How Can We Know God?
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Topic: How Can We Know God?
Posted By: Al-Warraq
Subject: How Can We Know God?
Date Posted: 08 February 2014 at 2:23am
The devil tries to make us occupied with questions about God, like: how is He like? How does He do what He does? What does He look like? Why does He do this? etc�, more than he tries to get us occupied with ourselves and our flaws. Many thoughts occur to us about these issues, and sometimes violently. Logically, however, does the created have the right to design their Creator and determine what He should and shouldn't be, even though they're created and not creators? Like why did He create this and why didn't He create that? We don't even know the meaning of "create", because creation is from the world of the Unseen (ghaib). Do we have to know the history of God in order to believe in Him? Even though He's the one who taught us the meaning of the word "history"! This is an application of the human logic on the non-human realms.
God created logic and created the mind, which means that there is logic and mind different from ours. Let's meditate on this point, it was enough for me to burn all my questions, and made me stop interfering with my mind with the matters of the realm of divinity, {do not occupy yourself with what you have no knowledge of} the Quran. For a simple reason: our reason was created on earth in the realm of the Seen (shahadah), and the realms of the Unseen (ghaib) can't be reached by our reason to judge their logicality and morality, God said in the Quran: {of knowledge, you (mankind) have been given only a little}.
When asking such questions about God we are viewing God as a human, and we judge Him by the standards, logic, and ethics of humans. And here the mind has trespassed into a field which doesn�t belong to it.
We should view God from the area through which He reveals Himself to us, that is our relationship with Him, and start asking questions like: Is He being unfair to us? Of course not, because he gave freedom of choice, one doesn't act unjustly towards you when one gives your freedom. Thus, God isn't unfair. Yes he created us without consulting us, but then he gave us a choice. If He were to ask us whether we want to be created or not we would already be alive then, and we won't say no because that would mean our death! And no living being wants to die!
This is how the mind should deal with the understanding of God, through our relationship with Him, and not through pulling Him down to the human realm and judge Him as a human, this is a mental trespassing that made us use our minds in a realm of which we have no knowledge.
All the realm of the unseen is hidden from us. Where is God? Why did he create the universe? Why did He make it so big? Why did He create all those different kinds of insects? Why did He create us and test us? What does He look like? What do angels and jinn look like? How can He collect us from dirt and resurrect us after we die? The mind doesn't know the answer to such questions, questions about the Unseen realm in which there is no use asking them, because the mind has zero information about it. And here comes the role of faith more than the mind in the matters of the Unseen, God said; {who believe in the unseen}, that's before they realize it with their senses and minds, He didn't say: who think about the Unseen. We should know that those ideas are whispers of our enemy Satan who wants to shake our courage to believe in our conscious faith.
We should say our opinion to ourselves about those questions, then take refuge with God from the devil whenever he tries to bring them back, and we'll find them fading away little by little. Attempting to have full knowledge of God and know His characteristics like whether He has a foot or a hand etc�, is an attempt to have a mental understanding of the realm of the Unseen. It's an error in the process of thinking, because sound reason is built on basic information, while we haven�t got any information about the Unseen. Thus, our thinking of God will be to imagine Him as a human to compensate for our shortage of information, and we tend to forget that He's a God! I have discovered this error in my thinking and in the thinking of those who raise such doubts, and I have known that they're waste of time and we get nothing from them but worries. They are whispers of the devil to deviate us from sound reason to insanity.
How can we know God then? Knowing that {nothing is like him} as He said in the Quran? Well, we can ask ourselves this question and say: how do we know humans? Is it because they have hands and feet they became known to us? Of course not, because we fear the mad person even though we see they have hands and feet, and if the closest person to us suddenly went mad we would be scared of them even though we claim to know them very well! Knowledge that comes through the senses constitutes only a small portion of knowledge, the senses are not our only means of knowledge.
We know others with things we can't see nor fully know, which are their minds and morality. Therefore, we have God's words, let's know Him from His own words, or to put it more accurately: from His morals. We love mercy and we know the merciful person, and God is the Most Merciful as He said about Himself, and thus we know Him from His moral qualities. We know people from their moral characteristics, and all the "Finest Names" and elevated moral characteristics belong to God. Therefore, our feeling knows God more than anyone.
This what the Quran meant by the terms "The Known and the Unknown" "Almaarof wa almonkar", God ordered us to encourage The Known, which are the truth, good and beauty, which are all we can know, whether with our reason and feeling combined as in scientific facts, or with our feeling before our minds as in good and beauty.
Atheists and doubters even if they see God they will not know Him, because their means of knowledge are insufficient, which are the mind and the senses. Sometimes someone comes to our lives and gets to know who we are probably better and faster than our own fathers and mothers, what did he/she use to understand us like that? Even though he/she doesn't know our full names and didn't see how we look like! We can know God clearly if we use our feeling, He will reveal Himself to us if we sought him with love, God said: {We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in their own selves until it becomes clear to them that He is the Truth}.
The absence of God or His blurry existence in our lives makes our vision blurry, because we are then far from our feeling which is the means for knowledge. The mind or reason isn't the means for knowledge, reason is only a tool that our feeling employs. Whoever loses the light of his feeling loses the knowledge of God, { Do not be like those who forget God, so He makes them forget themselves}, i.e. they forget their feeling through which they can distinguish between things. Come closer to yourself and you'll come closer to God, come closer to God and you'll come closer to yourself.
We suffer when we cram reason in immaterial fields. Our reason works at its best in material matters, and our feeling works at its best in immaterial and moral fields. The problem is when the mind controls the feeling and suppresses it. We must let our feeling flow, and make our mind rest a little by putting it in its natural position which is behind the feeling not in front of it. The natural job of the mind is being a servant to the feeling, not vice versa. No one believes through one's mind, we believe through our hearts, and no one crosses the road with their heart alone, they do so with their mind and their senses.
Who complains of being hesitant, it's because they only use one instrument which is the mind in immaterial matters. If we fairly treat our feeling we'll find that we're becoming more decisive and affirmative, and we all know how that makes us at ease. God said: {they are in grave doubt about it}, i.e. they aren�t at ease.
All knowledge that come from the feeling is decisive, final, and has no room for probabilities, that's why I recommend it. When you are afraid you never doubt at all that you feel fear, and when you feel hungry you never doubt that you are hungry. The same as when your feeing tells you that this person is good, it'll be a definite and decisive knowledge that can't be doubted, unless we ignore the feeing and resort to the mind, which will start operating its slow machines and ask its endless questions: what proves that this person is good? Is what they have done enough to call them good? Will they act the same way if they were in a different situation? What guarantees that they'll continue to be good? etc�, therefore I can't be sure that they are good and I'll remain in doubt! The feeling, however, has already judged them and got over with it so quickly!
Shoving the mind into immaterial/moral fields without regarding the feeling leads to dullness, doubt, hesitation and difficulty in decision making, because the mind is asked to perform a profession outside its specialty, and was preferred over the professional. We can quickly feel the beauty of a garden, while the mind can't exactly pinpoint why is it beautiful. The absence of the feeling from our life makes it turn into a robotlike, rational, slow, weak and materialistic life.
The good mind is the mind that serves the feeling, remembers it, and tries to prove it. This is the mind that helps us to be happy and serene, because happiness emanates from within. Undoubtedly, our feeling knows that God exists, the mind can't provide a convincing alternative for that, although it can doubt it as it always does. However, what is better and more courageous and beautiful: who follows their feeling with their mind, or who follow their mind regardless of their feeling?
Imagine a friend who spotted you with their feeling and quickly knew that you are a nice person and in need of someone to talk and safely open your heart to, then their mind responded to their feeling about you, won't you say that this a wonderful and smart person? Why were they like that? Because they were believers, they believed in their feeling about you, and their mind followed and served their feeling. However, if they doubted their feeling and said: how can I be sure that this person isn't arrogant? Or that they are in need for a friend? What guarantees for me that they won't repel me when I approach them? etc..., thus they'll continue to be hesitant. You won't say about such person wonderful, smart nor nice. This is the difference between the believer and the doubter. Faith is speed, wit, good and beauty, while responding to doubts causes slowness, dullness, lack of beauty and loss of opportunities.
We must be brave, for bravery is more beautiful that cowardice, God said : {when you have decided upon a course of action, place your trust in God} that is without hesitation. Doubts are endless, listening to them will make our life miserable, coward, lacking beauty and full of grave, fearful and exhausting doubts that deprive us of happiness. Your feeling says that God is fair, good and beautiful, and your mind agrees to that, start from here without hesitation and love good, truth and beauty. Love God and He shall love you, even if you don�t see Him with hands and feet, because we now know that vision isn't sufficient knowledge.
I wish we meditate on that. We meditate when our feelings work followed by our minds. We don�t meditate on those ideas by reading them with the mind alone, because it will say: those are emotional words lacking the material evidence that I want!
God is beautiful, great and in the realm of the Unseen, this is how we should view Him. God is virtuous and doesn't act unfairly towards anyone. As for why He created us even though He knows we'll commit sin, that doesn't make Him any less virtuous since He didn't force us to commit evil actions and He warned us against them. As for why he created us at all, this is a question on the matter of the Unseen, like asking: where did God come from? Or like: why did He create all those planets even though they're empty? These are silly human questions coming from the crisis of housing humans suffer from. The world of the Unseen is a different world, this is how we should view it.
Since reason told us that God exists, that He's fair, good, loving, rewarding the good people and punishing the bad ones, all-knowing, and nothing happens without His permission, that suffices the mind and now it should turn to us and to our flaws, they are more worthy of our attention.
I'd like to point out that materialistic philosopher and atheists aren't as rational as they'd like to be. I personally have discovered their superficiality and laughed at their minds. I'm actually shocked by how shallow their minds are -even though they have famous names-, because, poor them, they only rely on materialistic ideas and neglect the human inside them, all that to indulge in happiness as they view it, while Satan is leading them to trouble and depression.
The first step of Satan is materialism, because it's unfairness to ourselves for we're not only matter, that's why God called the truth deniers: "unfair to themselves", because they oppress the human inside them for the sake of their physical being as if it's the only thing that exists, they { try to deceive God but He, in fact, deceives them}the Quran. Undoubtedly, the way of Satan is the way of st**idity and insanity. Satan makes them lose their reason, and who has lost their reason has lost their mind. Reason can only be found in belief in God.
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http://alwarraq0en.blogspot.com/
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