18 Mayıs 2021 Salı
2 Ocak 2017 Pazartesi
Daily notes from the life! (2nd Jan 17)
Today is my first day to start up writing in this blog a series of daily papers. I intend to write every day my thoughts and feelings regarding anything which interests me on that day or anything that may be beneficial to others as well.
The main aim of this intention is to writing everyday, to improve my dedication ability of writing.
Its really a matter of pracice. If you write, you write.. when you long to write , it never comes to you. therefore you have to start writing n some point. It doesnt necessarily have to be a long paper. Even a ahoundred words piece would be enough to cover some ideas.
OK.
I say
Today I am at the middle of a project which took more than it deserved. I feel so bored to turn back to it and complete it. However, I am aware that if I dont finish it on time, I would be the only one who suffers and cries out of the consequence.
The project is mainly about a field study that is looking for the different discourses used in Turkey regarding Sunni and Shia relations. I have already collected the data last year,. But still struggling with the analysis.
There are two reasons for my struggle: 1. I am getting too lazy. I feel not so enthusiastic to attack the work and make it happen like before. I feel the slowness and laziness covering all my vody day by day. I know this is not an unchanngable consequence. I am pretty sure if I practice every day, I can overcome this problem by time. but it will take definitely some time.
2. The .. ok Ill continue tomorrow. Let me turn back to the project for now..
15 Ocak 2012 Pazar
The evil
Everything is good and beautiful, isn’t it?
This point explains one meaning of: (He) has made good everything He has created (32:7). Everything has an aspect of true beauty, and is either beautiful in itself (beautiful by itself) or beautiful on account of its results (beautiful through others). Some occurrences are apparently ugly and confused but, beneath that apparent veil, there are most radiant instances of beauty and order. Beneath the veil of spring’s stormy rains and muddy soil are smiles of innumerable beautiful flowers and well-ordered plants. Behind the veils of autumn’s harsh destruction and mournful separations are amiable small animals (friends of delicate, shy flowers) being discharged from their duties and preserved from winter’s blows and torments (manifestations of Divine Majesty). Under the veil of winter, the way is prepared for a new and beautiful spring. Beneath the veil of storms, earthquakes, plagues, and similar natural events are numerous hidden “immaterial flowers” that unfold. Seeds of many potential ties sprout and flourish due to apparently ugly events. It is as if upheavals, revolutions, and general changes function as “immaterial” rain. Being superficial and self-centered observers inclined to judge by outward appearances, we consider only the external and consider such events ugly, reason according to the result we desire and so consider them evil. But in reality, if one of these aims relates to us, many others are directly connected with their Maker’s Names. For example, we may consider thorny plants and trees harmful and meaningless, even though these great miracles of the Creator’s Power are “well-equipped, heroic guards” of plants and trees. God’s causing hawks to harry sparrows is apparently incompatible with Mercy. But such things cause sparrows to develop their potentialities.
We might consider snow to be cold and unpleasant, but under those veils are such warm purposes and sweet results that they are indescribable. As our judgments are based on outward appearance and our own interest, we suppose that many things that are perfectly polite and compatible with well-mannered behaviour are contrary to good manners. Some expressions of the Qur’an, the source of good manners and right conduct, about our private parts and affairs or relationships are perfectly polite and correct due to the art of their creation and the purposes intended thereby. Likewise, beneath the faces of apparently ugly and useless creatures and events are many beautiful and purposeful instances of art, as well as aspects of beauty concerning their creation? This shows that they are connected with their Maker. Beautiful veils conceal instances of wisdom, and many apparent instances of disorder and confusion are, in reality, the most well-arranged examples of sacred Divine composition.
Why there are evils in the existence?
If you were to ask: Allâh (May He be exalted) is All-Wise and SelfSufficient, so what is the wisdom in the creation of evil, ugliness, and misguidance in the world?
You would be told: Know that perfection, good, and beauty are essentially what are intended in the universe, and are in the majority. Relatively, defects, evil, and ugliness are in the minority, and are insignificant, secondary, and trivial. Their Creator created them interspersed among good and perfection not for their own sakes, but as preliminaries and units of measurement for the appearance, or existence, of the relative truths of good and perfection.
If you were to ask: So what is the importance of the relative truths for the sake of which partial evil is approved?
You would be told: Relative truths are the ties between beings and the threads with which their order is woven. They are the rays from which is reflected each unique being of the species in the universe. Relative truths are thousands of times more numerous than real truths, for if the real attributes of a person were sevenfold, the relative truths would be seven hundred. A lesser evil may therefore be forgiven, approved even, for the sake of the greater good. For to abandon the greater good because it contains some lesser evil, is a greater evil. And in the view of wisdom, if the lesser evil encounters the greater evil, the lesser evil becomes a relative good, as has been established in principle in zakât(giving charity) and jihad (war to protect your country from enemies) , for example. As is well-known, "things are known through their opposites," which means that the existence of a thing's opposite causes the manifestation and existence of its relative truths. For example, if there were no ugliness and it did not permeate beauty, the existence of beauty with its infinite degrees would not be apparent.
What is the importance of “The Mankind” and its “Actions”?
A tree’s life and the efforts spent for its growth are aimed at its fruits, which represent it and are the aim of its growth. Its life is aimed at the seeds, because each seed is an index bearing the tree’s entire meaning. Thus, the One Who creates the tree and the necessary conditions for its growth aims all manifestations of His Names concerned with the tree’s life at the fruit, the raison d’être of its existence. Furthermore, that huge tree is sometimes pruned to control its growth and make it yield better fruits for many years; they cut off some parts of it so that it may rejuvenate.
Similarly, as we are the Tree of Creation’s fruit, we are the reason for the universe’s creation and existence, and the human heart is the most illumined and comprehensive mirror of the Maker of the universe. Because of this, humanity undergoes frequent pruning in the form of convulsions, revolutions, upheavals, and physical and social change, and it will cause the destruction and re-construction of the universe. The door of this world will be closed and the door of a new one be opened for its judgement.
...........
The way of Prophethood and belief, as well as the doctrine of Divine Unity, deal with everything from the viewpoint of Unity, the Hereafter, and God’s Divinity. Thus they see truth and reality from the same perspective. Modern scientific views and philosophy, however, are concerned with nature, causality, and things in their multiplicity. These points of view have almost nothing in common. And so the greatest aim of philosophers and scientists is almost imperceptible in comparison with the aims of the scholars of religious methodology and theology.
What is the Relationship between “the man’s actions” and “the evil”?
• Why Adam was sent out of Paradise?
• Why Satan was created?
• Why God afflicts the innocent with misfortune?
YOUR FIRST QUESTION: Why was Adam sent out of Paradise, and why will some people be thrown into Hell?
ANSWER: Humanity has a unique duty in the universe. Adam was sent to Earth with so sublime a duty that humanity was made the object of an infinite spiritual evolution, a comprehensive mirror in which all Divine Names are reflected. This duty enabled humanity to develop its full potential. If Adam had stayed in Heaven, his rank would have been fixed and humanity’s full potential would not have developed. Humanity was not created to worship God in the manner of angels, whose worship does not cause them to evolve spiritually. Divine Wisdom must have required a different world in which humanity could attain the highest ranks and fully develop its potential. This is why Adam was sent to Earth after he lapsed, which, in fact, was what fulfilling human nature requires. As this expulsion was a mercy for humanity and in complete accord with wisdom, it is absolutely right and just to throw unbelievers into Hell.
At first, it might seem improper for wisdom and justice to condemn unbelievers to eternal punishment because of their unbelief during their short lives here. But in reality it is fully just and right that the All-Overwhelming One of Majesty puts them in Hell forever, for unbelief insults and degrades creation and denies and contradicts all creatures’ witnessing to God’s Oneness. Moreover, it falsifies God’s Beautiful Names, which are reflected continually in the mirrors of all living and non-living things. Therefore unbelief is an infinitely great crime, and God will call unbelievers to account and punish them for treating creation so unjustly.
Why was Satan created? Why does evil exist, when creating evil is itself an evil, and creating ugliness is ugly?
ANSWER: Creating or conferring existence on evil is not an evil, for people have free will. God gives objective existence to our willed actions. People will and do something, and God creates it. And so it is our own willing and doing of evil that is evil and ugly, not God’s giving objective existence to it. If God did not create what we will and do, our free will would be annulled.
Also, God’s creation involves the universe, not just one act, and should be evaluated on results and not only on the acts themselves. For example, rain produces many results, almost all of which are beneficial. If some people are harmed due to water’s misuse, they cannot argue that rain’s creation is anything but a grace. Fire also has many benefits. If some people are harmed by it through their own ill-will and misuse, they cannot claim that fire’s creation is something other than wholly good. As fire was not created to burn one’s hand, those who accidentally burn their hands have no right to conclude that creating fire is evil.
In short, a lesser evil is not resisted for the sake of a greater good. If people do not agree to endure a lesser evil in return for a much greater good, they will suffer a greater evil. For example, people may not want to fight for Islam since doing so endangers their lives and possessions. But such a holy fight has great benefits: Muslims are saved from invasion and Islam continues to bless them in both worlds. If Muslims renounce such a fight on the pretext of suffering loss, they will experience even greater loss. A gangrenous finger must be amputated, although it seems an evil, or else one day the whole hand will have to be cut off (an even greater evil).
Thus it is not an evil that God created and creates devils and apparently evil and disastrous acts, for they produce good and important results. For example, angels do not rise to the higher spiritual ranks because devils cannot tempt them into deviation. Animals have fixed stations, and so cannot rise to higher stations or fall to lower ones. But human beings can acquire endless ranks or stations, all the way from the top to the bottom. There is an infinitely long line of spiritual evolution between the ranks of the greatest Prophets and saints and such people as Pharaoh and Nimrod. Thus this world is the field and this life the term, in which people are tested so that elevated diamond-like spirits may be distinguished from base coal-like ones. This is why devils were created and Prophets were sent with Divine commandments. Without such testing, good and evil could not be distinguished and would be treated equally: The spirit of Abu Bakr, who rose to the highest level after the Prophets, would remain at the same level as that of Abu Jahl, who fell to the lowest level. Thus the creation of devils and evil is wholly good, for they cause good and universal results to be achieved. Those who suffer because of them do so because of their own weakness, misuse of their free will, or some external circumstances that they caused to appear. As a result, all evil and misfortune that happen to people lie in themselves, not in God’s creation of them.
IF YOU ASK: As sending Prophets has caused many or even most people to become unbelievers because of Satan’s seduction, how can you say that creating evil things and acts is good, that raising Prophets is a mercy for humanity?
ANSWER: As quality is always far more important than quantity, we should consider only qualitative values in making our judgment. To cite an example: 100 date-stones are worth only 100 cents until they are planted and grow into palm trees. But if only 20 grow into trees and the remaining 80 rot because of over-watering, how can you say it is an evil to plant and water them? Everyone would agree that it is wholly good to have 20 trees at the expense of 80 date-stones, since 20 trees will give 20,000 date-stones. Again, 100 peacock eggs are worth maybe 500 cents. But if she sits on the eggs and only 20 hatches, who can say it is an evil that 80 eggs were spoiled in return for 20 peacocks? On the contrary, it is wholly good to have 20 peacocks at the expense of 80 eggs, because the 20 peacocks will be worth far more than the eggs and will lay more eggs.
And so it is with humanity. Our being raised up by Prophets, as well as our fight against Satan and our carnal self, result in the loss of animal-like people, unbelievers, and hypocrites (more in number but poorer in quality) in exchange for hundreds of thousands of Prophets, millions of saints, and billions of people of wisdom and sincerity—the suns, moons, and stars of the human world.
YOUR THIRD QUESTION: Is it just for God to afflict innocent people and animals with misfortune and suffering?
ANSWER: No injustice can be attributed to Him, for He owns all of creation and so can do with it as He wills. Consider this analogy: A skilful clothes designer pays you to serve as a model to display his artistry. He fashions the jewelled garment he has made you wear as he wills, and tells you to sit and stand. How can you say: “You cause me trouble by making me sit and stand? Also, you have damaged this cloth that makes me look beautiful.” Such objections would be sheer impertinence.
God, the Majestic Creator, dresses you in an artistically fashioned garment (e.g., the body, jewelled with eyes, ears, a nose, and a tongue, etc.). To show His Beautiful Names’ works, He makes you ill, hungry, and thirsty, and afflicts you with misfortune. He exposes you to various conditions so that you may be perfected and His Beautiful Names may be manifested. Given this, your objection will cause many instances of wisdom to silence you.
Monotony and inertia are a kind of non-existence, while activity and alteration mature life through suffering and misfortune. Life grows stronger and purer and develops fully through the Divine Beautiful Names’ operation. Ultimately, life becomes the pen with which people determine and write their own fate. Thus they fully deserve their reward (or punishment) in the Afterlife.
......
Q u e s t i o n : The creation of devils, who are pure evil, and their harassing the people of belief, and many people not believing and going to Hell because of them, appears to be terrible and ugly. How does the mercy and beauty of the Absolutely Beauteous One, the Absolutely Compassionate One, and the Truly Merciful One, permit this infinite ugliness and awesome calamity?
Many people have asked about this question, and it occurs to many people.
T he Answer: In addition to the minor evils, there are numerous universal good purposes in the existence of Satan, and human attainments and perfections. Yes, however many degrees there are from a seed to a huge tree, the abilities lodged in human nature are more numerous. There are degrees from a minute particle to the sun. For these abilities and potentialities to develop, action is required, a transaction is necessary. The action of the mechanism of progress in such a transaction is brought about through striving. And striving occurs through the existence of evil spirits and harmful things. Otherwise man’s station would have been constant like that of the angels. There would have been no classes in human kind, which resembles thousands of species. And it is contrary to wisdom and justice to abandon a thousand instances of good so as to avoid one minor evil.
For sure the majority of people embrace misguidance due to Satan, but importance and value look mostly to quality; they look to quantity little or not at all. If someone has a thousand and ten seeds which he buries, and under the earth the seeds undergo a chemical reaction as a result of which ten become trees and a thousand rot, the profit the man receives from the ten seeds which have become trees certainly reduces to nothing the loss he suffers from the thousand rotted ones. In exactly the same way, through the struggle against the soul and Satan, the profit, honour, enlightenment, and value for human kind gained by ten perfect men, who are like stars, certainly reduce to nothing the harm caused to mankind through the people of misguidance embracing unbelief, who are so base as to be thought of as vermin. Since this is so, Divine mercy, wisdom, and justice have permitted the existence of Satan, and allowed him to molest men.
If it is said: The calamities, ugliness, and evils in this world are contrary to that all-embracing mercy, and spoil it.
The Answer: This question has been answered completely satisfactorily in various parts of the Risale-i Nur such as the Treatise On Divine Determining. Referring you to them, here we make only a brief allusion, as follows:
All the elements, all the realms of beings, and all creatures, have numerous duties, particular and universal, and each of those duties yields numerous results and fruits. For the most part these are beneficial, beautiful, good, and are mercy. Only a few of them encounter those lacking ability, those who act wrongly, or those who deserve punishment and disciplining, or those who will be the means of producing many shoots of good. An apparent, minor evil is ugliness; it is apparently unkind. But if for that minor evil not to occur, the element and universal being is prevented by mercy from performing its duty, then all its other good and beautiful results would not come into existence. Since the non-existence of a good is evil and the spoiling of beauty is ugly, evils, ugliness, and pitilessness would occur to the number of those results. Thus, hundreds of evil and instances of unkindness would be perpetrated just so that one evil would not occur, which would be entirely contrary to wisdom, benefit, and the mercy of dominicality. For example, things like snow, cold, fire, and rain have hundreds of benefits and purposes. If through their own choice careless or imprudent people harm themselves, for instance if they put their hands in the fire and say there is no mercy in its creation, the innumerable good, beneficial, merciful uses of fire will give them the lie, and hit them in the mouth.
Moreover, man's selfish desires and lowly emotions, which are blind to consequences, cannot be the criteria, measure, or balance of the laws of mercy, sovereignty, and dominicality which are in force in the universe. He sees things according to the colour of his own mirror. A black-hearted, cruel person sees the universe as weeping, ugly, dark, and tyrannical. But if he looks through the eye of belief, he sees a macroanthropos(macro-human=world) clothed in seventy thousand beautiful garments one over the other, sewn of instances of mercy, good, and wisdom. Like a houri of Paradise dressed in seventy fine garments, it is always laughing, smiling with mercy. He will observe that mankind within it is a miniature universe, and each individual man a microcosm. He will exclaim with all his heart and spirit:
"All praise be to God, the Sustainer of All the Worlds * The Merciful, the Compassionate. * Owner of the Day of Judgement!"
This point explains one meaning of: (He) has made good everything He has created (32:7). Everything has an aspect of true beauty, and is either beautiful in itself (beautiful by itself) or beautiful on account of its results (beautiful through others). Some occurrences are apparently ugly and confused but, beneath that apparent veil, there are most radiant instances of beauty and order. Beneath the veil of spring’s stormy rains and muddy soil are smiles of innumerable beautiful flowers and well-ordered plants. Behind the veils of autumn’s harsh destruction and mournful separations are amiable small animals (friends of delicate, shy flowers) being discharged from their duties and preserved from winter’s blows and torments (manifestations of Divine Majesty). Under the veil of winter, the way is prepared for a new and beautiful spring. Beneath the veil of storms, earthquakes, plagues, and similar natural events are numerous hidden “immaterial flowers” that unfold. Seeds of many potential ties sprout and flourish due to apparently ugly events. It is as if upheavals, revolutions, and general changes function as “immaterial” rain. Being superficial and self-centered observers inclined to judge by outward appearances, we consider only the external and consider such events ugly, reason according to the result we desire and so consider them evil. But in reality, if one of these aims relates to us, many others are directly connected with their Maker’s Names. For example, we may consider thorny plants and trees harmful and meaningless, even though these great miracles of the Creator’s Power are “well-equipped, heroic guards” of plants and trees. God’s causing hawks to harry sparrows is apparently incompatible with Mercy. But such things cause sparrows to develop their potentialities.
We might consider snow to be cold and unpleasant, but under those veils are such warm purposes and sweet results that they are indescribable. As our judgments are based on outward appearance and our own interest, we suppose that many things that are perfectly polite and compatible with well-mannered behaviour are contrary to good manners. Some expressions of the Qur’an, the source of good manners and right conduct, about our private parts and affairs or relationships are perfectly polite and correct due to the art of their creation and the purposes intended thereby. Likewise, beneath the faces of apparently ugly and useless creatures and events are many beautiful and purposeful instances of art, as well as aspects of beauty concerning their creation? This shows that they are connected with their Maker. Beautiful veils conceal instances of wisdom, and many apparent instances of disorder and confusion are, in reality, the most well-arranged examples of sacred Divine composition.
Why there are evils in the existence?
If you were to ask: Allâh (May He be exalted) is All-Wise and SelfSufficient, so what is the wisdom in the creation of evil, ugliness, and misguidance in the world?
You would be told: Know that perfection, good, and beauty are essentially what are intended in the universe, and are in the majority. Relatively, defects, evil, and ugliness are in the minority, and are insignificant, secondary, and trivial. Their Creator created them interspersed among good and perfection not for their own sakes, but as preliminaries and units of measurement for the appearance, or existence, of the relative truths of good and perfection.
If you were to ask: So what is the importance of the relative truths for the sake of which partial evil is approved?
You would be told: Relative truths are the ties between beings and the threads with which their order is woven. They are the rays from which is reflected each unique being of the species in the universe. Relative truths are thousands of times more numerous than real truths, for if the real attributes of a person were sevenfold, the relative truths would be seven hundred. A lesser evil may therefore be forgiven, approved even, for the sake of the greater good. For to abandon the greater good because it contains some lesser evil, is a greater evil. And in the view of wisdom, if the lesser evil encounters the greater evil, the lesser evil becomes a relative good, as has been established in principle in zakât(giving charity) and jihad (war to protect your country from enemies) , for example. As is well-known, "things are known through their opposites," which means that the existence of a thing's opposite causes the manifestation and existence of its relative truths. For example, if there were no ugliness and it did not permeate beauty, the existence of beauty with its infinite degrees would not be apparent.
What is the importance of “The Mankind” and its “Actions”?
A tree’s life and the efforts spent for its growth are aimed at its fruits, which represent it and are the aim of its growth. Its life is aimed at the seeds, because each seed is an index bearing the tree’s entire meaning. Thus, the One Who creates the tree and the necessary conditions for its growth aims all manifestations of His Names concerned with the tree’s life at the fruit, the raison d’être of its existence. Furthermore, that huge tree is sometimes pruned to control its growth and make it yield better fruits for many years; they cut off some parts of it so that it may rejuvenate.
Similarly, as we are the Tree of Creation’s fruit, we are the reason for the universe’s creation and existence, and the human heart is the most illumined and comprehensive mirror of the Maker of the universe. Because of this, humanity undergoes frequent pruning in the form of convulsions, revolutions, upheavals, and physical and social change, and it will cause the destruction and re-construction of the universe. The door of this world will be closed and the door of a new one be opened for its judgement.
...........
The way of Prophethood and belief, as well as the doctrine of Divine Unity, deal with everything from the viewpoint of Unity, the Hereafter, and God’s Divinity. Thus they see truth and reality from the same perspective. Modern scientific views and philosophy, however, are concerned with nature, causality, and things in their multiplicity. These points of view have almost nothing in common. And so the greatest aim of philosophers and scientists is almost imperceptible in comparison with the aims of the scholars of religious methodology and theology.
What is the Relationship between “the man’s actions” and “the evil”?
• Why Adam was sent out of Paradise?
• Why Satan was created?
• Why God afflicts the innocent with misfortune?
YOUR FIRST QUESTION: Why was Adam sent out of Paradise, and why will some people be thrown into Hell?
ANSWER: Humanity has a unique duty in the universe. Adam was sent to Earth with so sublime a duty that humanity was made the object of an infinite spiritual evolution, a comprehensive mirror in which all Divine Names are reflected. This duty enabled humanity to develop its full potential. If Adam had stayed in Heaven, his rank would have been fixed and humanity’s full potential would not have developed. Humanity was not created to worship God in the manner of angels, whose worship does not cause them to evolve spiritually. Divine Wisdom must have required a different world in which humanity could attain the highest ranks and fully develop its potential. This is why Adam was sent to Earth after he lapsed, which, in fact, was what fulfilling human nature requires. As this expulsion was a mercy for humanity and in complete accord with wisdom, it is absolutely right and just to throw unbelievers into Hell.
At first, it might seem improper for wisdom and justice to condemn unbelievers to eternal punishment because of their unbelief during their short lives here. But in reality it is fully just and right that the All-Overwhelming One of Majesty puts them in Hell forever, for unbelief insults and degrades creation and denies and contradicts all creatures’ witnessing to God’s Oneness. Moreover, it falsifies God’s Beautiful Names, which are reflected continually in the mirrors of all living and non-living things. Therefore unbelief is an infinitely great crime, and God will call unbelievers to account and punish them for treating creation so unjustly.
Why was Satan created? Why does evil exist, when creating evil is itself an evil, and creating ugliness is ugly?
ANSWER: Creating or conferring existence on evil is not an evil, for people have free will. God gives objective existence to our willed actions. People will and do something, and God creates it. And so it is our own willing and doing of evil that is evil and ugly, not God’s giving objective existence to it. If God did not create what we will and do, our free will would be annulled.
Also, God’s creation involves the universe, not just one act, and should be evaluated on results and not only on the acts themselves. For example, rain produces many results, almost all of which are beneficial. If some people are harmed due to water’s misuse, they cannot argue that rain’s creation is anything but a grace. Fire also has many benefits. If some people are harmed by it through their own ill-will and misuse, they cannot claim that fire’s creation is something other than wholly good. As fire was not created to burn one’s hand, those who accidentally burn their hands have no right to conclude that creating fire is evil.
In short, a lesser evil is not resisted for the sake of a greater good. If people do not agree to endure a lesser evil in return for a much greater good, they will suffer a greater evil. For example, people may not want to fight for Islam since doing so endangers their lives and possessions. But such a holy fight has great benefits: Muslims are saved from invasion and Islam continues to bless them in both worlds. If Muslims renounce such a fight on the pretext of suffering loss, they will experience even greater loss. A gangrenous finger must be amputated, although it seems an evil, or else one day the whole hand will have to be cut off (an even greater evil).
Thus it is not an evil that God created and creates devils and apparently evil and disastrous acts, for they produce good and important results. For example, angels do not rise to the higher spiritual ranks because devils cannot tempt them into deviation. Animals have fixed stations, and so cannot rise to higher stations or fall to lower ones. But human beings can acquire endless ranks or stations, all the way from the top to the bottom. There is an infinitely long line of spiritual evolution between the ranks of the greatest Prophets and saints and such people as Pharaoh and Nimrod. Thus this world is the field and this life the term, in which people are tested so that elevated diamond-like spirits may be distinguished from base coal-like ones. This is why devils were created and Prophets were sent with Divine commandments. Without such testing, good and evil could not be distinguished and would be treated equally: The spirit of Abu Bakr, who rose to the highest level after the Prophets, would remain at the same level as that of Abu Jahl, who fell to the lowest level. Thus the creation of devils and evil is wholly good, for they cause good and universal results to be achieved. Those who suffer because of them do so because of their own weakness, misuse of their free will, or some external circumstances that they caused to appear. As a result, all evil and misfortune that happen to people lie in themselves, not in God’s creation of them.
IF YOU ASK: As sending Prophets has caused many or even most people to become unbelievers because of Satan’s seduction, how can you say that creating evil things and acts is good, that raising Prophets is a mercy for humanity?
ANSWER: As quality is always far more important than quantity, we should consider only qualitative values in making our judgment. To cite an example: 100 date-stones are worth only 100 cents until they are planted and grow into palm trees. But if only 20 grow into trees and the remaining 80 rot because of over-watering, how can you say it is an evil to plant and water them? Everyone would agree that it is wholly good to have 20 trees at the expense of 80 date-stones, since 20 trees will give 20,000 date-stones. Again, 100 peacock eggs are worth maybe 500 cents. But if she sits on the eggs and only 20 hatches, who can say it is an evil that 80 eggs were spoiled in return for 20 peacocks? On the contrary, it is wholly good to have 20 peacocks at the expense of 80 eggs, because the 20 peacocks will be worth far more than the eggs and will lay more eggs.
And so it is with humanity. Our being raised up by Prophets, as well as our fight against Satan and our carnal self, result in the loss of animal-like people, unbelievers, and hypocrites (more in number but poorer in quality) in exchange for hundreds of thousands of Prophets, millions of saints, and billions of people of wisdom and sincerity—the suns, moons, and stars of the human world.
YOUR THIRD QUESTION: Is it just for God to afflict innocent people and animals with misfortune and suffering?
ANSWER: No injustice can be attributed to Him, for He owns all of creation and so can do with it as He wills. Consider this analogy: A skilful clothes designer pays you to serve as a model to display his artistry. He fashions the jewelled garment he has made you wear as he wills, and tells you to sit and stand. How can you say: “You cause me trouble by making me sit and stand? Also, you have damaged this cloth that makes me look beautiful.” Such objections would be sheer impertinence.
God, the Majestic Creator, dresses you in an artistically fashioned garment (e.g., the body, jewelled with eyes, ears, a nose, and a tongue, etc.). To show His Beautiful Names’ works, He makes you ill, hungry, and thirsty, and afflicts you with misfortune. He exposes you to various conditions so that you may be perfected and His Beautiful Names may be manifested. Given this, your objection will cause many instances of wisdom to silence you.
Monotony and inertia are a kind of non-existence, while activity and alteration mature life through suffering and misfortune. Life grows stronger and purer and develops fully through the Divine Beautiful Names’ operation. Ultimately, life becomes the pen with which people determine and write their own fate. Thus they fully deserve their reward (or punishment) in the Afterlife.
......
Q u e s t i o n : The creation of devils, who are pure evil, and their harassing the people of belief, and many people not believing and going to Hell because of them, appears to be terrible and ugly. How does the mercy and beauty of the Absolutely Beauteous One, the Absolutely Compassionate One, and the Truly Merciful One, permit this infinite ugliness and awesome calamity?
Many people have asked about this question, and it occurs to many people.
T he Answer: In addition to the minor evils, there are numerous universal good purposes in the existence of Satan, and human attainments and perfections. Yes, however many degrees there are from a seed to a huge tree, the abilities lodged in human nature are more numerous. There are degrees from a minute particle to the sun. For these abilities and potentialities to develop, action is required, a transaction is necessary. The action of the mechanism of progress in such a transaction is brought about through striving. And striving occurs through the existence of evil spirits and harmful things. Otherwise man’s station would have been constant like that of the angels. There would have been no classes in human kind, which resembles thousands of species. And it is contrary to wisdom and justice to abandon a thousand instances of good so as to avoid one minor evil.
For sure the majority of people embrace misguidance due to Satan, but importance and value look mostly to quality; they look to quantity little or not at all. If someone has a thousand and ten seeds which he buries, and under the earth the seeds undergo a chemical reaction as a result of which ten become trees and a thousand rot, the profit the man receives from the ten seeds which have become trees certainly reduces to nothing the loss he suffers from the thousand rotted ones. In exactly the same way, through the struggle against the soul and Satan, the profit, honour, enlightenment, and value for human kind gained by ten perfect men, who are like stars, certainly reduce to nothing the harm caused to mankind through the people of misguidance embracing unbelief, who are so base as to be thought of as vermin. Since this is so, Divine mercy, wisdom, and justice have permitted the existence of Satan, and allowed him to molest men.
If it is said: The calamities, ugliness, and evils in this world are contrary to that all-embracing mercy, and spoil it.
The Answer: This question has been answered completely satisfactorily in various parts of the Risale-i Nur such as the Treatise On Divine Determining. Referring you to them, here we make only a brief allusion, as follows:
All the elements, all the realms of beings, and all creatures, have numerous duties, particular and universal, and each of those duties yields numerous results and fruits. For the most part these are beneficial, beautiful, good, and are mercy. Only a few of them encounter those lacking ability, those who act wrongly, or those who deserve punishment and disciplining, or those who will be the means of producing many shoots of good. An apparent, minor evil is ugliness; it is apparently unkind. But if for that minor evil not to occur, the element and universal being is prevented by mercy from performing its duty, then all its other good and beautiful results would not come into existence. Since the non-existence of a good is evil and the spoiling of beauty is ugly, evils, ugliness, and pitilessness would occur to the number of those results. Thus, hundreds of evil and instances of unkindness would be perpetrated just so that one evil would not occur, which would be entirely contrary to wisdom, benefit, and the mercy of dominicality. For example, things like snow, cold, fire, and rain have hundreds of benefits and purposes. If through their own choice careless or imprudent people harm themselves, for instance if they put their hands in the fire and say there is no mercy in its creation, the innumerable good, beneficial, merciful uses of fire will give them the lie, and hit them in the mouth.
Moreover, man's selfish desires and lowly emotions, which are blind to consequences, cannot be the criteria, measure, or balance of the laws of mercy, sovereignty, and dominicality which are in force in the universe. He sees things according to the colour of his own mirror. A black-hearted, cruel person sees the universe as weeping, ugly, dark, and tyrannical. But if he looks through the eye of belief, he sees a macroanthropos(macro-human=world) clothed in seventy thousand beautiful garments one over the other, sewn of instances of mercy, good, and wisdom. Like a houri of Paradise dressed in seventy fine garments, it is always laughing, smiling with mercy. He will observe that mankind within it is a miniature universe, and each individual man a microcosm. He will exclaim with all his heart and spirit:
"All praise be to God, the Sustainer of All the Worlds * The Merciful, the Compassionate. * Owner of the Day of Judgement!"
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