As long as our lives are going on in our favor, we have no worries, but the minute life starts to pinch us, we start to question God.
But why me? What have I done to deserve this hardship? I am not that bad anyway. We go on thinking of others and say to ourselves: Look at the wars, the poor and the sick. It’s not fair they have to go through all that? What have they done to deserve it?
And eventually, we may end up thinking: Is there even a God? If He was there, then, why is He allowing all that to happen?
In this article, I will cover some points to help you better understand the reality of this life, and why God does that to us.
Is the term “fair” subjective or objective?
Meaning: can we all agree that a certain salary is optimum for all people all over the world for example? If no, then why are we claiming God to act with a certain attitude with all the people??
You must have seen people with power and what they have done with it, ex.: Hitler.
The very common example of people with a lot of money that we see each day, and how they just don’t care about the poor.
The example of people with strong health, and how they abuse it by committing misdoings.
It is out of the complete wisdom of God to deprive certain people of wealth, because if they had it, they would commit every evil deed in this world, and would never do good or feed the poor.
It’s from His complete wisdom that the Almighty deprive certain people of health, and test them with sickness, as this is the best for them, or else they will abuse this power and health in misdoings.
Allah (God) is helping you to perform better in this life with the least amount of losses even if you don’t understand or see that.
You can’t determine that God is unfair unless you have knowledge and power as or even more than His, and that’s impossible!
Do you know if you give the homeless person you see each day on the street wealth and health, what will he do with them?
You don’t have the answer because you can’t see inside the heart and mind of that person, then you have no right at all to question God’s decree, why He did not give that person what he deserves “from your point of view”.
It’s unfair that the lives of the oppressors and those who were being oppressed end up that simply without any punishment or reward.
It is completely absurd that the oppressor gets away with what he did in this life without being punished.
Allah the Almighty said:
“Say, “To whom belongs whatever is in the heavens and earth?” Say, “To Allah.” He has decreed upon Himself mercy. He will surely assemble you for the Day of Resurrection, about which there is no doubt. Those who will lose themselves [that Day] do not believe.” (quran.com/6/12)
Hence, it’s from His absolute mercy to gather all the people on ‘Judgment Day’ in which the oppressor will get his punishment, and the believer will get his reward.
Allah said about that day:
“This Day every soul will be recompensed for what it earned. No injustice today!” (quran.com/40/17)
ALLAH says:
“and injustice is not done to them, [even] as much as a thread [inside a date seed].” (quran.com/4/49)
How just is He?!! The Lord will not forsake the judgment of the wrongdoers, as He said about himself:
“He knows that which deceives the eyes and what the breasts conceal.” (quran.com/40/19)
This life is worth nothing!
Imagine the number of zeros from your place to the sun counted in each centimeter. That will be equal to infinity. Well, that’s how the hereafter is compared to this life.
Let’s assume that you will live a hundred years, collecting millions of millions of money, enjoying every luxury in life. Then what?!
What will the pleasure you have tasted in this life be like compared to eternity in paradise?
The heroism that you can laugh lastly! Win at the end.
If God has promised the oppressed with eternity in paradise, then why are you so concerned about his life now?
Best results!
You just don’t see it! Or you don’t want to see it.
Look at the spirit of any nation under the fire of war. Look at Gaza for example, tens of years of occupation and war.
Just take a quick look at them:
You destroy their mosque; they pray in its wreck.
You kill their children; they pray al-eid (bairam).
You bomb them, and they have their weddings in the shelters.
There was a law put on them just a few days ago to prevent mosques from saying out loud the adhan (the Islamic call to worship, recited by the muezzin at five prescribed times of the day), and now all of them the elderly, youths and even small kids perform the adhan from the roofs of their houses.
It’s this persistence, it’s this faith, and it’s this reality they see. That’s the true outcome from the hardship.
A reporter once asked a Palestinian:
‘Do you people still believe in ALLAH? If He was there, He wouldn’t have let all that happen to you.’
And the man said:
‘If He wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be as strong as we are now. The strength and courage that we have are a sign of Allah’s existence. If it wasn’t for Allah, we would have stopped resisting a long time ago.’
Examples from the Sunnah (the verbally transmitted record of the teachings, deeds and sayings, silent permissions (or disapprovals) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, as well as various reports about Muhammad’s companions):
At a certain point of the Prophet’s life, he was rich, and that when he was most generous. At another point, he was poor and that when he was patient.
He grew up as an orphan without his father or mother and that was no excuse for him to destroy his future, but instead he was known among his people as “the truthful and the trustworthy”.
And suddenly after he started to announce the message that God has commanded him to convey, they called him a liar, crazy and magician. Yet, he kept his self-control and patience. They hurt him, and ordered him to leave his homeland, they hit and tortured his friends, killed some of them and threatened all those who thought of following him, yet he met all that with good manners and patience.
At the point of his early message, God took away his most beloved wife Khadija (may Allah be pleased with her) and his uncle, who were at that specific time his backbones. He also lost his only son Ibrahim. Despite his deep pain, he met all that with patience.
He never asked God why are you doing that to me?! I love you; I am here to serve you and to deliver your message to all of the mankind, so why are you doing that to me?
He knew the reality of this life and he clearly understood that there was a lesson behind every trial he went through. So, He used it to be stronger.
He treated every blessing in his life as a gift, thanking Allah for it, and using it in the way that most pleases Allah.
“When Omar ibn Elkhattab –may Allah be pleased with him- saw the Prophet (peace be upon him) sleeping on a straw mat, he questioned the Prophet, telling him I see worse people living in better circumstances than you, and you who has the belief lives like that?
Or in other words “life isn’t being fair to you”
The Prophet replied: won’t you be satisfied o’ you Omar that they have this life and we have the hereafter?” (Sunan Ibn Majah)
He didn’t question Allah because he knew that God doesn’t wrong anyone and that each moment of hardship in this life is an eternity of ease in the hereafter.
Why do you question God when you pass through hardships only?
When you earn good marks, you say I studied hard so I deserve that.
When you marry a good spouse, you say that’s because I am good as well so I deserve that.
When you have a lot of money, you say to yourself I worked hard to gain that, this is my right.
But when things start to go bad, you look for someone to blame and you question God.
This is the complete opposite of what Prophet Muhammad taught us:
“’All the goodness is in your hands and the evil is not attributed to you.” He used to say in his supplication.
Life is a big complicated test filled with blessings and trials, waiting for you to fill it with answers of patience and gratitude.
My fear is I get too busy in this life asking God why He is doing what He is doing to me, forgetting that one day He will Judge me saying:
I did that out of mercy to give you so and so in the hereafter, so what have you done to earn it? And that was your test.
It’s as simple as that!
