Reflections
on God’s Grace, Salvation, Heaven &
Hell
By Dr Shahid Athar
Indianapolis, US
(Below is a speech I gave at
an interfaith program in Indianapolis. I was asked
to respond to the contention of authors Phil Gulley
and Jim Mullholand ("Hell is Killing Us").
Their contention is that extremists justify killing
of others by sending the infidel to hell hoping
themselves to become martyr and go to heaven.
My talk was well received by over 350 were present
in the audience.)
As a physician I like to give my patients hope
for their health and not decimal statistics of
impending death. As a believer, I would like to
see my fellow humans go to heaven and not to hell.
As advised by Prophet Muhammad, I “desire
for my brother what I desire for myself”.
The two questions I ask myself are: a) What is
the Islamic concept of God’s Grace, Salvation
and Love? b) What would God do to those who misbehave,
i.e. have wrong beliefs resulting in wrong actions?
We humans cannot comprehend what God is like and
how He is going to act. A thing created cannot
define his or her Creator. I am reminded of the
story of four blind men in India who wanted to
know what an elephant was like since they had
never seen one. They thought that if they went
to the zoo and touched the elephant, they could
describe what it was like. They did so and one
who touched the tail of the elephant said it was
like a rope, the one who touched the side of the
elephant said it was like a wall, the one who
touched the leg said it was like a pillar and
the one who touched the ear said it was like a
big leaf. They insisted on what they believed
as being the only truth and a fight was about
to begin when God out of His infinite Mercy, decided
to give them their eyesight back. Then they went
back to the zoo and confirmed that the elephant
was all that was described- plus more. This is
what is wrong with us that when we talk of God
as my God and do not know that the same God is
shared by others. When the US General Boykin said
to his church audience, “My God is bigger
than their (Muslims) God. My God is a real God
and their God is an idol”, he was behaving
no differently than the kids on the street, who
when they fight, say to each other, “My
dad is stronger than your dad and my dad will
beat up your dad.” This is what some of
us say that my God will save you if you believe
in Him the way I believe and if you dont, He will
send you to hell.
I started my talk with the name of God, the most
Kind, the most Merciful. I did so as two of the
99 names of God are Rahman and Rahim which means
the Kind and the Merciful. What is God’s
Mercy? Does He love only those who believe in
Him? Does He not feed also those who deny His
existence? He loves humans more than a mother
loves her children. A mother would not like to
throw her child into fire. God would not like
to send anyone to hell unless that person intentionally
wants to go there. And who does? It is for this
reason that He created and left the door of forgiveness
wide open. He loves to forgive those who seek
His forgiveness. He finds a reason to forgive
those who do wrong out of ignorance. The Qur’an
tells us, “Say ! O My servants! Who have
transgressed against their souls, despair not
from the Mercy of God, for God forgives all sins.
He is oft forgiving, most Merciful.” (31:53).
“And it is He who accepts repentance from
His servants, and pardons the evil deed, and knows
what you do.” (42:25)
Is any crime or too many crimes, too big to be
forgiven? In one of the authentic sayings of the
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), transmitted to him directly
from God (Hadith Qudsi), God almighty has said,
“O Son of Adam, so long as you call upon
Me and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what
you have done and I will not mind. O son of Adam,
were your sins to reach the clouds of sky and
were you then seek the forgiveness of Me I would
forgive you. O son of Adam were you to come to
Me with sins as great as the earth, and were you
then to face Me ascribing no partners to Me, I
will bring you forgiveness nearly as great as
it.”
How does God forgive the sin of the sinner who
repents? According to another saying of Prophet
Muhammad, “When God accepts the repentance,
then the recording angels erase their records,
the organs which he used to commit the crime lose
their memory, the place where he committed the
crime remove the stains of evidence so that person
appears before God with a clean record”.
The case dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Another name that God has taken for Himself is
Al- Wadud, meaning the Loving God. His Mercy and
Forgiveness is tied with His love. He created
us out of love in His own image and blown into
us His own spirit. Thus, He forgives out of His
love, like a loving mother, who always forgives
her misbehaving children when they come back to
her. It this love of God, that 9th century Muslim
woman saint, Rabia Basri talks about by saying,
“Dear God, if I worship You for fear of
Hell, then burn me therein
If I worship You for the reward of Paradise, then
keep me away from it
But if I worship You, only out of my love for
You, then,
Do not deprive me of Your nearness in the life
hereafter.
After describing God, His Forgiveness, His Mercy
and Love, is there any room now left for a discussion
on God’s punishment and hellfire?
Another attribute of God is Al- Adil, the Just
One. There has to be a concept of reward and punishment
in order for Him to do justice with two groups
of people. The Qur’an says, “Those
who have done an atom’s worth of good will
see it (in the day of Judgment) and those who
have done an atom’s worth of evil will also
see it.” In our human life, as a teacher
for example, we never treat all students equally.
Those who attend classes and study are passed
and those who skip classes and don’t study
are failed. Parents don’t treat their children
equally either. Those who are loving and obedient
versus those who are hateful and rebellious are
treated differently. Thus God says, “Equal
are not, the dwellers of Heaven and the dwellers
of Hell, as the dwellers of Heaven are successful.”
Thus, according to the Qur’an, “Those
who reject God whether, people of the book (i.e.
those who received Divine scriptures, Jews, Christians
and Muslims) or idol worshippers, for them there
is a hell-fire to dwell therein, they are the
worst of creations”. Thus He created hell
as a deterrent for wrongdoing. Just the thought
of being burned in Hell may refrain us from wrongdoing.
Jesus said, “If your right eye causes you
to sin, gauge it out and throw it away. It is
better for you to lose one part of your body than
for your whole body to be thrown in hell. And
if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it of
and throw it away. It is better for you to lose
one part of your body than for your whole body
to go to Hell.” (Matthew 5:29-30)
There is no death penalty in the Qur’an
for apostasy. The Qur’an says “Let
there be no compulsion in religion, truth stands
out from falsehood. Whosoever rejects falsehood
and believes in one God has grasped the most trustworthy
hand that never breaks, and God hears and knows
all things.” (2:26). In order to be a true
Muslim, the faith has to accepted in the heart
of the person. A court cannot force him to become
Muslim.
According to the Qur’an, those who are believers
and do go good attain salvation. “Those
who believe and do good such are the rightful
owners of heaven, they will live therein forever”(Al-Baqara),
“and those who do good whether male or female,
and they are believers, they will enter into heaven
and not be wronged.”(An-Nissa)
My friends, I do not worry if others are going
to heaven or hell, I worry about myself. I must
have tolerance for others who do not look like
me, nor were born where I was born, nor speak
the same language as mine, nor do they pray to
God the way my parents taught me to pray as we
all are from seed Adam who was made out of clay.
“Our first task in approaching other people,
another culture, another religion, is to take
off our own shoes, for the place we are approaching
is holy, else we may find ourselves treading on
another’s dream. More serious still, we
may forget that God was there before we arrived.”(Author
unknown)
Nowhere in the Holy Qur’an, God calls Himself
as God of Muslims only but He calls Himself as
Lord of the Universe. A poet put it this way,
“At the muezzin’s call to prayer,
The kneeling faithful throng the square
And on the pushkara’s lofty heights,
The saintly priest chanted Brahma’s might,
Amid a monastery’s weed,
An old Franciscan held his beads,
While to the synagogue there came a Jew
To praise Jehovah’s name
The One great God looked down and
Counted each of His loving child and smiled
For the Turk, the Brahmin, the monk and the Jew
They all had reached Him
Through their prayers they knew.
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