SUPERIOR MANAGEMENT
Count Your Blessings
A member of CPS Tamil Nadu team, Maulana Iqbal Umri (Umrabad, Tamil Nadu) recounts his experiences and insights from his recent surgery.
ON July 19, 2024, I was admitted to the General Block of Ramachandran Medical College in Chennai. I was suffering from kidney stones. A large stone got stuck in the duct and wasn’t coming out, causing significant pain and distress, which led to the decision for surgery. I’ve had this problem for fifteen years, but never received proper advice regarding surgery. Nowadays, surgery has become the ultimate solution for such problems, although it takes time to decide on it.
The advancements in modern medical science, especially in the field of surgery, are nothing short of miraculous. It’s as if God has turned miracles into medical achievements. This event is proof of humankind’s conquest over the ailments of the human body, leading humans to the illusion that they have found solutions to all human problems. While this phenomenon should be seen as a marvel of human capability given by God, we observe that humanity is busy interpreting life without God. Indeed, these advancements are the pinnacle of human capability, but behind them lies the presence of a Creator and Sustainer who gives this whole event its true meaning. This is proof that humans are capable of utilizing creation, not reaching the status of the Creator. By using creation, humans have reached the peak of progress, and with the acknowledgement of the Creator, they can attain the eternal passport to even greater heights. But human negligence and the lack of the call to faith have given atheism a high status.
I was wondering why humans deny God. Upon reflection, I realized that when humans go through moments of weakness, instead of discovering their vulnerability, they act rebelliously and ask why, if God exists, they are made weak and needy, or why they face difficult situations like illness. By posing such questions, they seek to compensate for their own weakness and then live as rebellious beings against God. Human vulnerability is a step toward discovering God, but humans take nourishment for rebellion from it.
Indeed, there is vulnerability in human life, but the Creator of this state of weakness has also made full arrangements for its compensation. In the past, this compensation was adopted on a lower level, now humans are adopting it on a higher level. It’s as if even the denier of God, when seeing the world of compensation, realizes that the arrangement for minor weakness is made with great compensation. The modern era, in one respect, is a time of superior management of compensation for weakness. In this era of superior management, the door to superior atheism has opened when the chapter of superior realization of God should have been unlocked. During the times of the prophets, arrangements for compensation for weakness were made on a miraculous level. Now, there is a shower of blessings through medicine and science. Humans have found a solution for almost every problem. If there is pain, there is its medicine. However, human beings have generally failed to realize that the support system to produce medicine is provided by the Creator. When He gave humans the ability to discover, they found the cure but lived with the feeling that “I created, I discovered, I solved”.
The Quran clearly mentions the creation of humans and their weaknesses. The wisdom in this is what makes humans self-discovering and keeps them moving on the path of progress through challenging conditions.
We have created man into a life of toil and trial (90: 4)
Man has been created weak. (4: 28)
Man is a creature of haste. (21: 37)
And regarding its compensation, these are the relevant Quranic references:
He has given you all that you asked of Him; and if you try to reckon up God’s favours, you will not be able to count them. Truly man is very unjust, very ungrateful. (14: 34)
Today, there is a need to take the advancements of the modern era positively and use them for realization of God. This is the test of gratitude for every human being.
