(Reprinted from the Musliim Journal 3/16/2001)

The Life of the Human Family: Part 3

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

For many, many years I was struggling for the right understanding, struggling for the right picture, struggling for light in the dark areas. But my faith was strong to start with. And as G-d began to bless me with understanding of the sacred words and of the mission of the Last Prophet, Muhammed, my faith began to increase and increase.

Now it is so strong, until I believe it is impossible for people to stop me. The statement, some think, should be: “I believe it is possible for me to succeed.” No I believe it is impossible for people to stop me, because G-d approves what I have chosen to be as a human person and G-d is going to protect that life. That life lives for G-d. It doesn’t live for itself. Because the person who has that life knows that it only has it because G-d has favored him with His Mercy. And G-d has sent His Angels to guide that person and to assist that person, when that person needs help until that person arrives where that person wants to be.

THE LIFE THAT MAKES US COMFORTABLE
Where did I want to be? I wanted to be comfortable with myself. Isn't this the need that drives all of us? We want to be comfortable with ourselves.

A sister may marry a man who she thought was going to be a good mate for her, and she is an honest, faithful, hardworking woman – she doesn't mind working and helping him out. But the more she helps him out, the more she sees that he is doing wrong.

The more she helps him out, the more time he has to go out and flirt. So now she thinks she made a mistake. She says: "I think I have the wrong man. This man looked like he didn't want anybody but me, until I started helping him out and freed him up and now he has more time on his hands. Now he has time to go out and flirt. Now he goes out flirting all the time and making my life miserable, and I have to give him up, cut this man loose."

It can be hard to have the life that you can be comfortable with. And a lot of sisters will cut that brother loose. She'll say: "You know I love you like I always loved you." He'll say to her: "You know what those other women are to me?" She'll ask: "What?" And he'll say: "Nothing." Then she says: "Just go on again to establish ourselves in the life that we think will make us comfortable.”

This is the history not of a person or individual. This is the history of nations. Nations struggle for the life that will make them comfortable. They say it is the life of environmental beauty. " And let us make a god to this dream of ours, and let us call this god, the god of beauty"

This is the history of nations. Then they will make a god to their aim and purpose in life and will call that god "Apollo" – the god of beauty. And their nation, they think, will be strong because they have that god. They have their ideal life. They have their dream picture of what they want to be as a people. And they have a god now that will remind them always: "What we want is a life of beauty." But later down the road, they will have beauty to disappoint them.

Some have chosen war, strength, man power as the ideal life: "Let us have the strongest army on earth, and this will be our security. Our borders will be protected. No one will dare attack us, and we will have freedom that others don't have. While they are in fear, we will be partying. We will be over other nations."

THINK NOT FOR OURSELVES
In our homes, we will have individuals trying to get the life we want. But let me make it short. Over the long road of history for individuals and nations striving to have a life that will make them comfortable, they have been some decent, human minded, human soul, human spirited, human loving persons wanting to find not what will make them happy, but wanting to find what would make the maximum number of human beings happy.

They think not for themselves, they think for the family of mankind. And because they were innocent and charitable, G-d chose some of them to be His Messengers, to be His Prophets. Then G-d revealed to them, those special people who wanted not something for themselves or for their families or their nations or for their race only, for they wanted something for all human beings — everybody in human form.

G-D CREATED THE BODY AND THE LIFE
Because of G-d selecting them and revealing to them the life — The Life; we cannot know the life, unless G-d reveals it to us. It is impossible. The same G-d that created us physically to look like humans also had to reveal to a human being, who is worthy of His Revelation, the life that we need to make us happy. We cannot get it, except from Him.

Now, isn't that rational? Isn't that logical? Isn't that justice? If I have gotten my physical life, this human body, this biological form with this intelligence and everything that makes me the person that I am, if I got this from a G-d that created everything and now I am looking for the ideal life to live or to have in this body or to live for in the world environment, should I be free to get that on my own, when I wasn't free to get this body on my own? I was not free to get this body on my own.

So G-d has ordered that if you want the life that He created the body for, you have to also get that from Him. And we have it in the language. Maybe you don't know it in the language of all the men who G-d has appointed, but it is in the language of everyone of them. It is the language to speak to this life, to address this condition.

In Adam, the first man whom He created and in the narration of the story about his creation, we see that He created Adam for a particular life. In the Bible, it gives us the story of a man being created and being put into the garden. A garden means a beautiful thing, a lovely place – especially back then – a Paradise, a Heaven on Earth or at least a Heaven in his environment wherever he was.

G-d put Adam in the garden and advised him; G-d advised the man: "Eat of every tree...." This is in the Bible, and here is G-d telling the man to enjoy the life and food and beauty; He told him: "Eat of every tree, but that one tree of knowledge of good and evil – do not eat of it." This is in the Genesis of the Bible.

Here is the first human being created by G-d, and according to this revealed knowledge called the Bible scripture, the man was cautioned by the same G-d that made him, created him, not to eat of a certain tree in the garden. And that tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He said: "For the day that you eat of it, you will surely die."

So here is a food that if this person who G-d created for life eats of it, he will lose that life. He will lose the life that G-d gave him, that G-d intended for him. He will lose the life that is truly his life, if he eats of that fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

AVOID SPIRITUAL DEATH
That tells us that G-d is saying in Genesis that human beings are created by G-d and the same G-d that created them in the form that they are in also gave them the life that is best suited for them. If they leave that life or lose that life, they will die. Does it mean that they will die physically or be put in a physical grave? No. They will die spiritually. The spirit that G-d gave them when He created them, they will lose and won't have it. They will die to that spirit, and therefore they will be virtually dead.

G-d created them to have that spirit, the human spirit, and G-d created them for that particular life. And if they don't have that particular life — though they have another life — they are dead. If I were born to have the life of Wallace D. Mohammed, and someone takes the life of Wallace D. Mohammed from me and I become the life of Abdur Rahman Saleem, then when I go home to my wife as Abdur Rahman Saleem, she is going to ask: "Where is my husband?"

And if she can't get anything from me but "Abdur Rahman Saleem," I am going to have to leave the house. I can't stay there. When people ask her, "what happened to your husband?" she is going to say: "He is dead; he died." If we lose the life that G-d created for us, that ideal human life that G-d created for us, we are virtually dead.

We have to have the life that Allah wants for us, The One Who created us in the beginning. Then we will have happiness, indeed. And when we have that life, we have the support of G-d's Angels. We will have the support of the Angels.

That is what He told man when He created him in the life that He wanted him to have. He said: "The Angels will support you, and the creation will yield up its resources to you." It will yield up its treasures to you.

But G-d says: "If you go out of the form that I created for you, then you lose all of that. The Angels won't work for you anymore. The creation won't yield its treasures up to you." Instead of great opportunities and abundant goods and services for you, you will be cast down to bite the dust.