Man is a truth-seeking being. I have personally experienced this myself. From childhood, I have desired to search for the Truth somehow or the other. In the year 1942, this desire became particularly intense. At that time, my condition was such that I would go off into the wilderness and, in aloneness, would cry out, “O God! When will you come? Till when shall I wait for your arrival?”
Finally, I got the answer to this in a Hadith of the Prophet. According to this Hadith, God said: “I was a hidden treasure. I wanted to be known. Therefore, I created man.” (Kashf al-Khafa by al-'Ajluni: 2016) According to this statement, the purpose of man’s existence is to attain a realization (maarifah) of his Creator. Moreover, as a reward for this realization, he will be rewarded with a place in eternal Paradise. The period of man’s life before his death is the period to acquire this realization, and the post-death phase of his life is the period to live a life of comfort and peace in eternal Paradise if he proves eligible for this.
This realization of God is no easy matter. It is a challenging campaign. This is because God's world for man to spend time in before death is full of doubts. An element of doubt is present in every single component of it. In this world, nothing exists that is bereft of doubt. In the pre-death phase of life, man’s task is to draw apart the curtains of doubt and see Truth. Despite doubts, he should obtain a state of complete certainty.
A veil of doubt is placed over everything that exists in the world. As soon as a person takes birth in this world, he finds himself in a jungle of conflicting thoughts. Man is confronted with all sorts of philosophies of life that constantly bombard him, which can leave him utterly confused. There are dogmas of religions and other worldviews, and each religion or ideology claims it is true. Each person nurses a storm of emotions and desires inside him, which are a hurdle in acting rationally. Everyone is entangled in family attachments and social bonds. Everyone is guided by self-interest. Everyone is so caught in the web of wealth and relationships that he does not know what to do and what not to do.
In such a situation, only someone who can develop himself objective thinking can obtain the realization of Truth. He should develop the ability to lift and remove the curtains of doubt and see Truth as Truth and Falsehood as Falsehood. He should see things as they indeed are. Along with this, he should have the ability to accept what he knows to be true willingly. If he realizes something is right, he should openly accept it, unhesitatingly, without hedging about or making qualifications. Changing the direction of his life, he should make attaining self-discovered Truth the aim of his life.
The means to remove the curtain of doubts that man is confronted with is just one: knowing and understanding God's creation plan. This creation plan explains things so that all doubts are removed, and the truth is made evident, like the sun appearing bright and shining after the dark clouds have moved away.
Moreover, what is God’s creation plan? The critical aspect of this creation plan is that man has been created with total freedom. Now, man’s test is that he should use his freedom correctly and not misuse it. The decision regarding a person’s eternal future will hinge on his use of freedom. For those who use their freedom correctly, Paradise is their reward, while Hell is the destiny for those who misuse their freedom. One aspect of this freedom is that it produces competition and challenge, without which no progress is possible.
The most debated question concerning man and God in philosophy has been ‘the problem of evil’. That is the issue of why there is so much suffering in the human world. If God is All-Good, why did He make such a world where people are forced to face different types of problems and where there is so much suffering?
The reason for this becomes evident after understanding God’s creation plan. In some way or other, all these problems are the price of the inappropriate use of freedom. On its face, this price seems to be a very high one. However, from God, we have this good news: after death, when the Day of Judgement will come, God will hold one to task only when it was proved that man had misused the freedom he had been given. For whatever other difficulties a person may have faced based on God’s creation plan, arrangements will be made for their compensation so that a person will think that whatever difficulties and hardships he had encountered while on earth were in line with the demand of justice. We also need to understand that problems are, in a sense, a sort of shock treatment because they can become a means for man’s inner growth.
Understanding the issue of suffering does not suffice to form an opinion about it according to one’s assumptions or through mere speculation. A better way is to try to understand it in the light of human history.
A study tells us that a more significant incentive is not ease and comfort for man's progress but challenge and difficulty. With ease and comfort, often, man’s abilities are ruined. In contrast, challenges and problems often act as powerful incentives for people to develop virtues and scale new heights. That is why one can say that it does not ease but effort, not facility but difficulty, that makes men.
This point can be understood with the help of a real example. In the materially affluent societies of the West, a new disease has emerged, named ‘Affluenza’. This is a disease of the materially rich. In ‘rich’ families, people become intellectual dwarfs instead of intellectual giants. Their IQ is very low. They are lazy and do not do much work. In contrast to them, people who have grown up with difficulty often go on to do great things.
In every period of human history, thinkers and reformers have tried to establish an ideal society or an ideal state. However, despite all their efforts, all of them could only make a non-ideal society or a non-ideal state. Why was this so?
This fact of history can be adequately understood only when viewed in light of the Creator’s creation plan. God did not make this present world so an ideal state or society could be established here. The limitations of this present world and the presence of different disadvantages are concrete barriers that prevent an ideal state or society from being established here.
