Showing One’s Mettle
The world is like a divine stage where God allows human beings to reveal their true natures. Human calibre can be discerned clearly from how people respond to different situations. Man will be rewarded or punished based on how he responds.
An elderly couple, B.K. Rama Reddy, aged 90, and his wife, Phula Bai, aged 80, were sleeping peacefully in their home at Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, when they were ruthlessly attacked on the 21st of September 1981 and killed by their 50-year-old servant, Ramaya. Now the master of the house, he broke open their boxes, stole jewels worth about one lakh of rupees, and escaped into the darkness.
As he went furtively on his way, he passed by two police officers on night duty. Sensing something suspicious in his movements, they detained him for interrogation. On being threatened with dire consequences, he broke down and confessed to his crime, handing over the stolen goods to the two police officers, Sheikh Mahboob and Sheikh Rasheed. They then took him and his entire loot to the police station.
The police officers on duty greatly appreciated the honesty of these two policemen, who could easily have felt tempted to enrich themselves in such a situation. In addition to giving them a cash reward, they also had them promoted, Sheikh Mahboob becoming Station Officer and Sheikh Rasheed becoming Head Constable.
How opposite were the implications for different people involved in a single event! Virtue was rewarded, and crime was punished. However, there is nothing accidental in the one event simultaneously giving rise to such different consequences: such events are the divine instruments by which God puts different individuals to the test. Where one man would bring discredit upon himself, another would cover himself in glory. The individual concerned would reveal himself in his true colours in each case. Where Sheikh Mahboob and Sheikh Rasheed evinced the sterling qualities of strict honesty and dedication to duty, Ramaya revealed himself for the base, unprincipled scoundrel that he was and was rightly sentenced to life imprisonment. The world is like a divine stage where God allows human beings to reveal they’re true natures. Human calibre can be discerned clearly from how people respond to different situations.
However, it should be borne in mind that man has no intrinsic power. No one can, by himself, give anything to anyone, nor can he deprive anyone of anything. All human acts take place according to the will of God. Man exists in this world to be tested, and the test is as much concerned with his intentions as it is with his actions and their out-come, for man can only desire that an event should take place and strive to cause things to happen in the way he wishes, but if God wills otherwise, there is no way that man can see his wishes come true. Ramaya might have escaped under cover of darkness and enjoyed the fruits of his hideous crime, but he had failed the supreme test, and God willed that his punishment should be immediate.
