Belief in God vs Believing God

God's Teachings

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful:

“O you that believe! Fear Allah and believe in His Messenger,

And He will bestow on you a double portion of His Mercy;

He will provide for you a Light by which ye shall walk

(Straight in your path), and He will forgive you (your past);

For Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

(Quran 57: 28)

There is a dichotomy in the minds of many believing souls, of which they may not be aware. It is the misunderstanding that “believing in God” is the same as “believing” God. This may come as a shock to many believers, but these two concepts refer to vastly different stages of faith.

Believing in God is the first step, the awakening in the soul that leads you towards a God-conscious life. It is an introductory phase in your search for truth and real knowledge. This comes about as a realization that there has to be more to life on earth than just careless play and amusement. There is an insatiable hunger within for tangible knowledge of your reality of being, your purpose of life, your humanity. It is the point when you realize that the “knowledge” that has been foisted upon you, so far, is nothing but a lot of speculative junk, devoid of true substance; disconnected from the universal scheme of things. This “knowledge” leaves you ignorant of your reality; who you are and what is your purpose of life. It leaves you earthbound, trapped in the harsh struggle for material subsistence with no concept of a higher purpose or exit strategy. It holds out no promise of a “future”; you live; you die; finito! You become another lump of dirt.

 Your whole existence, according to this “knowledge”, is merely a product of chance. Somehow you simply arrived in this time, on this planet, for no other reason than to claw and struggle to the top of the food chain. And after you arrive, then what? Indulge in distractions for your own amusement and self-gratification until your body can no longer sustain itself and dies; another useless, ungrateful airsucker who lived and died without ever knowing why it existed in the first place. During your lifetime, you may even dabble in “religion”, but on your terms. If the “religious dogma” does not conform to your desires, or attempts to censor your activities, then you openly ignore it. You may even profess “belief in God” but, by your actions, demonstrate that you do not “believe God”. You reinterpret or ignore every command you dislike that emanates from your scriptures and act immorally to achieve your goals, despite the tenets of your scriptures. You justify your actions with the observation that “everyone else does it.” You live your life according to the trend of the majority of society and try to fit in, despite the still small voice within you crying out for answers to reality.

Believing God is the phase where you live according to the tenets of your scriptures. It is the stage in life where you have come to the realization that revelation is not for comparison with your opinions but for direction of your life and actions. The scripture becomes your educational source. You are no longer in competition with your Creator. You are now in submission to Him and allow yourself to be taught by Him. You are willing to discard the speculative, error-prone, earth-bound education you had been previously given and the haphazard actions stemming from it. You no longer mentally subject God to your will; you subject yourself to His Will and hold yourself accountable to Him for your actions and intentions in life. You embrace the purpose and guidance He gave you through His message and His prophets. You reject what He condemns and you practice what He recommends. You remake yourself gradually into the creature that He tells you, through His message, that you were created to be. You believe in the promises He makes to you in His message. You become a “fan”, a believer in the message of your Creator, and dedicate your life to pleasing Him. This does not imply that you recluse yourself from other human beings. On the contrary, it inspires you to reach out to other humans and encourage them to adopt the message of the Creator. 

 

Believing God is a gradual process. It does not happen immediately that you start “believing in God”. It is an educational process that culminates in an unshakeable Faith in the veracity of the teachings of the prophets of God. Like any other educational process, you have to develop faith that the information you are receiving comes from a credible source and is reliably accurate. It requires you to study and ponder over the information you receive and apply its recommendations in your daily life. It also requires you to develop the recommended mindset to fully absorb the implications of the teachings you receive. A closed mind is no friend to an open book; you have to be willing to discard previously-accepted views and inclinations that are inconsistent with the new knowledge. Faith, like most human characteristics, is developed step-by-step. As you replace erroneous knowledge with scriptural knowledge, it becomes increasingly harder for you to indulge in old, harmful behaviors and your life and character changes. You will begin to evaluate your old indulgences by new scriptural values and, over time, shed the incompatible ones. Scriptural knowledge clearly defines the features and characteristics that a human being needs to develop to claim its humanity and the rewards of cultivating them in this life and the upcoming future that God promises us. 

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