If only the Qur'an had elaborated on God somewhere, gave us enough of a description so that we could fill in the lines. I did not come all this way only to find out that God is incomprehensible - an inscrutable mystery - and that for me there is no hope.
No wonder we humans tend to deify our own or to humanize God. Although this creates for me more rational dilemmas then it solves; it does lend God some tangibility. I guess I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I wanted God to be utterly exalted above creation, utterly unlike the humanity I was part of, and at the same time reachable.
What a fool I had been, deluding myself into thinking that the Qur'an could somehow bridge the infinite gulf between God and humanity, that it could logically relate human suffering to divine intimacy. We hardly understand the human personality; how could it make sense of the relationship between God and man? It took reading the entire text to prove that I had been right all along, that there is no possible theological rationalization for human existence.
I was finally beginning to see clearly again. I was wrong when I just said that we understand our fellow man. We do not understand our humanity; we only know it through experience. I do not fully comprehend who I am, my motivations, my anxieties, my dreams, my emotions, my conscience and psychology. I do not grasp my humanity intellectually; I know it through my being human. Virtually all of my knowledge of humanness is subjective. This leads, however, to a seemingly inescapable conclusion. For if we cannot come at all close to experiencing divinity, which appears to be the Qur'an's position, then we cannot possibly come to know God in any real, meaningful way. By insisting that God is radically unlike creation - that nothing we know even compares to Him - the Qur'an has made attaining a relationship with God practically impossible. Although the author had campaigned brilliantly, had presented a literary and rational masterpiece, he was unable to present a complete and coherent explanation for why we are here. Yet he had nothing to be ashamed of, for he fell short where he and all others must inevitably fall short, trapped in the limitless void between God and man.
This was for me a hollow realization, and I felt no sense of victory whatsoever. For there were times in my reading of the Qur’an when I was so close to surrender, when the author’s words – his voice – nearly overpowered me, causing me to feel that only God could be speaking to me through this Scripture. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I was moved to tears on several occasions, that at times I truly felt I was in the presence of a tremendous power and mercy. These spiritual moments always took me by surprise. I would even try to resist them, to shake them off, but they were often too strong and intoxicating to resist, and my resistance continually weakened as I progressed through the text. There were moments when I was almost sure there is a God, when I felt the presence of one I always knew but had fought to forget. I didn’t know if I was any better or worse for having read the Qur’an, but I knew that I had changed, that I would never be so confident in my atheism again.
Even so, it was time to get on with my life, time to stop agonizing over the existence of God, letting it impede with my happiness. One of the main things that first attracted me to San Francisco is that it is a place where people live life to the fullest. After twenty-one years of schooling, I was ready to reap the benefits of all my work. It was time for me to start enjoying myself, I had the motivation, the opportunity and the means, I was young, single, considered good-looking, and had a good career. It was time to start having fun.
[God says:] Say my Name
And then, not too long after finishing the Qur’an, perhaps a couple of weeks later, I thought of it. It came to me softly, unexpectedly – I think while I was watching a football game on television – as an afterthought, slipping into my consciousness,
It is not true that the Qur’an tells us very little about God; it tells us a great deal, but for some reason I had paid almost no attention to it. If I had just glanced at the beginning of a surah, or turned to almost any page, I would have found what I was looking for, if only I had read carefully, for there are thousands of descriptions of God in the Qur’an that link good works to growing closer to Him. Although I had read the Qur’an from cover to cover, deliberating on and analyzing almost every verse along the way, I mentally disregarded the Scripture’s abundant references to God’s attributes. Often used to punctuate passages, they occur typically in simple dual attributive statements, such as, “God is the Forgiving, the Compassionate” (4:129), “He is the Almighty, the Compassionate” (26:68), “God is the Hearing, the Seeing” (17:1). Collectively, the Qur’an refers to these titles as al-asmaa al-husnaa, God’s “most beautiful names” (7:180; 17:110; 20:8; 59:24).
- Say: Call upon God, or call upon the Merciful, by whichever you call, His are the most beautiful names. (17:110)
God! There is no God but He. To Him belong the most beautiful names.(20:8)
He is God, other than whom there is no other god. He knows the unseen and the seen. He is the Merciful, the Compassionate. He is God, other than whom there is no other God; the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Source of Peace, the Keeper of Faith, the Guardian, the Exalted in Might, the Irresistible, the Supreme. Glory to God, above what they ascribe to Him! He is God, the Creator, the Evolver, the Fashioner. To Him belong the most beautiful names. Whatever is in the heavens and on earth glorifies Him and He is Exalted in Might, the Wise. (59:23-24).
- God is the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Forgiving, the Clement, the Peaceful, the Loving, the Just, the Benevolent, the Creator, the Powerful, the Protector, the Truthful, the Knowing, the Wise, the Living, etcetera.
There, right before me, was the connection I sought, for this list largely intersected with and was the perfection of the one I had compiled earlier of the virtues that men and women need to develop. The implication was clear: Since God is the perfection of the virtues we should acquire, the more we grow in them, the greater our ability becomes to experience His being. The more we grow in mercy, the greater our ability becomes to experience God’s infinite mercy. The more we develop compassion, the greater our ability becomes to know God’s infinite compassion. The more we learn to forgive, the greater our ability becomes to experience God’s infinite compassion. The more we learn to forgive, the greater our ability to experience God’s infinite forgiveness. The same could be said of love, truth, justice, kindness, and so on. The more we grow in these, the greater our ability becomes to receive and experience God’s attributes of perfection.
An analogy would be helpful. I once had a goldfish and a magnificent German shepherd, and I now have three beautiful daughters. My gold fish, being very limited in intellect and growth, could only know and experience my love and compassion at a relatively low level, no matter how much kindness I directed towards it. On the other hand, my dog, who was a more complex and intelligent animal than my fish, could feel warmth and affection on a much higher level, and could therefore experience the love and compassion I showered on him to a much greater degree. Yet my daughters – and even more so as they mature – have the ability to feel the intensity of my love and caring for them on a plane my dog could never conceive of. This is because they have the capacity to know first hand through their own emotions and relationships deeper and richer feelings than my dog. Analogously, the greater our level of goodness, the greater our ability becomes to experience and relate to the infinite goodness that is God.
…Even if we are unaware of our experiences of the divine – even if we deny the existence of God – we experience His names nonetheless, but we remain deaf, dumb, and blind to their source. This is the greatest tragedy – the ultimate loss – according to the Qur’an, for we deprive ourselves of the means to grow closer to God. We come to know something of goodness, while closing ourselves off to the boundless mercy that originates it, which brings us back to the importance of faith in addition to good works.
…In the Qur’an, the story of Adam begins with the announcement that God is about to place a vicegerent (khaleefa) on earth, one who will represent Him and act on His behalf (2:30). It is presented as a momentous delegation, as a commission announced to the angels. It is presented as a momentous delegation as a commission announced to the angels. It is an honorable election for which each of us is created. When I first read this passage I was as dumbfounded as the angels were, for how could man, this most rebellious and destructive creature, represent God on earth? I, like the angels, saw only one side of humanity, the inclination to do evil, to “spread corruption and shed much blood”. Of course many men and women do not represent God very well. But our ability to do and grow in evil comes with the reciprocal ability to do and grow in goodness, and on the whole it seems that there must be more good than evil in the world, otherwise our race would have destroyed itself long ago. There have also always been persons who are great exemplars of goodness, who humbly dedicate themselves to helping others for love of God. This is the vicegerency to which the Qur’an calls us. More than just communicating a message or implementing a command, it means becoming an agent of God on earth through which others experience His attributes. Such individuals become filters, as it were, of the divine light, as God’s goodness reaches others through them. The more they grow in goodness, through their dedication, self-sacrifice, and learning, the greater becomes their ability to receive, experience, and represent God’s most beautiful names, and their experience of God’s presence in this life is only a small foreshadowing of what awaits them in the next.
(Lang, pp. 93-102)
