Nature Or The Creator

The person who abandoned the atheistic-naturalist way of thinking and embraced faith said: “All praise be to Allah, my doubts have been removed. However, I still have a few questions that arouse my curiosity.”

First Question

“We often hear lazy people and those who neglect the five daily prayers ask:

‘What need has Allah of our worship that He, in the Qur’an, so severely and repeatedly reproaches those who abandon and neglect it, and threatens them with such a dreadful punishment as Hell? How does it befit the balanced, measured, and just style of the Qur’an to respond so harshly to what appears to be a minor and insignificant offence?’”

The Answer: Allah has no need whatsoever of your worship, nor indeed of anything else. It is you who are in need of worship, for spiritually you are ill. As we have demonstrated in many parts of the Risale-i Nur, worship is like a remedy for spiritual wounds. Consider how absurd it would be if a sick person were to say to a compassionate physician, who persistently urges him to take medicines beneficial for his illness: “Why are you so insistent? What need do you have of my recovery?”

As for the severe warnings and dreadful punishments in the Qur’an concerning the abandonment of worship, they resemble a ruler who punishes an ordinary man severely in proportion to his crime because that crime has violated the rights of his subjects, whose rights he is bound to protect.

Likewise, the person who abandons worship and prayer commits a serious transgression against the rights of all beings, which are like the subjects of the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, and thereby commits a spiritual injustice. For the perfections of beings become manifest through the glorifications and acts of worship they offer to their Creator. The one who abandons worship neither sees nor perceives this worship; indeed, he may even deny it.

As a result, he lowers beings from their exalted stations—stations they attain through worship and glorification, where each serves as a missive of as-Samad and a mirror to the Divine Names. Since he regards them as insignificant, purposeless, lifeless, and without duties, he insults them, denies their perfections, and violates their rights.

Indeed, everyone sees the universe through the mirror of his own inner state. Allah created man as a measure and scale for the universe, and has given each person a particular world within this world. He displays that world to him according to the condition of his heart and his beliefs.

For example, a despairing and grief-stricken person sees existence itself as sorrowful and hopeless, whereas someone filled with joy and delight sees everything as cheerful and vibrant. Similarly, a believer who worships and glorifies Allah with reflection and seriousness discovers and perceives, to a certain degree, the genuine worship and glorification that truly exist throughout creation. But one who abandons worship through neglect or denial imagines beings in a manner entirely contrary to the reality of their perfection and thus spiritually violates their rights.