Village Journals
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Bringing Faith, Meaning and Peace to Life in a Multicultural World-3-
Guidance through Prophets ? Final Source of Guidance
All the four sources of guidance are ingrained is human nature and rely for their effectiveness on the normal functioning of human faculties. However, the knowledge gained through these sources is neither certain and final nor conclusive and comprehensive. It is prone to the possibility of error.
Man in quest of the real purpose of life finds it both limited and limiting. These sources fail to satisfy a person who is in search of certainty and ultimate purpose of life. Such a man needs fool-proof guarantees. He needs the kind of knowledge that can eliminate incertitude and provide comprehensive satisfaction:
All these source of knowledge cannot provide answers to some of the most fundamental questions. For example, all the explanations about man's origin and extinction are purely tentative. Instead of solving the riddle they only mystify it. These are highly elusive issues and cannot be tackled with perfunctory answers. These sources of knowledge fail him in his most critical hour. When he is embarked on a quest to find out the purpose of his life and the object of his struggle, he is greeted by confusion and the confusion multiplies with each fresh explanation. It is a case of wrong medical prescription. No amount of maltreatment can cure a malady; it can only make it worse.
Similarly, when man wants to know about the purpose of his worldly life, life hereafter, and final awards and rewards, only definite answers can satisfy his curiosity. He is disillusioned by the pervasive injustice in the world and he needs satisfactory answers that can explain away the apparent contradiction. In the same way questions relating to the Creator. His various attributes and His infinite creative potential cannot be properly answered on the basis of even the most advanced worldly knowledge. It is in this state of blindness that man becomes acutely aware of his limitations and inadequacies. He realizes that the knowledge he has gained through his human faculties is like a drop in the ocean. It does not even touch the fringe of perfection. It is so limited that it induces in man a sense of deep humiliation. He, therefore, cries in a state of utter helplessness. He cries for divine guidance because he finds his capacities and potentialities insufficient to solve the dilemma. When he loses faith in the human sources of enlightenment, he requests God to reveal to him some extra source of guidance that can satisfy his intellectual curiosity by providing definite answers to his fundamental questions. He receives "Divine Guidance? from the Creator in response to the stirrings of his soul.
But the definite and conclusive guidance does not come to him directly. It is revealed through the "Prophets and Apostles" and through "Books and Scriptures". The Holy Qur?an has explained this phenomenon in the words;
And We raised among them the Prophets to lead them to our command.
This and many other Qur?anic verses clearly indicate the facts that the Prophets and Apostles were raised to communicate the purpose of life and ultimate guidance to mankind.
The same concept and importance of Prophethood is beautifully described in this Biblical verse;
Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress. He sent forth his word and healed them; He rescued them from the grave. Let give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men. Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of His works with songs of joy.
These Quranic and Biblical verses endorse the fact that the primary mission of the Prophets was to communicate the divine purpose of life to mankind. This uninterrupted continuation of prophethood is a proof of positive divine involvement in human affairs. It provides the strongest rebuttal of the atheistic charge that God, after creating mankind, left it at the mercy of chaos and disorder. The world, certainly, is not chaotic and disorder and its greatest proof is the presence of Prophets amongst human beings who are the carriers of divine revelation and the undeniable source of divine guidance.
Imam al-Gazali states the importance of Prophethood in these words;
Moreover, just as the man at the stage of discernment would reject and disregard the objects of intellect were these to be presented to him, so some intellectuals reject and disregard the objects of prophetic revelation. That is sheer ignorance. They have no ground for their view except that this is a stage which they have not reached and which for them does not exist; yet they suppose that it is non-existent in itself. When a man blind from birth, who has not learnt about colours and shapes by listening to people?s talk, is told about these things for the first time, he does not understand them nor admit their existence.
The Holy Qur?an, Surah 32 verse 24.
The Holy Bible, Psalm107:17-21
The Faith and Practice of Al-Gazali, page 26. Translated by W. Montgomery Watt
All the four sources of guidance are ingrained is human nature and rely for their effectiveness on the normal functioning of human faculties. However, the knowledge gained through these sources is neither certain and final nor conclusive and comprehensive. It is prone to the possibility of error.
Man in quest of the real purpose of life finds it both limited and limiting. These sources fail to satisfy a person who is in search of certainty and ultimate purpose of life. Such a man needs fool-proof guarantees. He needs the kind of knowledge that can eliminate incertitude and provide comprehensive satisfaction:
All these source of knowledge cannot provide answers to some of the most fundamental questions. For example, all the explanations about man's origin and extinction are purely tentative. Instead of solving the riddle they only mystify it. These are highly elusive issues and cannot be tackled with perfunctory answers. These sources of knowledge fail him in his most critical hour. When he is embarked on a quest to find out the purpose of his life and the object of his struggle, he is greeted by confusion and the confusion multiplies with each fresh explanation. It is a case of wrong medical prescription. No amount of maltreatment can cure a malady; it can only make it worse.
Similarly, when man wants to know about the purpose of his worldly life, life hereafter, and final awards and rewards, only definite answers can satisfy his curiosity. He is disillusioned by the pervasive injustice in the world and he needs satisfactory answers that can explain away the apparent contradiction. In the same way questions relating to the Creator. His various attributes and His infinite creative potential cannot be properly answered on the basis of even the most advanced worldly knowledge. It is in this state of blindness that man becomes acutely aware of his limitations and inadequacies. He realizes that the knowledge he has gained through his human faculties is like a drop in the ocean. It does not even touch the fringe of perfection. It is so limited that it induces in man a sense of deep humiliation. He, therefore, cries in a state of utter helplessness. He cries for divine guidance because he finds his capacities and potentialities insufficient to solve the dilemma. When he loses faith in the human sources of enlightenment, he requests God to reveal to him some extra source of guidance that can satisfy his intellectual curiosity by providing definite answers to his fundamental questions. He receives "Divine Guidance? from the Creator in response to the stirrings of his soul.
But the definite and conclusive guidance does not come to him directly. It is revealed through the "Prophets and Apostles" and through "Books and Scriptures". The Holy Qur?an has explained this phenomenon in the words;
And We raised among them the Prophets to lead them to our command.
This and many other Qur?anic verses clearly indicate the facts that the Prophets and Apostles were raised to communicate the purpose of life and ultimate guidance to mankind.
The same concept and importance of Prophethood is beautifully described in this Biblical verse;
Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress. He sent forth his word and healed them; He rescued them from the grave. Let give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men. Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of His works with songs of joy.
These Quranic and Biblical verses endorse the fact that the primary mission of the Prophets was to communicate the divine purpose of life to mankind. This uninterrupted continuation of prophethood is a proof of positive divine involvement in human affairs. It provides the strongest rebuttal of the atheistic charge that God, after creating mankind, left it at the mercy of chaos and disorder. The world, certainly, is not chaotic and disorder and its greatest proof is the presence of Prophets amongst human beings who are the carriers of divine revelation and the undeniable source of divine guidance.
Imam al-Gazali states the importance of Prophethood in these words;
Moreover, just as the man at the stage of discernment would reject and disregard the objects of intellect were these to be presented to him, so some intellectuals reject and disregard the objects of prophetic revelation. That is sheer ignorance. They have no ground for their view except that this is a stage which they have not reached and which for them does not exist; yet they suppose that it is non-existent in itself. When a man blind from birth, who has not learnt about colours and shapes by listening to people?s talk, is told about these things for the first time, he does not understand them nor admit their existence.
The Holy Qur?an, Surah 32 verse 24.
The Holy Bible, Psalm107:17-21
The Faith and Practice of Al-Gazali, page 26. Translated by W. Montgomery Watt