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Suffering and Divine Wisdom Pt 2 Suffering and Divine Wisdom Pt 2
The last word is perhaps something of a hyperbole, for when Allah tries someone, even a servant who has ma'rifa, it is the nature of a divine test to push the individual to the very limit of his capacities. Otherwise it would not be a test. In Dr. Marcel Carret's ministrations to Sheikh al-'Alawi as he lay in the extremity of dying, for example, when he lost consciousness, the doctor injected him with a stimulant that brought him back from that far perimeter. The sheikh awoke with a reproof on his lips for holding him back from his Beloved. Carret writes:
. . . He opened his eyes, and looked at me reproachfully.
"Why did you do that?" he said. "You should have let me go. There is no point in keeping me back. What is the good?"
"If I am at your side," I answered, "it is because God willed it so. And if He willed it so, it was in order that I might do my duty by you as your doctor."
"Very well," he said. "In sha' Allah" (if God wills) (A Sufi Saint (12), 31).
At that moment of wrenching separation after closeness, and in an extremity of physical weakness, Sheikh al-'Alawi's opacity at beholding the doctor, who was after all merely a means of effecting the divine will, was succeeded by a higher degree of recognition, expanding his knowledge of the Divine. As Ibn 'Ata Illah says, "My Lord, I realize from the diversity of phenomenal vestiges, and the transformations of successive stages, that what You want of me is to reveal Yourself to me in everything, so that I may not be ignorant of You in anything" (Munajat (8), 82: 11).
Lack of Progress in the Spiritual Path
Spiritual sufferings include those of murids whose suluk has stalled. When early in my tariqa I once complained to Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman about my occasional lows of dispiritedness, he told me, "Allah makes spiritual expansion (bast) and contraction (qabd) alternate in the human heart as night alternates with day, until Allah makes you only with Him." Longer than such swings are the periods of spiritual dryness that sometimes set in after the beginning of a disciple's path, as a test from Allah of his genuineness. Anyone can be a servant when it is easy, but who shall be a servant when it is not? True servanthood means tawakkul or reliance on Allah and continuing in one's servitude come what may. As Ibrahim al-Dasuqi said, "Whomever Allah tries, let him bear it patiently, for He has only tried him in order to exalt him-or be rid of him."
But when spiritual progress is held up at great length, the disciple may well face a basic obstacle such as pride, or lack of contentment, or ruh-pollution through internalizing the views, goals, or character of those who are spiritually dead. Such obstacles may remain unaddressed for years through "putting a good face on them" and not returning to the sheikh. In such a case, the pain caused by lack of progress is a message from God to the murid that he has an attitude problem, and should return to the basics. A tariqa consists not only of a disciple, but a teacher by whose guidance the disciple accomplishes his journey when he has adab and perseverance. Suffering is a gift from Allah when it brings one back to the way of success; and is often the harbinger of divine increase, as Ibn 'Ata Illah says: "Intense needs that appear are the feast-days of disciples" (Hikam (8), 52: 174).
Alienation from Allah
Another more common spiritual suffering is alienation from Allah because of sin. The wisdom therein is that one repent and renew one's closeness to Allah. Ibn 'Ata Illah says, "How many a sin that brought humiliation and need was better than an act of worship that brought triumph and haughtiness" (ibid., 36: 96). In this sense the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, "By Him in whose hand is my soul, if you all did not sin, Allah would do away with you and bring a people who sinned and asked Allah's forgiveness, and He forgave (Muslim (14), 4.2106: 2749. S). When sin is unfollowed by repentance, the divine wisdom therein is an object lesson to others through the individual's destruction and perdition, depending on which divine names it manifests, such as the Avenger, the Humiliator, or other.
IN fine, the manifestations of divine wisdom in suffering are many. Most sufferings teach us disattachment from all but Allah. Some, like those of the prophets and saints, inspire us with a sense of the spiritual exaltedness of the sufferer and his fortitude. Some show us the magnitude of the divine blessing of relief after distress. All reveal to those with wisdom the immensity of the divine perfection, beauty, sovereignty, and justice, "yet none remember but those clearest of mind" (Qur'an 2:269). Even a little wisdom shows the nullity of the idea that "someone just and good would not allow suffering and evil if he could prevent them." To even suggest this shows a profound lack of realism about human nature that could hardly be expected from someone who had lived any length of time in this world and dealt with people, let alone someone who created them.
7. CONCLUSIONS: THE NATURE OF EVIL
To summarize everything we have said, the foregoing aspects of divine wisdom are disclosed by an existential attitude (hal) of entire trust in Allah whose mark is husn al-dhann bi Llah, or always thinking the best of Allah. Those who possess it do not make up hypothetical situations and then tax Allah with them, but confine themselves to concrete events they know have happened, and the particulars of which are fully known by them. "Suffering" in general is such a hypostatized, abstract reality, for the suffering of the part may well entail the benefit of the whole, or one of the many other aspects of wisdom we have mentioned.
Let us return for a moment to the syllogism with which we began:
(1) God is almighty.
(2) God is just and good.
(3) Someone just and good would not allow suffering and evil if he could prevent them, yet both exist in the world.
(4) Therefore God is either not almighty, or else not just and good.
From our knowledge of tawhid, the divine oneness and uniqueness, it is plain why the conclusion "Therefore God is either not almighty, or else not just and good" does not follow from these premises; namely, because their key terms just and good are equivocal: they are used in premise (2) as they apply to one order of being, that of the Divine; while in premise (3) are used both as they apply to the Divine, and as they apply to an entirely distinct order of being, that of man-of whom it is usually true that that "someone just and good would not allow suffering and evil if he could prevent them"-yet not always even then, since someone just and good might well choose the "lesser of two evils," or impose temporary suffering by say, surgery, to effect a cure, or for innumerable other ethically valid reasons. And our twenty or so examples in the previous section have shown how much less the first assertion of premise (3) applies to God.
We have seen that the autonomy of Allah, His supreme perfection in Himself, and the fact that man is not a co-sharer (sharik) in it, entail a number of consequences:
First, Allah's goodness, justice, mercy, and other attributes are only graspable by us to the degree that our all-too-human understanding can absorb the light of what He has revealed to us about them in the Qur'an and the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). As Abul Hasan al-Shadhili said in his Litany of Light:
I cannot reckon Your praise, You are but as You have praised Yourself: Indeed, You are too majestic even for praises, which are but accidents indicating Your generosity that You have bestowed upon us on the tongue of Your messenger so we may worship You with them in our own measure, not in Yours (Awrad al-Tariqa al-Shadhiliyya (17), 38).
Secondly, Allah's justice is intrinsically different from human justice. "Morally accountable" means nothing more or less than "answerable to Allah." It is meaningless to ask whether He is just, because His judgement is what justice is. "He is not answerable for aught that He does, but rather they are answerable" (Qur'an 21:23).
Third, because of the limited and fragmentary nature of our knowledge about the past, present, and future, to say nothing of the details of the cosmos, our own motives, those of others, the parts of others' lives we see not, and above all eternity-through which alone the consequences of the present will become transparent to comprehension-suffering and evil remain at least to some degree opaque in this life. Their full knowledge, if we are realistic about the limits of our own, must be consigned to their Creator.
Fourth, because Allah is the primary reality, and the particulars imperfectly known to us derive from Him alone, His own perfection entails that from the perspective of omniscience, the world is perfect, while it only seems imperfect, evil, and filled with needless suffering from a human point of view that is limitary and incomplete.
In other words, reality in its entirety, the true concrete, is the infinity of Allah and His limitless perfection. The 'arifin or those who know Allah directly and experientially, men such as Imam Ghazali, Mawlana Rumi, Sheikh al-'Alawi, or Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman (Allah be well pleased with them), have traversed the path to Him and realized this perfection by beholding its Source, saying with 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, "My eye at anything besides Your beauty does not gaze" (Diwan (15), 1.246). Their spiritual vantage-point revealed to them the radical affirmation of everything that is from God, and they have said with one voice, as the Prophet himself (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, "All the creation of Allah Mighty and Majestic is goodly" (Ahmad (9), 4.390: 19475. S), or as our sheikh used to express it: "Were any of you to encompass the Unseen in knowledge, he would not choose anything but what is." For all that is only exists through Allah's perfected disposal over His own sovereignty: He does what he wills, and rules as He ordains. The obvious question for man is: Why not strive to win His eternal favor and bliss, rather than His eternal wrath and punishment?
Finally, from all this we can understand the nature of evil, and that it is inimical to man, not God. Evil is rebellion against the Divine that is not followed by repentance.
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