The human being

God has completely and fully detailed all things, including the description of the human being in the Quran. God explains in the Quran that we live in temporary exile and how that came to be as a result of the great feud and our failure to make a firm stand with God alone. But, through God’s immeasurable mercy, we have been gently and completely provided for in a perfectly provisioned world, like a great spaceship. All things are perfectly measured, perfectly timed, perfectly designed.

By God’s design, every thought we have, every action we take, every consequence we experience, every person we meet, everything our eyes see and our ears hear—all are created as our total life experience in this world on an individually tailored basis by Almighty God (16:78, 90:4-7). And the best provisions of all are the abundant reminders from God of His love, mercy, greatness, truth, wonder and the “only way home” to reunion with Him.

God takes a great deal of time in the Quran to describe us, the human

being. There seem to be two categories of descriptions. The physical human being, the body, the garment, is always described in terms of perfection. The creation/ reproduction of the human being, from dust, to the lowly liquid, to the clot, the drop, the fetus, in three stages of darkness, for a predetermined time in a protected repository, to being brought out knowing nothing, growing to maturity, and eventually, death (22:5, 23:12-15, 39:6).

We are told by God that the “garment” is in total prostration to God. The chemical reactions in our bodies, the bones, and cartilage that enable us to walk, stretch, bend, run, do all things; the digestive system, the natural immune system that this wondrous machine comes with, which recognizes intruders and acts to protect the body with no conscious effort of ours; the marvelous brain which is programmed to tell the body what to do and when, sending invisible messages to every cell, each of them mini-universes themselves, each moment of our lives—all this is prostration to God, and all this is a sign to the people of the signs within ourselves. Even if we

do not see the signs in the world around us, which are seemingly impossible to avoid, we can never fail to see and feel the wonder of perfection therein.

And this is only clay and water, by God’s own description (16:4, 22:5, 23:12-15). Yet, we walk on the moon, we fly as the birds do, we “invent” machines to do our work for us, and much more! Clay and water. Total prostration. What a gift! What joy to think of all this being presented to each of us. We each get our own and do not have to envy another’s possession.

God also describes the full and complete range of behavior that we, the human beings are capable of. God is always honest with us, and therefore, tells us things we do not want to hear about ourselves.

Examples are many and repetitive. The human being is averse to reminders from God; only a few of us take heed, even with concrete examples in front of us. We can be unjust, choosing to satisfy our ego before our real self, choosing this life—this temporary illusion—as our only goal, and a low one at that.

Cont’d on page 2