROM IT DOES SO AT HIS OWN PERIL: YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE OF THEM.  God takes the souls of the dead and the souls of the living while they sleep– He keeps hold of those whose death He has ordained and sends the others back until their appointed time– there truly are signs in this for those who reflect.  Yet they take intercessors besides God! Say, ‘Even though these have no power or understanding?’  Say, ‘All intercession belongs to God alone; He holds control of the heavens and the earth; in the end you will all return to Him.’” (39:41-44)

Fourth. The Truth comes and will come in absolute clarity to us.  Every deep truth will show itself and come to the surface.  We shall witness and understand the Truth in our flesh and blood.  We shall see that we had a choice between worshipping our own desires and whims, worshipping our transient life on this phenomenal world, or to connect and transcend to the ultimate direction that undoes nihilism, naturalism, and despair and opens up the horizon for us to experience the ecstatic bliss of experiencing God.  The Truth shall overwhelm us: 

“Whenever God is mentioned on His own, the hearts of those who do not believe in the Hereafter shrink with aversion, but they rejoice when gods other than Him are mentioned.  Say, ‘God! Creator of the heavens and earth! Knower of all that is hidden and all that is open, You will judge between Your servants regarding their differences.’  If the evildoers possessed the earth’s assets twice over they would offer them to ransom themselves from the terrible suffering on the Day of Resurrection: GOD WILL SHOW THEM SOMETHING THEY HAD NOT RECKONED WITH, THE EVIL OF THEIR DEEDS WILL BECOME PLAIN TO THEM, AND THEY WILL BE OVERWHELMED BY THAT AT WHICH THEY USED TO LAUGH.” (39:45-48)

Ingratitude to God Is the Suffering of Soul

God doesn’t need us but feels satisfaction and is pleased when we show gratitude.  But for us ‘gratitude to God’ is our destiny.  We need it more than anything else.  But look at our time: for so many gratitude is gone.  We have lost the sense of reverence for life and being alive.  A constant stimulation, whether work, exercise, eating, making love, taking care of family, art or scientific and philosophical curiosity—when I was a disbeliever I used to do all of these and feel to be in the dark.  But if you ask those who don’t believe and thus live this disbelief, which is walking on the edge of razor, because deceptions and temptations are always in the way, they succumb to the God given enthusiasm and passion for life and reject that they are in the dark.  I know that because I have been one of disbelievers.  There is no other way to go.  It is pleasure or curiosity.  One feels this fresh air and water and loves life, but to no avail, because in the depth of the heart of disbeliever is despair.  The universe is indifferent and dead. I am here as an accident.  There is no real point in life.  However, I continue living, and like ouroboros who bites its tail, continue worshipping “humanity” and “humanism” and “naturalism”.  But they don’t know and have lost hope to know why they are here.  What is the point of all these?  What is “naturalism” that they worship? 

The ingratitude to God has consequences and the above description is the first consequence: to be in the dark.  The second consequence is that we become cancerous as the beating heart of life is gratitude to God.  Those who are blind to this source think they will die and turn into dust, because they have only faith in the phenomenal world.  They are unaware of their eternal soul.  The suffering will ensue for ingratitude, as one disconnects from the source of life and becomes alienated to it.  The scriptures from the time immemorial are reminding us from this fact.  I used to think it is a human made machinery for feeling good, that there is a justice after death or to control, as some say, others.  But I know that it is the truth now.  Only those who are ensnared in despair and are in the dark will deny the consequences of ingratitude.  The Quran is the last reminder and a stark warning of this fact:

 

“When man suffers some affliction, he prays to his Lord and turns to Him, but once he has been granted a favor from God, he forgets the One he had been praying to and sets up rivals to God, to make others stray from His path. Say, ‘Enjoy your ingratitude for a little while: you will be one of the inhabitants of the Fire.’  What about someone who worships devoutly during the night, bowing down, standing in prayer, ever mindful of the life to come, hoping for his Lord’s mercy? Say, ‘How can those who know be equal to those who do not know?’ Only those who have understanding will take heed.” (39:8-9)

“Have you not considered that God sends water down from the sky, guides it along to form springs in the earth, and then, with it, brings forth vegetation of various colors, which later withers, turns yellow before your eyes, and is crumbled to dust at His command?  There is truly a reminder in this for those who have understanding. 

What about the one whose heart God has opened in devotion to Him, so that he walks in light from his Lord? Alas for those whose hearts harden at the mention of God! They have clearly lost their way.  God has sent down the most beautiful of all teachings: a Scripture that is consistent and draws comparisons; that causes the skins of those in awe of their Lord to shiver. Then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God: such is God’s guidance.  He guides with it whoever He will; no one can guide those God leaves to stray.” (39:21-23)

Autonomy without Theonomy Is Cancerous

Pay attention to the structure of surah “Saad”: First it expresses the warning of God in this last Scripture and prophethood.  The last reminder.  Is it not strange or telling—what worth reflection—that after the Quran, we don’t have any text to create a new religion with a truth and consistency and thus authority to penetrate hearts?  Second, the surah indicates the destiny of those who rejected their prophets in this world: they suffered and were destroyed.  Third, we have a few points about the prophet David.  In the story of David, when he followed his own desires and took another man’s wife, he is persuaded to be just.  It shows that even prophets are prone to act unjustly and fall astray to their desires.  And then the first conclusion: the creation of the heaven and the earth has a purpose: to separate good from bad or evil.  Fourth, we have a lesson about Solomon on how, at one point, he follows his own desires and suffers and then is forgiven, similar to his father, and were given several gifts by God.  Fifth, we have a brief narration about Job and the sufferings that was afflicted upon him by Satan, and how God relieved him from those afflictions.  The emphasis is: he was patient in the face of adversary.  Then, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are mentioned as those who devoted themselves in “sincere remembering of the Final Home”.  Sixth, we have a depiction of Hell and Heaven. Seventh, the below verses about how Satan rebelled against good by its arrogance and self-centeredness, which end the surah.  When we look at the structure of this surah: we have a consistent narration about the story of the beginning and end of universe and the beginning and end of evil: it started from Satanic following desires and declaration of cancerous separation and grandiosity—that Satan is better than humans—and those who follow Satan in this self-destructive grandiosity indeed follow their own desires and whims.  As with cancer, the outcome is getting far from Good and God and suffering in Hell.  It is God’s mercy to send Scriptures to warn us of this outcome and to encourage us to purify ourselves:

“[Prophet] say, ‘I am only here to give warning. There is no god but God the One, the All Powerful, Lord of the heavens and earth and everything between, the Almighty, the Most Forgiving.’  Say, ‘This message is a mighty one, yet you ignore it.  I have no knowledge of what those on high discuss: it is only revealed to me that I am here to give clear warning.’ 

Your Lord said to the angels, ‘I will create a man from clay.  When I have shaped him and breathed from My Spirit into him, bow down before him.’  The angels all bowed down together, but not Iblis, who was too proud. He became a rebel.  God said, ‘Iblis, what prevents you from bowing down to the man I have made with My own hands?  Are you too high and mighty?’  Iblis said, ‘I am better than him: You made me from fire, and him from clay.’  ‘Get out of here! You are rejected: My rejection will follow you till the Day of Judgement!’ but Iblis said, ‘My Lord, grant me respite until the Day when they are raised from the dead,’ so He said, ‘You have respite till the Appointed Day.’  Iblis said, ‘I swear by Your might! I will tempt all but Your true servants.’  God said, ‘This is the truth– I speak only the truth– I will fill Hell with you and all those that follow you.’ 

[Prophet], say, ‘I ask no reward from you for this, nor do I claim to be what I am not: this is only a warning for all people.  In time you will certainly come to know its truth.’” (38:65-88)