The crux of almost every religion and form of spirituality is built on the acceptance of two vital truths. First is belief in a singular divine Creator and secondly to behave yourself to attain salvation.
Everything else is detailed.
Humans are not all the same and different things motivate people. Some must experience suffering to learn to behave. Others learn from seeing the suffering of others and learn the same lesson.
This is one reason why Jesus Christ may have inferred that you must love and not hate your enemies.
Even enemies have a role to play in one’s life.
According to the Bible and Qur’an, whenever the Israelites disobeyed God, God sent a prophet to warn them. When they refused to listen, God unleashed the wrath they had brought on themselves.
To clarify.
God does not punish as God's mercy is greater than God's wrath. However, there is a balance in everything. Once that balance has shifted too far, rectification is required and wrath returns to balance.
What am I talking about?
Some of us are mediocre with limited ambition. Perhaps the Creator may want more from us. Thus we may find ourselves in an awful work milieu or relationship from which we must escape. Hence we either improve our qualifications or do whatever to get a better job or relationship, marriage, etc.
Though we may despise the people who, for whatever reason made life or work difficult, the result is that we may improve ourselves because of the infinite negative energy that surrounded ourselves.
Hence the saying. God works in mysterious ways.
For example, centuries ago, the British freed the slaves. The Dutch in the South African colony wanted respite as they had labour concerns. So, they agreed that all Christian slaves would be freed but other slaves held captive for a few more years. Since Islam was banned and practised in secret, its growth was stifled. Ironically, the Dutch then went about encouraging all slaves to embrace Islam as it was in the interest of their business. This culminated in the exponential growth of Islam among the slaves as the majority of slaves could not read and didn’t know about the British slave proclamation.
Often salvation can come from an enemy and thus the saying “everything happens for a reason”.
* Cllr Yagyah Adams, Cape Muslim Congress.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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