Jeffrey Lang – The Purpose of Life
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
My,
I've come from the University of Kansas.
We're playing in the final four this very
instant.
So I want to let you know that
you've asked a lot of me today.
No. I'm just joking.
Alright. I
very briefly, I I just wanna talk a
little bit about,
what the Quran has to say about the
purpose of life.
I think this is an extremely important subject,
especially for Muslims living in America because
we're
sort of a minority, a new religion here,
and many people are interested in what we
believe. And I think the primary question that
people want answered when they first consider another
religion is how that religion views it's how
that religion views the purpose of life, the
purpose of human,
of our existence here.
And so,
I'm gonna begin though,
talking about the an atheist point of view.
Because I wanna talk about what sort of
answers
the Quran might have for an atheist. So
to begin this, I need to talk for
about 5 or 10 minutes about, you know,
what made me what I believe contributed to
my becoming an atheist, because I grew up
in a Christian family.
And then I'll talk
for about, oh, 45 minutes or so about,
what I experienced in the Quran and how
that sort of
changed my perception.
So it's very simple. But my wife always
says I should summarize what I'm going to
do before I talk because it's easy to
get lost in my speeches and,
You
know, which my wife doesn't have a lot
of confidence in my speaking ability.
Okay. So,
let me start out by,
mentioning that
my mother certainly played no role in my
becoming an atheist.
My mother was a
wonderful woman,
a beautiful lady.
She had tremendous
dignity
and class.
She,
the neighbors loved her.
She was a a registered nurse, and she
put in many extra hours at the hospital.
Her she worked in the
war that dealt with dying patients.
And when I would come and pick her
up late from work at night,
all the patients would not all the patients,
but many of the patients would drag me
over and talk to me and tell me
what a wonderful woman my mother was.
When she died,
her funeral is packed and
person after person that came up to me
had a story to tell about my mother
and her goodness.
Time and time again, people described her as,
Jeff, you know, your mother is a true
saint.
She was a deeply religious woman, a great
mother, a great teacher,
a gentle person.
She never cursed. I never heard her cursed,
you know, swore ever in her whole life.
Never heard her speak to anybody rudely or
speak about anyone rudely.
She was a tremendous example
of a of a truly
religious person. And she didn't wear it on
her sleeve. It was just slowly but surely
you could see it just in her day
to day interactions with people.
My father, on the other hand,
was a difficult man.
My father,
for some strange reason,
had this tremendous
rage inside him.
I don't know where he got it.
He had this terrible violence inside him.
And every night, he would try to quell
that violence
with hard, hard drinking.
And his drinking though only made him all
the more volatile.
Because my father could be laughing and joking
1 minute, and he could fly into an
angry rampage
the next for some unexpected reason.
You never know what would trigger it. And
once he flew into that angry rampage,
it would take, you know, he would just
go wild in the house. The house would
be in havoc.
He would rage on and on and on,
and it would take an awful lot of
liquor and several hours before he would finally
go to sleep.
And this would happen night after night after
night.
And so my 4 brothers and I I
was the 4th in line.
My 4 brothers and I lived a frightening
and precarious
childhood.
But I have to say the worst of
it
was watching my father regularly taunt and threaten
and abuse my mother.
And it would happen day in, day in,
day in, day out, night in, night out.
And it was a never never ending nightmare.
You see, it's really not so bad when
you're the target of your father's violence.
You might think it's bad when a child
is the target of their father's violence, but
it's really not all that bad.
At the moment of attack, you're really not
thinking about anything except your own survival.
When he's firing punches at you, or kicking
you on the ground, or chasing you throughout
the house,
And when he's threatening you, I'm going to
hurt you bad boy.
You're not thinking about anything at that moment
except escape.
While all that's going on, you're not thinking
about the aftermath or consequences of psychological
repercussions or anything like that.
And when it's all over, you might even
excuse the onslaught
because you figure maybe you somehow deserved it.
If not for what you did this time,
maybe for something you did in the past.
You could always put the blame on yourself.
But a far worse
fear
is the terror that overcomes you when you
watch your father go after your mother,
because she's the only source of warmth and
kindness, of love and protection
that you know.
And if he were to take that away
from a little boy's standpoint, then you lost
everything.
But far worse than the fear is the
guilt,
and it comes over you from several directions.
First of all, there's the guilt that comes
at you for upon you from the growing
antipathy
you have towards your father.
Because we're taught to love and respect our
parents,
and we are born with this natural bonding
attachment to them.
But when you watch something like this happen
night after night after night, and you this
rage is growing inside you, you're being pulled
in opposite directions.
Then there's also, of course, the guilt that
comes when you think that you might be
the cause of this nice night's violence.
Maybe something you said or did that you
didn't even realize triggered it. Maybe just your
father's dislike of you
triggered an argument between your mom and him
that is now raging on downstairs.
But the worst guilt of all,
and it is by far the very worst,
is knowing that you did nothing to stop
your father from hurting your mother.
Because while he raged on against your mother
downstairs,
you hid in your bed and you trembled
underneath the covers.
Maybe you whimpered and you cried and you
put the pillow on your head.
And thus,
you traded
personal respect
for personal safety.
And with each such incident incident,
you come to realize with ever greater and
greater clarity, you come to realize your own
weakness,
your own impotence,
your own incompetence,
your own worthlessness,
your own cowardice.
And the hate grows and festers inside
you,
not only for the man that you call
father,
but for yourself as well.
It is a terrible, terrible thing to make
a young boy choose
between his mother and himself.
It is extremely unfair.
I noticed that tomorrow, there's gonna be a
a lecture about,
tomorrow morning, a lecture about spousal abuse,
given by doctor, Shaheen,
Rizwan.
I hope you all attend it. I think
it's a very important subject.
When I was little,
I used to daydream about life without my
father.
I just wanted the violence to go away.
I wanted not to be afraid anymore.
I felt like I was trapped in a
bad dream and there was no way out.
And so I prayed to God again and
again and again to take
to remove
my father from our lives.
But he was always there,
and very soon, I began to wonder if
God really was.
I could not fathom why God would subject
my mom to such lifelong punishment.
Could not imagine what great sin she must
have committed or that we, her children, must
have committed to deserve my father.
I didn't have the maturity to sort out
such questions, but I had enough fear and
anger to provoke them.
I was too young to see the wisdom
in allowing my father to,
I mean, my mom, to suffer the violence
and abuse of my father. I was too
young to understand why God would let innocent
children tremble night after night after night in
their beds,
fearing that they might not see their mother
the next morning.
I was too young to see how the
mercy of God could even extend to my
father with all his terrible failings.
All I could see in my world was
chaos and violence and fear. And so it
became easy for me to question the existence
of God. And I began to do that
at a very early age.
I think
I'll even say that the turmoil of the
sixties seventies,
that's the age when I was a teenager,
you know, late sixties, early seventies,
only,
reinforced
my skepticism.
When John and Robert f Kennedy were assassinated
or Martin Luther King was gunned down,
when vice president Agnew was kicked out of
office and Richard Nixon soon after him, when
the race riots erupted in city streets like
mine, and gang fights erupted in our cities,
many of those which I was involved in,
When I saw the bizarre and senseless carnage
of Vietnam,
they all confirmed the lesson that was already
ingrained in me and that my father had
taught me so well, that the world is
dominated
by random consuming,
undiscriminating
violence.
And very soon, I began to ask why.
Why would God make it that way?
Why wouldn't he just pop us into heaven
from the first and spare us all this
suffering?
Why does he let little children in Vietnam
get napalmed and run down the street naked
on fire
when they had done nothing to deserve it?
And why does he let the race riots
go on? Why does he let the leaders
be assassinated? Why does he just let the
violence go on and on and on for
people
who had nothing to do with it. It
wasn't of their own making.
Why didn't he just make us angels and
pop us into heaven if he could make
us angels, which I was always taught he
could?
Why did he make us so susceptible to
sin?
Why didn't he make us impervious to it
like he made the angels?
Is this the best world he could create?
I thought, is this the most perfect world
he could create for our existence,
For our beginning?
I just couldn't figure it. And all the
explanations I received from the priests and doctors
and lawyer you know, from whoever, you know,
spoke to me or taught me, They just
didn't make sense to me.
In any case, so I became an atheist
when I was 16, even though I was
going to Catholic school at the time. Declared
myself an atheist in one class. It was
a confrontation between me and a priest. We
were talking about
God and the purpose of life.
And I expressed my views and he said,
well, then you don't believe in God. I
said, well, I guess I don't.
And then through my junior junior and senior
year of high school, I got an f
in religion even though I continued to do
very well in the test.
In any case, when I was 28, to
make a long story short, some friends of
mine gave me a copy of the Quran.
And one night, I was sitting in Diamond
Heights, my apartment in Diamond Heights in San
Francisco.
I was working that time at the University
of San Francisco. I was 27, 28 at
that time. I can't remember.
And I ran out of stuff to read,
and I took this gift that my friends
gave me and I began to read it.
And I came to the first verse.
Well, I opened the Quran, read the first
page,
then the second, and then very quickly,
in the second surah, about 37 verses into
the Quran,
I came upon the story of mankind.
And, I have to admit, I read through
it very quickly. It was about 9, 10
verses long.
Story of the first man and woman. And
I recognized some of the details. It was
similar to what I had learned when I
was a child, but I noticed that
there was something wrong.
Was apparent to me that whoever authored this
Quran, of course, I wasn't a Muslim at
the time so I didn't have any idea
who that was, Whoever authored this Quran clearly
did not understand the real meaning of the
story.
Because they had obviously gotten the details confused.
They even on didn't even understand the whole
purpose of
the story. And so,
I just read through it once and then
I read through it again, just to try
to see what kind of point the author
was making. And then I read through it
a third time and a fourth, and then
I realized,
this is something strange going on here. I'm
gonna read this much more carefully. I'm gonna
need to go through this story line by
line, verse by verse because it's obvious that
the author is trying to bring out another
point.
And I wasn't quite sure what it was,
but definitely, he packs a lot of meaning
into almost every word.
And I thought the writer at least seems
to have a
great measure of brilliance.
And so I'll try to sort of take
you through what my experience was as quickly
as I can.
So I came to the second the 30th
verse of the second surah, surah Al Baqarah.
And it began like this.
It said, behold, your Lord said to the
angels,
I am going to place a vistrant on
earth. The Arabic word is khalifa. It means
a representative or an emissary of mine.
I am going to place a vistrant on
earth. And they said the angel said,
will you place there in one who will
spread corruption and shed blood
while we celebrate your praises and glorify your
holiness?
And God said, he said,
truly, I know what you do not know.
See, that's the verse that hooked me. That's
the verse that caught my attention. That's the
one that kept on making me read the
story again and again and again.
Because listen to the way it begins. Behold,
your lord said to the angels, I'm going
to place a representative of mine on earth,
a vice president of mine, an emissary, one
who acts on my behalf.
I thought that that's not the way it
goes.
You're not supposed to be placing man on
the earth in some positive role,
some elective office.
You place man as a on earth as
a punishment for his sin.
Clearly, I knew the author didn't quite get
the point.
But still, it was an amazing line. But
then I come to the next line, and
it says, and the angels say,
will you place her in one who will
spread corruption and shed blood,
while we celebrate your praises and glorify you?
I looked at it again. I couldn't believe
the question.
They said, will you place her in one
who will spread corruption and shed blood
While we, the angels, celebrate your praises and
glorify you?
I looked at that and I said, exactly.
That would be my question.
Why would you create this being
supposedly for some
positive role,
when he's capable of doing tremendous wrongdoing?
When he could spread corruption and shed much
blood?
Why would you create this violent and pernicious
creature
when you could create angels,
as the angels clearly say? While we
while we, the angels,
celebrate your praises and glorify you.
They're asking one of the most fundamental questions
in the entire history of religion.
Why create you man,
this utterly fallible
creature,
this creature who could rebel against God will,
who could do such tremendous wrongdoing, who can
wreak havoc like no other creature on earth,
when you can make him angels.
And look where the question is being asked.
It's being asked in heaven.
It's almost like saying, look, why don't you
just make him angels who'd be up here
in heaven with us, you know?
Why don't you just make him angels pop
him into heaven? He's fine.
Why would you put him on earth
where he could feel distant from you, where
he can work out his worse criminal tendencies,
act them out, feeling somehow independent and apart
from you, and free to do whatever he
wants, when you could just make them angels
and put them into heaven and make them
perfectly submissive to your will?
I looked at that question and said, that's
my question.
I'm not I'm not even a single verse
into the story of mankind
and there before me I see my question.
That whole question, everything that I ever thought,
everything that I ever experienced, everything that I
ever knew was in that question.
Was if the author took my life and
wanted to pick out exactly the right question
to humiliate me, to provoke me, to anger
me.
Why create man this most destructive and violent
creature when you could make him angels?
And then look at the answer.
And he said, God said,
truly I know what you do not know.
You
know, in modern parlance, we would say, I
know exactly what I'm doing.
I read that and said, what?
You know what you do not know? You
know exactly what you're doing? Well, please inform
me. Tell me what you're doing because, you
know, I'm I'm 28 years old and I
haven't figured out it yet,
And I have a lot of issues that
I'm still dealing with,
that's connected to this question.
You can't just get off that easy. You
can't just tell me, you know exactly what
you're doing.
Not after what I've been through. Not after
you made me this way.
And then I realized, of course, I was
arguing with a God I didn't even believe
in.
And that would happen several as I read
through the Quran. And sometimes I would just
get into such
so agitated
by what I read, I'd start arguing with
this
voice that's
that's that I'm reading before me, that's calling
to me.
So we turn to the next verse.
It turns out that the Quran just doesn't
dismiss the question and starts to answer it
a little bit.
And in the next verse, it says,
and he taught Adam god taught Adam the
names
of all things.
And then he placed them before the angels
and said, tell me their names if you
are right.
So this verse is clearly referring to the
previous one.
But notice what it says. Now I I
from my own background, I remember
Adam naming things,
but it wasn't connected to any answer to
any philosophical question.
But here, notice what it says. And he
taught Adam the names of all things. And
I realized already just from the first verse,
you gotta read these verses very carefully because
it's packed with a lot of symbolism and
meaning.
And he taught Adam the names of all
things. So here we see Adam is not
only just a creature who knows how to
name things, who's acquiring the gift of language,
but he's also a learning creature. God is
teaching him.
Now right here, right in this verse, and
it'll come even clearer in the subsequent verses,
that the very first thing that the that
the Quran is gonna emphasize here is man's
intellect.
He is a learning creature. He is taught.
And what is he taught? What is the
what is one of the great intellectual gifts
he's given
in response to the angel's question? The gift
of language.
Because through language, mankind cannot only learn, but
he could learn things not only through his
own experience, but he could learn things that
other people have experienced
of times and places that are 100, 1000
of years, and miles separated from him.
And so that all our knowledge becomes cumulative.
Every generation learning from the generation before. And
I'm learning today from authors I read from
other sides of the world that may have
existed 2000 years ago.
And so we all contribute to our collective
learning and knowledge.
And so what I'll see later in the
Quran when the Quran will emphasize again and
again and again. Like, in one verse, it
says, read in the name of your lord
who created created a man out of a
tiny creature that clings.
Read, it commands the reader. For your lord
is most bountiful. Why is he most bountiful?
What great gift did he give you? For
he taught man the use of the pen,
and through it, taught him what he otherwise
could not know.
And time and time and time again, the
Quran will call upon man to use his
intellectual faculties
and swear by his intellectual faculties
and to and to use them correctly
as a
because because they play a fundamental role in
guiding him to truth.
I never came upon a scripture that put
so much emphasis on the correct use of
our intellectual faculties, on the
harnessing of reason
in helping us attain to faith.
And he taught Adam the names of all
things. And then he placed them before the
angels and said, tell me their names if
you are right.
Okay. You have this objection to you have
this natural question about this creation of mankind.
Here, this mankind is a this is a
human being. This human creature is a learning
creature.
I think it has many intellectual gifts. Here,
I'm I'm gonna place these things before you.
Tell me their names if you are right
about man.
And what did the angels say? In the
next verse, they say,
glory to you.
We have no knowledge
except what you have taught us. In truth,
it is you are knowing the wise.
They say this would be this task, this
intellectual
test that's put before them is beyond their
grasp.
And notice what they emphasize, We have no
knowledge. This would take knowledge. This would take
an intellect
that they don't possess.
In truth, it is you who are knowing
the wise. You got it. It's easy for
you. You have you're the knowing, the wise.
You have knowledge. You have wisdom.
But this would take knowledge and wisdom that
is beyond us.
And so in the next verse we read,
and he said, oh, Adam, tell them tell
them their names.
And when he had told them their names,
notice how it just like it's nothing for
him.
For mankind, he has this phenomenal ability.
And when he had told them their names,
as if it's just a triviality for man,
he names them.
Oh, Adam, tell them their names. And when
he had told them their names, god said,
did I not tell you that I know
what is unseen in the heavens and the
earth? And I know what you reveal
and conceal.
And he's
clearly going back to the angel's question.
Yes. You have these natural
concerns about the creation of mankind.
Yes.
You could do these evil things,
but look at this tremendous intellect he has.
This is something you have overlooked that you
haven't considered,
and that's clearly the point of these verses.
Even though I under I felt that the
author
didn't quite, you know, it was as if
I I realized that he didn't not just
didn't misunderstand the story.
He was taking one of the great stories
in the history of humankind, one of the
fundamental greatest
stories in the history of mankind and molding
it and using it as a vehicle for
entirely
original message.
And God said, did I not tell you
that I know what is unseen in the
heavens and the earth?
And I know what you reveal and what
you conceal?
In other words, didn't I tell you I
know exactly what I'm doing?
And then in the next and didn't I
not tell you what I that I know
what you reveal and conceal?
Looked at that.
What question did there I mean, what did
they reveal and what did they conceal?
What did their quick question reveal and conceal?
I thought about it for a minute. Oh,
it's obvious.
What did their question reveal? Just go back
and look at the question. It revealed the
sinful and sinister
propensities of man.
I mean, it's obvious. Right?
Why are you all looking at me like
that? You're starting to scare me. You're all
looking very serious. Am I losing you?
Wow. Okay.
So they revealed the sinister and evil propensities
of man.
But what did did their question concealed?
And all you have to do is think
about it for a minute.
Human beings, yes, they could do evil.
Yes. They could do wrong. Yes. They could
create misery,
but they could also do exactly the opposite.
They could choose to do evil. They could
choose to do tremendous good. They could choose
to do tremendous violence. They could choose to
show tremendous compassion.
They could choose to be true to you
know, to live by falsehood. They could choose
to live by the the greatest truths.
They could be terribly ugly. They could be
terribly beautiful.
And I up until that point in my
life, I like the angels that only saw
one half of one side of the coin.
And for the first time, when I read
that verse, believe it or not, it was
an eye opener for me.
I had always been obsessed
with the evil
potentials of human beings.
When I read that verse, I realized that
and I had a great example right in
front of me with my own mom.
I realized that I had been blinded by
only one side of human nature.
So we go on to the next verse.
And behold, we said to the angels bow
down to Adam and they bowed down.
But not so Iblis.
Iblis
is like the father of Satan.
Satan. Satanic
beings,
Forces. Creatures.
Existences.
He refused and was arrogant. He was of
those who reject faith.
An interesting statement.
And behold, we said to the angels, bow
down to Adam.
And they bowed down. Bowing down could symbolize
2 things.
Bowing down could symbolize the superiority superiority
or potential superiority
of one being over another, and so they
bow down to them.
Bowing down could also mean that they serve
that creature in some respect.
Of course, the Quran says that all beings
serve God. All created beings serve God.
But this verse seems to be indicating, and
the rest of the Quran will make it
clear, that these angelic beings, these angelic,
entities
will serve the development of mankind.
We'll even see later that the satanic beings
serve the development of mankind.
Both forces, angelic and satanic,
will serve the development of mankind.
Because one will present man with a choice
to do the most altruistic things. The other
will simultaneously
try to influence man in the opposite direction.
And so, human human beings will be moral
creatures and will have to make moral decisions.
It's in those moral decisions that they will
grow spiritually and morally as human beings, and
they'll take that into the next life.
And the angelic and the satanic forces will
be catalyst
for those moral choices that they make. They
will heighten the human beings' awareness of the
rightfulness and the wrongfulness of the choice he's
about to make.
And the self,
the soul, the nafs, as they say in
Arabic, will have to make the ultimate choice
between good and evil.
And that choice, that test will come again
and again and again as human beings either
grow
or decline.
And those tests will come again and again
and again
to try to help him towards his spiritual
evolution,
To bring him back,
but that choice is ultimately ours.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
And so he said to the angels, bow
down to Adam, and they bowed down. But
not so Iblis. Iblis is Satan.
This rebellious force. This evil prompter. The one
who whispers into the human heart. He comes
into being.
And with the introduction of Satan, we have
the introduction of evil. That evil influences on
human beings.
And notice why Iblis does not bow down.
He refuses because he was arrogant.
You know, we often hear the what's the
root of all evil? In the west, it's
always money, greed, etcetera.
Here, the Quran says that seems to be
saying that the root of all evil is
not always material wants.
It's not always money. It's not always greed.
At the heart of evil is arrogance,
putting yourself
above all others.
Of assigning to yourself special priority
and neglecting the rights of others.
Of of, of
pride and arrogance
and envy.
The source of evil.
He was of those who reject faith.
I looked at that verse and I said,
okay. I mean, I get why you would
create angels.
To sort of influence man in a positive
direction. But why in this story now are
you introducing Satan? What sort of role does
would Satan play?
And then, of course, you just think about
it for a minute and you say, yes.
The story is telling us that on one
hand, we have these magnanimous urgings come from
one direction. On the other hand, we have
these satanic urgings coming from another direction. In
other words, the Quran is telling us that
man is not only a learning creature, but
he's a moral creature.
He has understanding of right and wrong.
And god infuses those allows those influences to
come to him. Man is not only an
intelligent being but a moral being.
And so, you know, the Quran is not
all that difficult to understand. You just sort
of read it, I found, and you just
sort of follow your nose through it and
see what it's saying.
I'm sure as most of you in this
audience know.
Okay.
So we see that man is not only
a learning creature, but he is a a
moral being as well. There's another verse in
the Quran. It says, by the soul and
that which whispers into it or which
breathes into it.
It's morality,
it's immorality, and it's god consciousness.
Both of
these, we we are under the influence of.
And God allows us to be under the
influence of us. He creates us to to
be exposed to both influences. And then the
verse says, truly he is successful who causes
it to grow.
Causes his soul, his self, his real self
to grow.
And truly, he
is lost who stunts it,
who disallows, who who destroys
his personal growth.
So mankind is not only an intellectual being,
but a moral being.
And we said in the next verse, oh,
Adam,
dwell you and your spouse in the garden.
And eat freely thereof what you wish. And
eat freely thereof what you wish. But come
not near,
this tree.
For then you will be among the wrongdoers.
I looked at this verse and I was,
you know, starting to wonder if the author
was drifting back to the old story again.
I was confused.
And we said, oh, Adam, dwell you and
your spouse in the garden and eat freely
thereof what you wish, but come not near
this tree for you will be among the
wrongdoers.
Thought it was drifting back to the old
story. Man's sins, man's punished for our sins
with earthly life. Maybe the author is drifting.
He had a good idea and now he's
drifting back to the sort of traditional story.
Maybe he couldn't man make his mind up
what story he wanted. Except for a couple
things about this verse, and this happened with
almost every verse as I read through it,
is that,
the whole tenor of the passage is sort
of not the what you would expect.
I noticed that the Quran in this story
has a tremendous penchant for understating things.
Because it says,
and said to Adam, dwell you and your
spouse in the garden and eat freely thereof
what you wish to Adam and his spouse,
but come not near this tree for you
will be among the wrongdoers. I mean, there's
no sense of god being threatened by the
possibility of man eating from the tree.
In this story, we don't see that you
know, in this verse, we don't see that
God is nervous at the prospect, that he's
threatened by the prospect, that he's anxious about
it.
The tree that he picks,
he picks it it seems like he's just
picking out any tree.
Nothing special about the tree. Go on there,
this tree
for you will be among the wrongdoers.
Satan will later come to him and tell
him it's a tree of eternal life, of
a kingdom that never decays. It turns out
to be a complete faucet in his part.
Nothing special about the tree.
Just a tree.
God's not nervous at the prospect at all.
You know, in the tradition that I came
from, god is threatened by the prospect.
He has to put a angel with a
fiery sword sword by to protect the tree
so that mankind never goes next to it
again. I'm not putting it down. I'm just
pointing out the difference of the story. They're
both beautifully told.
But he said, you know, he has to
guard the tree. Why? Because if they eat
from it,
they'll become
gods like us.
This man, he saw already has a rebellious
nature. Can you imagine if he eats from
the this tree?
I don't know. Can't let him get near
that tree.
But here,
just, you know, calmly says, you know, but
if you do, you'll be among the wrongdoers.
God is not worried about himself.
Just warning man.
Making it clear that if you do this,
you've committed a wrongful deed.
Again, the the whole tenor of the path
All these verses that you read through it
is, god knows exactly what he's doing.
Okay. Next verse.
But Satan caused them to slip
and expelled them from the state in which
they were. And we
said, go you all down, some of you
being the enemies of others, and on earth
will be your dwelling place and provision for
a time.
What I said?
I mean, you know, I was expecting now
the rage, the anger, the violence,
the jealousy.
That's what I was expecting. Okay. They eat
from the tree. Where's the rage, the violence?
I'm gonna punish you now.
You're gonna sweat on earth,
and you're gonna suffer, and you're gonna stub
your toe, and you're gonna work, and you're
gonna labor,
and you're gonna die there
for what you did.
And where's the woman?
Alright.
And the woman.
Right? She's the one who's gonna suffer the
most.
Right? She'll have to suffer labor pains
and monthly cycles.
Right? And bleeding and crying out. And her
children come into the world.
She'll scream out.
And worst of all, the greatest humiliation,
the man will rule over her.
When he's obviously her intellectual inferior, because she
and the angels seduced she and she she
and Satan seduced him,
and he just bumbled along and did commit
in a real, you know, wrong deed.
Well, I don't mean to make light of
it.
But
the story is obviously different though. You know,
no no threat here.
As a matter of fact, look at the
way it says, O Adam, dwell you and
your spouse in the garden and eat freely
thereof what you wish, but come down this,
near this tree for you will be among
the wrongdoers. Doers. Then they make the mistake.
But Satan caused them to slip
and expelled them from the state in which
they were.
And we said, go all you down. Some
of you being enemies of others will be
adversaries
of others. Some of you will be adversaries
of each other. And on earth will be
your dwelling place and provision for a time.
This is not a deity losing it.
If you look at it, I mean, on
earth will be your dwelling place and provision
for a time.
That's not the words of a of a
god that has got lost,
you know, that is really extremely upset.
On earth will be your dwelling place and
provision for a time.
When I walked into the hotel today
and they said,
and it's this nice one up there. I
don't know the name. I can't remember the
name of it, but that's a continental breakfast.
And they said, your room will be room,
111,
and, there's a continent continental breakfast in the
morning. I didn't say.
No. I didn't think they were mad at
me. You know? Because he said, you know,
you're gonna sleep here, and this is gonna
be your provision in the morning.
Oh, thank you.
But notice something else about this verse. I
mean, when you read these verses for the
first time, I don't know, maybe I'm nuts
And many people think I am. But when
you read these verses for the first time,
I mean, this is just so much that
catches your attention.
But k Satan caused them to slip.
I remember, I I couldn't get that verse
out of that those words out of my
head. Satan caused them to slip.
To slip?
The greatest sin in the history of the
human race, and it's called a slip.
You know, in my culture, slip means, you
know, you just
momentarily for a fraction of a second, you
lose your focus.
It's not a big deal.
My uncle Bob used to always say to
me, Jeff. I'm sorry. I'm 5 minutes late.
I slipped up.
You know, it's the understanding is it's no
big deal. It's just a slip.
Now that's what we say when we make
a minor mistake. I slipped up. Don't worry
about it. Never happened again.
A slip? I said.
Momentary loss of focus.
The greatest sin in the history of humanity.
Why we're all here? Why we're all suffering?
Why we experience death? A slip?
I didn't believe it. I went to my
Arabian friends at that time. I didn't know
any
Arabic. That came to this verse. We went
through it line by line. I said, now
don't change any words. Just read them one
at a time.
But Satan,
made them and I said, okay. This one.
This one right here. What does it mean?
Tell me what that means. They looked at
it. It says,
slip.
Slip.
And expelled them from the state in which
they were.
A slip I thought?
But then maybe I was trying to force
the traditional understanding,
the traditional interpretation.
Maybe it was just a slip.
I mean, after all, they didn't commit murder.
They didn't commit robbery,
*,
pillaging,
assault.
They they eat a they eat a couple
of pieces of fruit.
It's not the greatest sin in the history
of humanity by any means.
And then the next verse says, and then
they were expelled from the state in which
they were.
What state were they? Let's see now. Let's
go back from where we started. 1st, mankind
is being taught. We see he's an intellectual
being. Then we show he's a moral being.
Moral being means he's a being that's gonna
have to make choices.
And then God gives him this choice. It's
not a huge deal. It's not the gravest
sin in the history of humanity by any
means. It's minor by any standards.
They make it though.
We see that God originally intended to put
man on earth as his viceren. We see
a period of preparation where he's being prepared
intellectually, where he's growing intellectually, where he's growing
as a moral creature.
When does God finally put him on earth?
What signals that he's ready to begin?
He makes his first independent choice.
It's not the worst deed in the history
of humanity.
It's minor on anybody's scale,
but it shows that mankind is ready
to act on his own,
to be his own to make his own
choices,
That god has empowered him to make choices
and he's ready to make them and carry
them out and see them most often to
their expected ends, if god
wills.
And that seems to be the only real
significance of it.
But I thought maybe I'm getting this wrong.
Maybe God just blows off into an angry
rampage the next verse. So I look in
the next one and it says,
and then Adam received words from his Lord.
And he turned and God turned to him
mercifully,
for he's oft returning
ever merciful.
If I had any doubts up till now
that God is not enraged by what this
has happened,
that God hasn't prepared mankind
for this choice, for what was eventually gonna
happen. That all this was preparation for mankind
to begin his earthly sojourn in this famous
allegory.
If I had any doubts before now, I
had them. Certainly didn't have them after reading
this verse.
This verse is entirely
consoling,
reaching and merciful, reaching out to mankind in
mercy.
Mankind goes to earth.
He's obviously afraid. He obviously feels remorse. He's
in an unfamiliar environment. And what does God
do? He turns to him. He turns to
him. In Arabic, the word is like has
the meaning of like a father turning towards
an infant or a child or somebody or
a parent, a mother turning towards their child.
And he turns to him mercifully and he
for God is off returning,
ever merciful. And Adam receives words from his
Lord.
What kind of words?
Probably words of consolation,
words of hope, words tell him not not
to be scared.
And in the next verse, we see those
are exactly the type of words that Adam
receives.
He says, go down, Adam and his spouse.
Go down from the state, all of you
together.
Repeating that again, just so that we know
that this is not a punishment here. Go
down from the state all of to to
you together, and truly there will come to
you guidance from me. And whoever follows my
guidance has nothing to fear nor shall they
grieve.
It is,
it is an emotional picture.
This young couple, young couple is here, you
know, in in fear
and in in shame,
feeling remorse,
and God reaches out to them and turns
towards them and tells them, you have nothing
to fear nor shall you grieve. I know
this is tough for you, but you've been
prepared for it
up to of all up till now through
your entire existence.
It had to happen. This is a necessary
stage in your development,
in your growth, but just hang in there.
Follow my guidance.
Be true to me and I'll be true
to you. I'll guide you. I'll help you.
I'll do whatever you need. Just follow my
guidance and you have nothing to fear nor
shall you agree.
Okay.
So I was
impressed.
You know, I thought
this
author whom I didn't know, I thought was
extremely
brilliant.
Because the story is entirely coherent,
but it's bringing out entirely new meaning. And
it's stressing some things in the human
equation
that I would never have normally thought of.
Actually, I thought these sort of things argued
against the existence of God. Here, the author
was using them to say look at these,
these play a fundamental role in the purpose
of life. What?
Intellect.
Human beings
have intellect.
Right. In response to the angel question, they
are moral
creatures
and they are subjected to evil and angelic
promptings.
And they have to choose between them again
and again and again throughout their existence and
their growth, which which the Quran talks about
frequently,
is gonna depend on that.
We're here to grow as we will see.
But it emphasizes
choice.
Human beings
are creatures of choice.
It also emphasizes suffering.
Suffer. Hey. That's pretty nice writing. It also
emphasizes suffering. Human beings are gonna suffer here
on earth. That's the first thing that the
story mentions.
Spread corruption and shed blood?
Havoc suffering pain?
Yes. These three things play a central role
somehow, the story is saying, in our development
on earth, in our very purpose of our
development.
These are the three things we've always had
the most trouble grappling with all theologies
have.
Why can this interplay?
If it leads us often to challenge in
our minds the existence of god, if we
can't reconcile
the existence of God with our minds, with
our reason,
why give us choice if we can choose
to do wrong? Just make us angels.
Why not suffer us on earth? Just pop
us into heaven.
And here, the Quran is telling that these
play essential roles
in our in our attaining of faith.
Not only these, of course, it also mentions
guidance, god's forgiveness,
revelation,
etcetera,
angelic forces, satanic temptation. It mentions all these
other things as well. But these three essentially
really caught my attention.
I never expected that these three things would
be emphasized.
And so as I read through the Quran,
I looked anytime I saw anything that seemed
to relate to this, I would write down
notes and underline it.
You know, and I would walk up and
down in San Francisco with my pen as
I'm walking, because I like to walk about
7 miles every day, and I'd be underlining.
My friends would always say, Jeff what book
are you reading? And I would lie to
them. I tell them, oh it's a great
novel or something. You know, I didn't want
them
to know that I was reading the Quran.
I think they thought I was going nuts.
But in any case,
so I very quickly I was wondering, does
the Quran really emphasize reason? Does it really
emphasize choice? Does it really emphasize suffering?
How much more time do I have, madam
speaker?
35.
35? 25. 25. Okay.
I'll do the best I can. So let
me just try to indicate to you as
I read through the Quran, and I'll try
to get through this quickly because you guys
look tired.
And I know you're interested to find out
how that basketball game is turning out.
Let's see. Does the Quran really emphasize reason
as essential to human growth?
To this experience we're having on earth, to
our very purpose?
And the answer is definitely yes.
So much so that even Western orientalists,
people who wrote against the Quran
and said that this is a major feature
of the Quran,
a feature that you cannot miss.
Honore laments,
writing in the early part of this century,
the fame one of the famous orientalists,
you know, who wrote very much against Muslims
hoping to unseat them from their religious belief.
He wrote, the Quran, and this is a
quote, is not far from considering unbelief as
an infirmity of the human mind.
Unbelief is,
he thought, and he was saying it mockingly.
It's like, you know, you can't think straight.
You're not using your mind right, as my
father used to say.
Maxime Rodinson wrote at length about the the
rationalistic
approach of the Quran to faith.
And this rational tone of the Quran is
one of its most salient features beyond doubt.
I'll just give you a few quotations is
that
one of its fundamental themes is that people
ignore or reject god's science and corrupt religion
precisely because they do not use their reason.
The Quran will say that again and again
and again. The Quran says about the disbelievers,
they refuse to reason
and are people who do not reason. I
have 7 such quotes in the Quran.
The,
the Quran will say, will you not reason?
It mentions that 14 times to the reader.
God reveals signs and lessons and admonitions so
that and this is a quote from the
Quran. Perhaps perhaps you will finally use your
reason.
There are 8 such statements in the Quran.
From the Quran's viewpoint, reason and faith are
allies
just as the logic and false belief
are allies. And it clearly sets the conflict
along these lines. It says the right way
has henceforth become clear from error.
Those who benefit most from the Quran
are persons of insight.
16 such statements in the Quran. Firmly rooted
in knowledge, 8 such statements. Used to reason,
10 such statements. Stand on clear evidence and
proof, 7 such steep statements.
Those who oppose this revelation are diluted.
9 such statements. In manifest error, 28 such
statements. Ignorant, 15. Foolish, 3. Have no understanding,
9. Only follow surmise and conjecture, 9, and
blindly adhere to tradition
multiple, multiple times.
So it states that.
In an almost Socratic style, the Koran repeatedly
quizzes the reader and calls into question his
or her assumptions. Again and then, it asks
us,
what do you think?
18 such statements. Have you considered this or
that? 13.
Did you suppose? 7. Sounds like a math
teacher.
Do they not ponder? 2 such statements. Do
you think? Do you even think? 18 such
statements.
The message is clear.
To gain truer faith, we need to free
ourselves from inherited notions and examine our beliefs
rationally.
Learning plays a key role in human development.
Read, the Quran, exhorts the reader.
For god taught us the use of the
pen and taught humankind what it otherwise could
not know.
In life, nature, and history, in the Quran,
there are signs and lessons for those who
are wise. There are 21 such statements. The
Quran states over 100 times that has been
revealed to make things clear.
I thought the author of this Quran must
have had strong mathematical insight.
You know, a natural mathematician.
All throughout, when I was reading, I was
trying to imagine what he must have been
like.
God teaches humanity both directly and indirectly, and
thumb sometimes so subtly that we are unaware
of his instruction.
Thus, he tests us in multifer multifarious ways.
Of course, I just wanna make it clear.
Muslims believe the
God himself is the the author of the
Quran.
You know, sometimes I give this speech and
people come away and ask me, Jeff, who
is the author of the Quran? Anyway.
But, you know, I was I didn't know.
So I was just trying to make figure
it out.
Repetition is indicative of the importance given to
certain ideas. It should be observed that the
Arabic word for knowledge in the Quran, alm,
appears 854
times in the text in its various forms.
It's one of the most frequently occurring words.
So the Quran really does put great emphasis
on reason
in our spiritual quest.
Does it put great emphasis on choice?
Well, here's what it has to say. Let
there be no compulsion in religion.
The right way is henceforth clear from error.
It's a choice
and it must be freely made.
And it's a choice
between correctness and error, between right and error,
between reason and falsity.
Had God willed, he could have indeed guided
you all.
It says in the Quran.
Why not? I thought.
Why not just guide us all?
Why let some of us choose to go
this way and that way?
The Quran is constantly provoking me as I
read it.
Do not the unbelievers know that had God
willed He could have guided all mankind?
Oh. Do not the believers know that had
God willed He could have guided all mankind?
Okay. I'm an unbeliever, I thought. Tell me,
why didn't you guide all mankind?
If you want us to be sub in
conformity of your will, just make us that
way.
And if we had so will, we could
have given every soul its guidance.
Why did you let us be creatures of
choice?
Just program us to do the right thing,
never make a wrong choice.
Had God willed, he could have made us
all one community, he could have made us
clones of one another,
but he didn't.
It wasn't part of his plan.
Enlightenment has come from your Lord. He who
sees does so to his own good. He
who is
blind is so to his own hurt.
It's your choice.
Says it again and again in the Quran.
Remember when I was reading this, I was
a disbeliever.
You know? And I've had This scripture is
constantly reminding me, it's your choice, Ja.
It's
no compulsion in this. It's your choice.
It's up to
you. You don't, you know, you're not might
You're probably not reasoning correctly here. Think a
little harder. Come on. Try.
Just a few more steps.
And whoever is guided is only to his
own gain. And whoever is stray, I am
only a warner.
It's your choice.
We have revealed to you the book with
the truth for mankind. He who lets himself
be guided does so as for his own
good. He who goes astray, it's his own
to his own
hurt. It's his choice.
There are many, many such references. I'll stop
there. But you get the point.
Khan clearly emphasizes
that
choice plays a key role in our development.
But what about suffering?
I mean, you know, suffering is the biggie.
Right? I mean, that's the real major question.
What does the Quran have to say about
suffering?
You know, because every religion deals with suffering
in a different way.
You know, you it's either something you have
to be saved from.
And so some religions stress salvation.
Or it's something that you have to sort
of transcend
through meditation
and training so you can sort of not
feel it so much, get above it and
beyond it.
Some religions see it as primarily punishment.
Some see it as some of the more
ancient religions see it as the result of
the precarious and whimsical,
you know, control of many gods working against
each other, playing with human beings.
Different religions have dealt with it in different
ways.
But almost all of them, I would indeed
say all of them, have sort of seen
it as something not so good.
But let's see what the Quran has to
say about it. Something to be avoided, to
transcended, to be saved from. The Quran says
just the opposite. You are going to experience
it.
You will suffer
in this life.
And it plays a fundamental role in your
development and your growth and in what you
are to become.
This scripture didn't just say you're gonna experience
it, it said you should embrace it.
You should struggle through it. Your life should
be a struggle, it says.
It should be a jihad.
Yeah.
But
that's that's what it says.
Jihad means struggle. When the Quran most says
jihad, it's very seldom it's most often not
in the context of fighting. Qatar is the
Arabic word for fighting.
But, you know, it says even in the
Mecca verse long before Muslims had to defend
themselves against the oppressors,
mentions that you have to struggle in the
path of God.
With the Quran, it even says.
Struggle in the path of God with this
Quran.
Life is a struggle. It says in one
verse,
most assuredly we will try you with something
of danger and hunger and the loss of
worldly goods,
with the loss of your lives and the
fruits of your labor. Most assuredly, we will
try you.
It's not just talking about evil people, good
people.
But give the good news, the glad tidings.
Be happy
for those who are patient in adversity
and suffering.
Good news, I thought?
Doesn't the author understand
the terrible effects of suffering?
Give the good news to those who are
patient through adversity, who when calamity befalls them
say, truly unto God we belong and truly
unto him we shall return.
In other words, that this could benefit them.
It's a remarkable
statement.
Here's another one. Do you think that you
can enter paradise without having the like of
those who passed away before you?
And the next verses start to explain these
people were good people who suffered terribly.
Do you think that you can enter paradise
without having going through this without going through
the same?
Why I thought? Why do do you have
Why do we have to suffer in life?
Misfortune and hardship befell them and so shaken
were they that the apostle and the believers
with them would
exclaim, when will God's help come? These are
good people.
When will God's help come?
Oh, truly God's help is always near.
You will certainly be tried in your possessions
in yourselves, the Quran tells the reader. You're
gonna have face hardship.
It's
guaranteed. Every soul must taste of death and
may try you with calamity and prosperity both
as a means of trial.
And to us you are returned.
You are going to have hardship here. There
is gonna be no pit no heaven on
earth.
This is a environment is made to be
an environment of adversity. It is made to
be an environment where you have to work,
where you have to struggle, where you have
to strive.
And it plays a key role. Oh, man,
truly have been toiling to your Lord and
painful toil but you shall meet him.
You're toiling. Yes.
But you shall meet him.
We certainly created man to face distress. What
I thought?
We certainly have created man to face distress.
You made us to face distress?
Does he think that no one has power
over him? Sometimes people get, you know, so
so down. They just think,
this no one's that can't be a god.
Look how I'm suffering.
He would say, I have wasted much wealth.
Some people just become totally devoted to worldly
age. Does he think that no one sees
him? Have we not given him 2 eyes
to see you in? A tongue
and 2 lips to communicate with? To learn
from by communicating? Can he see around him?
Can he tell from communication with other people?
Haven't we pointed out to him the 2
conspicuous ways?
What are the 2 conspicuous ways?
But he attempts not the uphill climb.
One of them is uphill climb.
And he says this is the way you
should be pursuing.
And what will make you comprehend the uphill
climb?
Is to free a slave
or to feed in a day of hunger,
an orphan nearly related, or the poor one
lying in the dust.
Then
he or she is of those who believe
and exhorts one another to patience, and exhorts
one another to mercy.
You have not attained to faith until you
struggle the uphill climb,
it's telling us. You should pursue the uphill
climb. What is the uphill climb?
Reaching out to your fellow man who's in
his who suffers
to feed the poor one,
to help the poor soul that's lying in
the dust. And all over the world, there
are people in that state.
And we watch the news
as if it's just entertainment.
And the Quran tells us this is something
you should involve yourself as that is the
road that you should travel.
It describes a successful life as an uphill
climb.
Well,
I could see I'm running out of time
so I'm gonna have to tie this up
in about 15 minutes, I guess.
But,
definitely, the Quran
emphasizes
these three elements in the human drama.
But as I read through it, I couldn't
see how it all fit together.
I mean, why didn't god just
why? Why?
Why do we have to experience these? What
purpose do they play? Just pop us in
the hammers. Beam us up,
I thought.
Well, one thing like I mentioned before, the
Con will repeatedly,
emphasize that we're here to grow
and to learn.
And some just I'll give you 4 or
5 quick verses because I know you're tired.
It says,
our lord and raise up in their midst
the messenger from among them who shall recite
unto them your signs and shall teach them
the book and the wisdom,
and who shall cause them to grow.
We should we have to learn to learn
wisdom in the book,
Revelation in particular, and who shall cause us
to grow.
And we have sent among you of yourselves
a messenger to recite our signs to you
and to cause you to grow.
Truly God was gracious to the believers, this
is in the 3rd Sura, When he raised
up from among them a messenger from themselves
to recite his signs to them and to
cause them to grow.
It is he who was sent among you
the the who was sent among the unlettered
people, a messenger from among them to recite
his signs and to cause them to grow.
These are all distinct references. Just 2 more.
There are many more.
And the soul and that which breathed into
it, its immorality and its god consciousness, he
is indeed successful who causes it to grow.
And he is indeed a failure who stunts
it.
And in verse in the 92nd Surah Surah
Elayel, it says, far removed from it will
be the righteous who give his wealth
that he may grow.
So the purpose somehow is to grow. We're
in a growing, learning,
developing
experience.
We weren't just created when we came into
the world. This is actually a stage of
our creation.
Just as our development in the womb was
a stage in our creation,
our essential stage in our physical creation,
this is an essential stage in our
personality
creation, in the creation of our real being.
That which we take into the next life,
our essential selves.
We've gone from the physical creation in the
womb, primarily physical, now to the human creation,
the personality
creation in this stage.
I thought maybe I'm, you know, projecting my
own neurosis into the scripture. Maybe it doesn't
really
emphasize
that life has a purpose,
But time and time again, I would find
it does. For example, just quickly it says,
those who remember god standing and sitting and
lying down and reflect upon the creations of
the heaven and earth and say,
our lord, you did not create all this
in vain. You did not create all this
in purpose.
Just when I was starting to think, maybe
the Quran really doesn't
state a purpose or life. It really doesn't
mean there's a real purpose of life. Maybe
I'm reading into it something that is there.
I would come upon verses like that
that would force me to just read a
little further. Make me think, well, maybe it's
just around the corner.
We have not created the heaven and the
earth and whatever is between them in play.
If we wish to take a sport, we
could have done it by ourselves. If we
were to do that at all.
God doesn't create to satisfy his whims or
fancies or entertain himself.
Do you think that we created you purposely
and that you will not be returned to
us? It says in the 23rd Surah. The
true sovereign is too exalted above that.
In the 44th surah, we did not create
the heavens and earth and all that is
between them in play.
That serves a purpose.
Now what sort of purpose can it possibly
serve? So I tried to, you know apparently,
the Quran speaks about believers and those who
are the rejecters.
If the believers on in one hand, the
rejecters on the other. Now apparently, God has
created us to be believers. So I tried
to study what the Quran has to say
about the believers, It's a natural thing to
do. To see how what he it wants
us to become, if it has anything to
do with these essential elements that it stated.
I mean, it's a natural way to approach
it. I think you agree.
Do you agree?
Somebody nod your head.
That's what I say to my math students.
You know, just one head nod is enough
for a mathematician.
Get one head going, okay. I did my
job.
Okay. So
how does the
Quran describe the believers? What are they supposed
to attain to? What is their ultimate
thing that they're supposed to get? What are
they ultimately supposed to achieve? And it's very
clear when you read the the Quran that
what they will achieve
in this life and will experience to so
much greater degree in the next is they
will experience a relationship of love with God.
They will turn to God in love and
God will turn to them in love.
In the Quran, God's mercy, compassion,
forgiveness,
kindness, beneficence,
warmth, generosity,
all the things we normally think associated with
god are freely given to all mankind.
But when the God Quran speaks of God
love,
we would normally think of that as God's
love. But when the Quran speaks about God's
love, it's talking about something very special.
His love is always presented as a relationship.
A relationship between 2.
Without
if we do not turn to God in
love, then we just receive his mercy, forgiveness,
kindness,
beneficence,
warmth,
generosity,
all those wonderful nurturing things, his nurturing, and
we reject it.
And so we never really experience that love
because we never really turn to it and
open ourselves up to it. It is always
there for us,
but unless we enter into that relationship,
that love, that give and take, that relationship
of love
is never
develops.
We reject it. And that's what the word
Kafir means. It means to to reject, to
turn your back, to ignore, to throw something
a gift that someone gives you behind your
back.
And so the Quran tells us that the
believers will experience
this sublime relationship of love.
It says, yet there are men who take
others besides God as equal, loving them as
they should love God, but those who believe
love God more ardently.
Say, if you love God, follow me and
God will love you and forgive you your
faults. For God is to forgiving the merciful.
Oh, you believe, if any from among you
should turn back from his faith, then God
will assuredly bring a people he loves and
who loves
him.
And throughout the Quran, I'll mention time and
time again that god loves this the believer.
God loves this type of person. God loves
that type of person and so forth and
so on.
So it's quite and I'm trying to pick
to speed up here, so you'll have to
excuse me for
that. But it is apparent from the Quran
that one of the purposes of creation, maybe
the essential purpose of the creation is to
produce from this subset of humanity,
This subset of humanity that will freely enter
a relationship
of love with God.
They will not only experience the beauty of
other relationships in their lives, but this love
that they will experience with God
is the sublime experience that they will enjoy.
Not only in this life, but infinitely greater
in the next when all the distractions,
all the masks are stripped away.
Okay, I thought.
You created us to love you, for us
to turn to you in love and to
experience your love, to receive and experience your
love.
Why do you need these? Just pop us
into heaven, love us,
you know, and make us love you.
Program us to love you. You know, you'll
make my dog love me.
You know?
Do the same sort of thing.
I kept on coming back to the same
issue. Just do it.
You
know. Okay.
Still couldn't see it and I was almost
through the Quran and I thought either I'm
dumb
or this scripture just never really got to
it.
Okay. So I didn't give up.
I thought, okay, what's the next natural thing
to do? Okay. So the first so we're
here to develop this relationship of love with
God. The Quran tells us that, you know,
if we are believers and we do good,
we'll experience great joy and peace in this
life, not only through our relationship with with
God, but through complimentary relationships. Will all the
people around us in this world will be
a one for us of peace and serenity
even though we have to struggle and survive
and suffer.
But I couldn't see, you know, how this
all tied in with this suffering business and
why he couldn't just put us into heaven.
So what's the next natural thing to say?
Okay. So we're created to have this relationship
of love to with God, to enter this
relationship, to experience and receive all that he
has to offer us.
So the natural thing to do is to
study the 2 partners in that relationship.
What does the Quran have to say about
us,
the believer? What does it ask of him
and her? What does it require of them?
And then what does the Quran tell us
about god?
And then is there some essential nexus, some
essential connection between them and does it have
anything to do with these?
Because if the Quran doesn't show that,
then the the essential link that links all
this together, that pieces it all together is
missing.
And as I thought to myself, whoever this
author is and by now I knew he
had fantastic
genius,
even though he came from the primitive confines
of the most backward,
most uncivilized
sector of humanity,
of of people that had no literary history
really to speak of. No great works of
literature. No scriptures that preceded him. Even though
he came from the desert
of culture,
even though this came out of that environment
and the mind behind it had tremendously and
gene
phenomenally genius
to come out of that surrounding
and produce something like this.
If that essential link was missing, I knew
that, you know, he was great, but,
you know, and he's extremely great.
But, you know, he's you know, what do
you expect? How can anybody answer those questions?
Nobody in the history of humanity has been
able to ask answer them.
Okay.
So I thought, first, I'll see what the
Quran has to say about the believers, what
does it require of them, then what it
has to say about god and see if
there's some essential link. Are you following me?
Yes. You're giving me the note.
Get off the stage.
Okay. I'll do my best.
It's a deep subject. We're almost done. Bear
with me a few more minutes.
I'm sorry. Really.
I know Suraj Vahaj, when he gives these
sort of speeches, he always says, okay. I'm
finishing up now. And then 10 minutes later
he says, you thought I was telling you
to do
I won't say that, but
just give me a few more minutes. Bear
with me.
Okay. Quickly. What does the Quran ask of
the believers?
From the Quran's many exhortations
and its descriptions of acts and types of
individuals loved by God,
it's not difficult to compose a partial list
of
things that the Quran wants
us to do which it calls good deeds.
Time and time again.
To believe in God, to have faith in
God, to have a relationship with God, and
to do good.
So what does it describe as these good
deeds?
Well, as I read through the Quran, it
says that
can I take this
away?
Remember, intellect choice suffers.
It says we should
show compassion
show compassion.
We should be merciful. I have the references
here, but
just excuse me. I'm not gonna list them
all running out of time. We should be
forgiving.
Forgive others.
We should be just.
We should protect the weak
and defend the oppressed
Defend the oppressed.
We should be seek knowledge and wisdom.
Knowledge.
Wisdom. Bear with me, ladies and gentlemen. We
should be generous,
truthful, and we should love our or be
peaceful,
And we should love our fellow man.
Love others.
I'll just give you one verse because I
know we're running out of time,
Madam speaker. Truly those who believe and do
good, will the most merciful endow with love.
And to this end, we have made this
scripture easy to understand in your own tongue.
So that you might convey a glad tiding
to the god conscious and warn those given
to contention.
To this end, we have made this easy
to understand
so that we'll learn to love others.
Okay.
That's all I'll say about that.
I would like to say a lot more,
but I don't have time.
Now, what does the Quran tell us about
God? You have to realize, I'm just about
through with the Quran here in my first
time reading it.
And now I was really caught. I searched
my head. What does the Quran tell us
about God?
Tells us nothing could be compared to him.
That he is out anything he's outside anything
that we may compare to.
That our definitions do not encompass him. That
our reason cannot comprehend him.
That he is transcendent and we are finite.
That he is a more he he is
an,
he transcends time and space and we are
bound by it. That he is immortal. We
are mortal. He is uncorporeal. We are corporeal.
That we have no way of comparing ourselves
to him.
Nothing could be compared to him. I thought,
oh my God.
I'm so close and yet so far.
Because I'll never understand the essential link
between us and God, and why these three
things fit into place.
Because the Quran tells us that we will
could never
really quite understand
God,
or at least that's the way I thought.
And so I put down the Quran when
I had finished it.
And much to my dismay,
I was honestly disappointed
because I thought I'm just
the author made a brilliant, brilliant brilliant brilliant
try, but he never quite made it.
And so I was sitting in front of
about 3, 4 weeks later, I was sitting
in Diamond Heights in my apartment watching a
football game, I think it was.
And you know, sometimes these things just slip
into your minds when you least expect them.
And I'm sitting there watching it, and all
of a sudden into my mind
came a thought. And I said, wait a
minute.
The Quran does tell us
so much about God.
Tells us again and again and again, but
somehow I just missed it.
Just skimmed over it every single time.
Because if you turn to almost any page,
if you turn to the beginning of any
surah, you could see time and time again,
essential information about God that I just thought
was sort of a literary device. Something to
make it just sound more beautiful.
Because if you turn to beginning of any
Surah, you'll see the words Bismalay Rahmanir Rahim
in the name of God, the most merciful,
the most compassionate.
If you read almost any passage, long passage,
when you come to end end of it,
it's punctuated by dual attributive statements like, god
is the merciful, the compassionate. God is the
forgiving, the gentle. God is the kind, the
protector. God is the generous, the truthful. God
is, and so forth and so on. There
are tens of thousands of such references in
the statements in the Quran.
What the Quran defines as God's most beautiful
names is attributes of perfection,
repeated again and again and again on almost
every page. And as I sat there,
sitting by the television,
I started to jot them down
in my you know, on my little piece
of notebook there.
Same notebook I used to jot these down
before. And I began to list from my
own mind the attributes of perfection as I
remembered them.
And they were
we should be God is the compassion.
God is the mercy.
God is the forgiving.
That is the judge,
the protector,
the defender
of the oppressed and the weak,
the knowing,
the wise,
the generous,
the kind, the truthful, the loving,
the peaceful,
the source of all peace, the truth,
and so forth and so on.
Every item I had listed
in my list
for the qualities that we human beings are
supposed to develop,
the Quran was telling me had its infinite
source and perfection in Allah, in God.
And then all of a sudden, all the
pieces fell together.
Then I suddenly saw it as I see
most of you probably see as well.
But now I mean, suddenly it all began
to make sense to me.
In what way do I say that?
Well,
it was now obvious why we had to
develop these qualities. It was now it was
now obvious how these things on the floor
here fell into place.
And I'll just say it clearly, We're here
to develop a relationship with God, to become
closer to God. But how can you become
closer to God when he's transcendent and you're
finite, when he's immortal and you're immortal,
when you're in vice versa.
When he's immortal and you're mortal, when he's
unbound fettered by time and space, and you
are, and so forth and so on. How
can you become close to that one?
If I wanna become close to you,
I need to have something to share with
you, something that we have in common. So
for example, if I wanna get come close
to this young man here physically, I'll approach
him because we both have bodies and I
could position my body closer to him. Physical
presence, bodily presence is something we both share.
If I want to become closer to that
gentleman back there, if I want to become
closer to him intellectually,
I'll reason with him so we will have
a convergence of minds.
Because we both possess reason.
If I want to become closer to one
of the my sister's sons, this side, emotionally,
I'll try to appeal to their sentiments because
we both share feelings and similar types of
experiences that generate those
feelings. But how does one become closer to
God?
What do we share with him?
We share with him what exactly what he
gave us. Because the Quran tells us that
when we were came into this life, he
breathes into our spirit
something of his
spirit.
And that we come into this world with
the seed of these very qualities within us.
And we could either kill them, stunt them
as the Quran says, or cause them to
grow.
And when we grow in these, we grow
in our ability not just to experience tremendous
tremendous beauty in life through all this,
but we grow in our ability to receive
and experience the infinite beauty, the infinite peace,
the infinite truth, the infinite compassion, the infinite
mercy, the internet, etcetera, all the way down
list down the list
that only comes from the infinite purse perfect
source of all these.
The more we grow in mercy, the more
we grow in our ability to receive and
experience
in this life
and in the next, to an infinitely greater
degree, the mercy of God. The more we
grow in compassion, the more we grow in
our ability to receive and experience God's compassion
in this life through prayer and through ritual
and through contemplation and through other experience of
others.
And and, of course, infinitely more in the
next life, the compassion of god. The more
we grow in our truthfulness, the more we
grow in our ability to experience god the
truth,
because all truth comes from god.
The more we grow in these things, the
more we grow in our ability to receive
and experience God's attributes of perfection. The more
we grow in our ability to receive and
experience his being.
And that sort of nearness we are growing
to him
is tied to our essential nature and to
his.
It's more than just physical nearness. It's more
than just a convergence of ideas. It's more
than just a convergence of feelings. It's a
convergence of essential beings.
It's the closest type of nearness
tube can feel, tube can experience.
I'll
just give you a quick analogy, because this
helped my children.
Let's pretend I have a cat, a goldfish,
a dog and 3 children.
3 daughters, let's say.
And I do have 3 daughters.
No matter how much of my love, compassion,
forgiveness,
caring, I pour upon that goldfish,
it could only experience it to a tiny
degree.
It might not even really be aware of
it,
because it's a very primitive creature.
But my dog, on the other hand,
when I show it all my kindness, all
my love, all my compassion, all of what
is essentially me,
it could experience it to a much higher
degree than my goldfish.
And through its interaction with me, through its
own trying to give its own self to
me, we could experience a quite wonderful relationship.
But my children,
especially as they grow older and go through
their own experience and their own development, could
receive and experience all the love and the
compassion and the forgiveness and the caring and
the generosity and the protection,
Everything I have to offer, they could experience
my being to a much higher degree than
my dog ever can.
And
we can have a relationship of beauty that
I could never have with my dog. As
much as I love animals,
having had 3 daughters, I know that the
relationship with that you have with 3 beautiful
daughters can never even come close.
The no other relationship could approximate that.
Of course, my relationship with my wife is
also extremely beautiful and she might hear this
today.
And she's a wonderful woman, really. I mean,
she's the source of so much beauty. But
okay. Madam chairman, I am ready.
So that
seems to bring it all together. So now
I thought, wait a minute.
That doesn't explain this.
Why the intellect? Why the choice? Why the
suffering?
I thought,
you almost had me,
this Quran.
You almost duped me. You almost tricked me,
seduced me into accepting
this philosophy.
But
wait a minute. What about intellect choice suffering?
Why do we have to experience these?
Why couldn't you just programmed us to be
merciful, compassionate, forgiving, etcetera?
Why do we have to go through all
this?
And then, of course, the answer came to
me as quickly as I thought of it.
So we are creatures, and we grow, and
we become.
And, yes, and you could make us anything
you want, but
you can't
contain any of those attributes I listed
without these three things. In mathematics, we try,
you know, 3 premises that go into, you
know,
proving a theorem. We try to see if
we can take one of them away, and
and if it's essential.
And all 3 of these are definitely essential.
For example,
you could program a computer never to make
an incorrect statement,
but it doesn't become a truthful computer.
Never heard anybody say to me, Jeff, this
Macintosh is the true most truthful computer I
ever saw. Yeah.
If it's programmed, it's not truth.
You could program a CAT scan to help
the sick, but it doesn't become compassionate.
Never heard a doctor say, Jeff, if you
wanna see a compassionate CAT scan, you come
right over here.
Right?
Because all those things, compassion, forgiveness,
truth,
caring,
love,
all are born out of choice,
suffering,
and reason.
In order to do a compassionate deed, when
we consider reaching out to someone in compassion,
that person first of all, that's inconceivable without
the presence of suffering, an environment where they're
suffering.
And when we decide to help them or
not,
we we reason in our minds, what is
this gonna require of me?
It's gonna require some suffering on my part,
some of my giving of myself.
And without that mental process, it doesn't become
a compassionate deed.
And if it isn't by choice, it's not
a compassionate deed. It's that choice that makes
it compassionate.
Same thing with truth.
Truth is a choice between telling the truth
or not telling the truth.
Oftentimes, we tell it when we're at risk
to our own personal loss.
The more suffering that might come out of
that choice, the greater is the truth behind
it, the greater an act of truthfulness.
And all the time, we have to weigh
the consequences of that choice. If I tell
the truth there, my teacher's gonna give me
an f.
If I don't tell the truth, I might
get
an a. We weigh it in our mind.
Last example, the famous wedding bob. Do you
take this woman to be your wife
in sickness and in health,
for rich or for poor,
until death do you part?
What are they asking us? Do you knowingly
make this choice,
understanding
full well what's at stake here?
That it might involve
richness but poverty,
health or sickness, that suffering's gonna be involved
until death.
Once a young lady told me, you know,
you never really love me because when the
growing got tough,
when things got hard, when we hit rock
bottom,
when my life fell apart, you just got
up and left.
And she was right.
And she understood full well that that's what
love is all about.
It is through giving and suffering All
those
all those three things are essential.
So it's very easy to see
why the Quran
stresses these. For because for in order for
us to grow in these,
I dropped it. We have to have these.
And that's why it's very easy to see,
ladies and gentlemen, why the Quran
30 seconds, madam chairmen. Why the Quran talks
about sin as self destruction? The Quran says
when we sin,
we commit the Arabic word is dzom
or zum, however dialect you have.
Dom against ourselves. We oppress, we destroy ourselves.
Because when we don't grow in these, when
we grow in the very opposite of these,
we are literally destroying ourselves.
When we grow into the things that are
empathetical to these, we are destroying our natures
and will not allow ourselves to receive and
experience the beauty
that could be in store for us that
this life and the next.
It's like coming into this world and developing
in the womb none of the physical things
you need to experience comfort and joy and
peace and happiness on a physical level in
this life.
It's as if you're coming into this life
and you've destroyed yourself physically somehow in the
womb, and you came into it and you
had nothing to protect you from the cold,
from the heat, from the harshness of the
elements,
from germs, from disease.
Nothing to protect you. Nothing to satisfy give
you the ability to satisfy your thirst or
your hunger. Nothing to for you to fear
experience any physical comfort.
This is all that matters as we go
into the next life. If we don't develop
these
through our relationship with God, our very purpose
of our being, then we will experience
terrible suffering in this life, worse than if
we came into this life
in a physical state that didn't avail us
of any of the comfort of this life.
And so it'll be worse than fire.
It'll be worse than endless fire. It'll be
worse than the * the worst * we
could possibly imagine.
So the Quran tells us, you know, that
yes, you know, when it talks about heaven
and *, it's used very powerful symbolic language.
But what essentially is telling us is imagine
the greatest
joy and wonder and peace and serenity you
could ever experience,
and that's what's open to you
on the one end. But on the other
end, imagine the most terrible suffering that you
could possibly bring on yourself, and you could
also do that to yourself as well. It'll
be worse than anything you could have ever
imagined.
And so and it's the Quran tells us
that God says on the day of judgment,
I did not harm you in the least.
You destroyed yourselves.
And it could say that the total objective
truth.
And that's why the Quran well, I think
I'll leave it at that because madam speaker
is about to shoot me.
I still have other things to talk about,
but I wanna find out how that basketball
game is going.
So,
thank you so for month so much for
listening to me for so long, and may
the peace and mercy of Allah be upon
you all. I didn't mean to try to
scare anybody at the end. That wasn't my
goal. I was just trying to make a
point. And may the peace and mercy of
God be upon you all. Thank you so
much. Assalamu Alaikum.
Alright. We'd like to thank doctor Lang for
that very heartfelt,
very
long
presentation. I have a few things to say
before you all leave, so just be patient
with me for a second.