The Speaking Tree | 6th Feb. 2012
The Prophet of Islam said that one who is not grateful to man could not be grateful to God either. The acknowledgement of a good turn done by a human being must be through thanksgiving.
If one is sensitive in this regard, this will find expression not only in the case of God but also in the case of human beings. It is impossible that man should be grateful in one respect and not in another.
Acknowledgement is a praiseworthy human action when it takes the form of thanksgiving. For every human being owes everything to God. That is why he should be grateful to God more than to anyone else.
The sign of this gratefulness should appear in the form of man being grateful to people like himself in his daily life. The absence of this gratefulness towards man is a sure sign of his ungratefulness to God. For gratefulness in one respect and ungratefulness in another cannot go together. Either a man will be grateful to both man and God or he will be grateful to none.
There is another saying of the Prophet of Islam, "One who never expresses his gratitude to other human beings will never be thankful to God."
Thankfulness is a state of mind which cannot be compartmentalised. If it manifests itself in one place, the chances are that it will do so in other places too. If a man shows gratitude to one person, he will surely show it to others likewise.
When a man does someone a good turn, it is something quite obvious - a tangible direct experience. On the contrary, God's kindness, being an indirect experience, is not at all obvious. One has to be perceptive, and reflective to be able to realise what favours are granted to man by God. While the favours a man does are observable, God's favours can be realized only by thinking about them.
One who fails to perceive an event which is directly observable cannot be expected to grasp something which can be apprehended only after a great deal of cogitation.
If the recipient of a favour fails to acknowledge it for fear of belittling himself in the eyes of his benefactor, he does himself nothing but harm. It is more a question of being belittled in the eyes of his own conscience than falling down in others' eyes - a course by far the more injurious.
An even greater disadvantage of an ungrateful attitude is that it produces a mentality of non-acknowledgement. Failing at first to acknowledge the favours of one's fellow men leads on to failure to give wholehearted credence to the Lord of the Universe. There is no greater loss in this world than one who has failed to acknowledge his Creator.
