Anonymous asked: hey sorry if I'm disturbing you, but I have a question about faith. I want to believe so bad. I've always believed in something, I just don't know what. My life's been pretty rough so far and if god were real, why would ze let all this shit happen? I'm really interested in islam and I have been for a long time, but I'm a mentally ill smoker coming from a long line of alcoholics and drug addicts. I'm really freaking myself out here, but I don't really belong anywhere. sorry to bother you :(Hi friend! You aren’t disturbing me at all (:
Many people want to believe but they want to know why God would let all these bad things exist. Why would he let world hunger be a problem? Why would he let good people die, or catch diseases, or be victims of unnecessary wars? And it’s very human to ask that, isn’t it? We should ask it. If God is the most just, and the most merciful, why would he let all these horrible things happen?
And I can guarantee you, everyone, believer or non-believer, had these questions. I still have them sometimes. Because, on the surface, it really doesn’t seem fair. Why did kids die in Pakistan? How come I was born into this relatively privileged life and they weren’t? How is that any fair?
The answer is simple but expansive so I hope I don’t lose you. OK, so let’s divide the bad in the world into two categories. One type of bad we can help, and one type of bad we can’t. So Holocaust would be a bad we can help, and mental illness, disabilities, being born in a third world country, having a disadvantage because of your race, would be a bad we can’t help. One we, as humans, could prevent, one we can’t.
Now, the first type of bad roots from humans. Wars, exploitation, discrimination, 19 kids dying every day due to preventable diseases or hunger, is our fault. Our greed and our selfishness prevents us from helping each other and stopping these things. Islamically, one of the five pillars of faith, is to give zakat which is basically alms. So almsgiving is a part of the material solution. People are required to give 1/40th of their earnings+assets annually to those in need. Imagine that, now, projected estimates to end world hunger are around $30 billion dollars. You know how much alms could the US give depending on our GDP, in a year, we can give $420 billion. Yup, that’s right. We could solve world hunger 14 times. And that’s just the US.
But what about immaterial things? Like fraud, racism, hate crimes? That has a simple solution too. Religion is a way of life. It’s not something you confine to a single day in the week, or a single week in the year. It’s a guideline to help you lead a decent life. What does Islam say? Well, it gives you a few ethical decencies to stick to, and the rest is easy. Don’t lie, don’t gossip, don’t assume things about people or judge their actions (because you don’t know their hearts, only God does) & do tell the truth, do be kind, do know that you are also human, and in front of God you are all equal. Did this solve like all of our problems? Yeah, it pretty much did. I mean, c’mon, if we have people understanding that they are all equal in front of God we would dismantle entire institutions. Men, women, whites, blacks, homosexuals, heterosexuals, you are all equal in your humanity. No better, no worse. God is just.
I also mentioned bad we couldn’t help. Things we can’t change. You being a mentally ill smoker coming from a long line of alcoholics and drug addicts isn’t something you signed up for. And yes, it sounds awful and really, just unfair. Why did you get these problems, when your next door neighbor is leading the apple pie life? Well, two things.
1. Don’t think that these mere 70 something years you are promised make the entirety of your existence, because they don’t. That would be highly contradictory if God said he was the most just being, but gave you that many years and a random set of circumstances to live through right? It might be insane to think about, but yes, your life isn’t limited to what you do on Earth. You will die and you will be resurrected and God will show his justice. After all, would it be fair if you and your neighbor died and that was it? She had the perfect life, no worries, no problems, and you suffered. And then bam, you die and that’s it. That’s all you get. That doesn’t fit the definition of justice. Justice is, testing you on this earth with different scenarios and weighing your actions in accordance to your circumstances. You have to struggle, you have problems, life is harder to get through for you, would your God overlook that if he was just? No, but he is just and he won’t. It’s sort of like a weighted grading system. Think of yourself as if you are in AP classes or taking harder courses and your neighbor is taking normal classes. Your work and grades affect your GPAs differently. You go through more, so your B is the same as your neighbor’s A in a normal class. You will be rewarded accordingly. God will say, you suffered through a lot my dear, every day you woke up was like worship, every breath you took was a prayer, deciding to hang on, deciding to go forward earned you this high throne. And to your neighbor he will say, you lived in comfort and wealth, did you help those in need, did you do good deeds with what was available to you, did you show gratitude, did you seek me?
2. Think about if we lived in utopia. Would you really seek God? Imagine he made everything perfect. No wrongdoing humans, no lies, no cheats, no pollution, no mutations, no disabilities, no mistakes, no nothing. Imagine we really lived in utopia. If everything was perfect, why would we look for God? We wouldn’t. Everything is already working like a nice clock, why wonder about who does it? I mean, even with the world we live in now, there are so many perfect things that we overlook.
Our location in space is just the right place for us to be. Jupiter’s mass, our moon’s tilt, our location in relation to the sun etc. The scientific argument says we evolved here because our planet is the only planet to support life, but that is true only from a human perspective. Humans cannot live without water, oxygen and vitamin D. Science says we evolved from a single-cell organism into photosynthesizing plants, into vertebrates, into fishes, into amphibians, and finally into mammals. Venus’s atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, why didn’t photosynthesizing plants that could endure high temperatures evolve there, and go through a complex evolutionary process to finally arrive at a being equivalent to a human who could maybe photosynthesize, or not be affected by high carbon dioxide levels and temperatures?
Coincidences are miracles in disguise. We are presented a vast amount of bounties yet we ignore them because we use them regularly. We can start listing everything that science claims to be the product of complete chance in our body and see how it cannot all be by mere chance. For me, life in itself is a miracle. Modern technology envies our heart, a machine that keeps working for decades. Fancy iPhones and brand new cars only last a few years, and they require constant repair, while your heart creates enough energy to drive a truck for 20 miles in one day, and in your whole life, you could go to the moon and back with that energy. Our brain can hold approximately a million gigabytes of information. That’s the same as leaving the TV open for 300 years and absorbing everything on the screen. Our stomach acids are strong enough to dissolve metal. Our noses can differentiate between 50,000 different scents. Our eyelashes curl outward instead of inward and don’t stab us in our eyes.
We have everything we have now, and we can still say it has all happened by itself. How did the world originate in the first place? The Big Bang Theory states that it all begun with an infinitesimally small and hot singularity. The singularity exploded and now it is still expanding. Where it came from and why it came, science cannot answer, and when science cannot answer a question, we do not delve into that topic too deeply. Mathematically, everything happening by coincidence is impossible. Although, computer scientists code programs to test probabilities, life isn’t a computer simulation.
If we lived in utopia, nothing to make us question God’s existence at all, would we seek him? It’s hypocritical to talk about fairness when we associate all bad things with God but we don’t go to him for the good. World hunger – Hey, where is God? Sacred geometry – wow, look at these awesome coincidences!
So yes, we have suffering, and we have struggle. But we need to have those. Just like you need darkness to understand the importance of light. It makes us ask questions. It makes us think. It leads to, “I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”
And it leads to lots of pondering and smiling because did you know God tests those he loves even more. It’s similar to the teacher who pushes your limits and you hate him for a while but in the end, you get the highest grade in the exam. It leads to, God will never put you through anything you can’t handle. After all, he knows you better than you know yourself. He created you. He knows how strong you are. How perseverant you are. He knows what you can handle, and he will never give you anything that is not solvable or curable. He is the most just, and he is the most merciful. He is the most loving, and he is the all knowing. He knows you. He knows your heart. He loves you. He loves you and he loves me and he loves all of us, together and individually. And he knows you now. He knows what you are going through, he hears your pleas, he hears your wants. You don’t even have to pray directly to him, and he knows you are praying if you are trying to recover. He is with you. And isn’t that beautiful?
And whatever happens, your desire to believe in something is amazing, and in the end, if you don’t label it or have a name for it, don’t worry because even a grain of faith can and will save you. God has pushed you to this point, he has given you this desire, he wants you to learn and know and believe. Think of your doubts and your questions as a personal invitation from God. Isn’t that really cool? Think about it. The creator of all that exists, the being that manages everything – everything, the red blood cells in your body and the stars around our galaxy – sent you, one of his most beloved creation, an invitation. It reads, come, ask questions, wonder, think about yourself, think about your place in this realm, think, try to find answers, try to find me. Just come, I will lead you to me. Take one step, and I will run to you. Your heart is open, your mind is accepting, just come.
Think about that (: