THIS WORLD: A SELECTION GROUND FOR PARADISE
The Creator’s aim is to select those who are fit to inhabit the world of Paradise. To test man, God has given him complete freedom to choose his actions. Only if he uses his freedom wisely, submits to God, will he qualify for Paradise.
Man has sought Paradise on Earth for thousands of years due to his natural urges. With the coming of the industrial revolution and the age of consumerism, the man thought that he could build a Paradise on Earth, that the industrial age would culminate into the perfect world—Paradise—that he longed for. However, the hopes that man could make a Paradise on Earth were dashed to pieces with the coming of pollution, acid rain, and global warming. Moreover, now the Covid-19 pandemic has made man realise to the last extent that he cannot build a Paradise on Earth.
Paradise will only be found in a state of perfection hereafter. In Paradise, man will find a life of joy, peace, and happiness forever. There will be no necessity for physical labour; pleasant intellectual activities will suffice to achieve all the desired goals. Man must realise that he stands on the threshold of Paradise. The present Earth is a Paradise-in-the-making, not Paradise itself. How can man achieve the Paradise of his dreams?
To find an answer to this question, one must become aware of the Creation Plan of God. God has created man according to His Plan. To become acquainted with this plan, a man must thoroughly understand himself. Just as the workings of a machine can only be understood when we study the engineer’s drawings who made it. Besides the engineer’s mind, there is no other thing to clarify what the machine is meant for. The case of man is the same. Only by understanding the Creation Plan of the Creator can we know the purpose of man’s life.
Man’s existence is such a unique phenomenon that no other such example can be found throughout the vastness of the cosmos. Man is rightly called the ‘best of all creations,’ which means the best and most meaningful ‘being’ among all the things created. Such a ‘meaningful being’ cannot have been created without a purpose. The Creator of man has created him according to a unique plan. The Quran, the only preserved religious scripture, sheds light on this plan. The Quran states:
“He created death and life so that He might test you, and find out which of you is best in conduct.” (67: 2)
According to this verse of the Quran, the man was created as an eternal being, and ‘death and life’ represent both the pre-death and post-death periods of human life. So, death and life cover the entire eternal lifespan of human beings. The Creator of man has created him according to a unique plan. His intention is that man must spend a period of trial in this present, imperfect world, and after this, according to his deeds, he will earn the right to inhabit the perfect and eternal world, another name for which is Paradise.
According to His will, God created a perfect world called Paradise: a world as per all of our desires as human beings, in that it is free of all limitations and disadvantages, free of fear and pain, and free of all imperfections. It would be an eternal world with neither death nor old age, an ideal world where we could achieve fulfilment.
Less-than-perfect beings cannot inhabit a perfect Paradise. So, God created perfection-seeking creatures—human beings. He intended us to spend a period of trial here on Earth. After this, we will earn the right to inhabit the perfect and eternal world according to our deeds.
The essence of God’s creation plan is to give a person complete freedom–not simply as a gift, but as a test. This test would enable God to judge who misused his freedom and who put his freedom to the best use. This is the divine scheme of things for man. In the pre-death period of life, an individual has the chance to qualify himself for Paradise so that in the post-death period of life, he may be settled as a deserving candidate in this perfect world.
This world, therefore, has all the components necessary for a test. However, it has perfection-seeking beings in a less-than-perfect world who have been given complete freedom to choose their actions. Thus, we have a choice—we can misuse our freedom to do evil or use our freedom wisely, submit to God, and qualify for Paradise. Those who misuse their God-given freedom are chastised thus in the Quran:
“This is the Truth from your Lord. Let him who will believe in it and who will deny it.’ For the wrongdoers, we have prepared a Fire that will cover them like a canopy, and if they beg for water, they will be given water as hot as molten lead, which will scald their faces: how dreadful a drink, and how evil a resting place!” (18: 29)
The Creator of the world has created this world as one half of a pair—the present world, in which we pass our lives after birth, is the first half; and the next eternal world, where we live after death, is the other half. The Creator of man has further created him as an eternal creature and has divided his life into the pre-death period, the life in this world, the post-death period, or the life after death. The limited period before death is meant to be a test for man, while the eternal period after his death will be the period for his reward or punishment, based on his performance in the test in this life.
According to this Creation Plan of God, human beings are placed in situations where they face hardships from time to time throughout their lives as part of their test. Difficulty and sadness are an integral part of the creation plan of the Creator. No man has the power to extricate himself from this life of trial and tribulation. This arrangement reminds man that the present world has not been made as a place of luxury and comfort but as a period of trial and will help determine whether he is eligible for eternal life in Paradise. It is the scheme of existence for this world devised by its Creator. The Creator’s aim is to select those who are fit to inhabit the world of Paradise.
