What God Wants from Us
An examination was being conducted in a college. A student entered the examination hall and took his seat. But he did not write anything at all in the answer sheet, though. He just sat in his chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette! And then, three hours later, he stepped out of the hall and went to the library, where he began answering the examination paper. He had left the answer sheet blank in the examination hall, but there, in the library, surrounded by books, he filled his notebook with his scribbling.
You will say this is a fictitious story. Surely, no student can be as stupid as to write his examination in the library instead of the examination hall, you will remark. And suppose this story is true, you will add, this student was definitely not in his senses.
It is true that only a mad man can behave like this. But something that appears so utterly absurd in the context of an examination of this sort is precisely what everyone is doing with regard to the Hereafter. A college student ought to write his examination in the examination hall, not in the library. In the same way, there are appropriate places to appear for the examination set by God. Strangely, though, people do not appear for their examinations in those places which God has set for them for this purpose. Instead, they want to write their examinations elsewhere.
God wants to see evidence of a person’s faith in its acceptance in the recesses of his heart, while people want to give evidence of it simply by verbal proclamations of the faith. God gauges our worship on the basis of the humility and sincerity of our prayers, while people think punctilious conformity to the minor details of external acts of worship to be proof of their piety. God wants to see the proof of their faith in terms of their inner being and their dealings, while people express it in the form of mere words. God wants us to follow His teachings in our lives, while people are busy stirring protests against others in the name of making them follow God’s injunctions. God wants to see us help oppressed individuals, but people, instead, write, speak and issue statements about collective oppression, never helping oppressed individuals while presenting themselves to be ardent supporters of the oppressed as an abstract category.
Everyone knows that the answer sheet that a student fills up sitting in a library instead of an examination hall is utterly useless. Alas! If only people knew that, in exactly the same way, actions are completely valueless that are performed in any ‘place’ else other than where God wants them to be done!
