The R. A. Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah
Allah, The Most Exalted, has created man to live a certain limited age: ‘Every soul will taste death (3:185)’,‘Indeed, you are to die, and indeed, they are to die.(39:30)’,‘But never will Allah delay a soul when its time has come(63:11)’.
Life is a journey that starts at birth and moves daily in one’s lifetime that would be burdened by the weight of the years. Man eats each day a piece of hislife,until he finishes, in this tiresome and exhausting trip, all the food that Allah has put in his hands. It will then end by death, which will conclude the period of work, which Allah has determined for him andwhich represents his responsibility towards his presence and the role that Allah, The Most Exalted, has prepared for him.
Then after death, he will face the outcomes of (the way he held)this responsibility through the reward that Allah, The Most Exalted, has prepared for his good deeds and the punishment He promised for his bad and evil deeds. It is the day of truth when Allah, The Most Exalted, will reward the good doers and punish the evil doers. And this is what makes life purposeful andinhibits the creation of man from being absurd, for this world is a place where man acts, and he will reap the results of his good or evil work in the Afterlife. This is the Divine justice that gives each of Allah, The Most Exalted ’s servants his right based on God’s right to be obeyed, and holds him responsible for his duties ,based on the meaning of bondage to Allah, The Most Exalted, and the need to abstain from sin, in accordance to God’s will.
It is the justice of the Lord whose names have risen to the highest degree of greatness that nobody else can reach and that is pure of any deficiency or shortage.
He is the one whose successive graces on all creatures are numerous. And He is the Lord whose servants cannot, no matter how much they try,understand the reasons and the wisdom behind His deeds. They do not have the right to know the inner secrets and the unlimited horizonsof the Divine Self .Consequently , they do not have the right to ask Him about why He did what He did,for this implies that they have the right to know His motivations or learn His secrets or rule if the(Divine) deed itself could be judged as right or wrong,which means that it can be either praised or criticized, depending on what is revealed of its nature. All this is unattainable, considering the position of the Creator from the point of view of the creature.
He is the God that possesses man entirely, implying that the human being does not have the right to ask Him of what He does to him or to the rest of creatures,in that it would be consideredugly if He abstains from answering, for man does not have the right to object on any of His acts. The belief in Allah, The Most Exalted, , the one , the All Omnipotent, the free to do any anything with His creatures , and the Just in all His actions , suggests that Allah, The Most Exalted, is wise in everything He does and just in all what He decrees. It is impossible that he does anything without a purpose since He is perfect in Himself. It is also impossible for Him to do wrong, since He is perfect and does not need to. Such a question is meaningless if it is not an objection or a rebellion, and this does not conform with man’s deep and inner belief and contradicts the knowledge of man that Allah, The Most Exalted, is greatand perfect…. He is the Lord Who created His servants and held them responsible of what they say and do , based on their bondage to Him since their existence by its nature submits to Him, and that it opens up in its movement totheir voluntary yielding and obedience to Him. That is why it is His right to question them, as He said in His Glorious Book:‘And stop them; indeed, they are to be questioned.’
In the course of explaining His saying‘He is not questioned about what He does, but they will be questioned’, Imam As-Sadiq(a.s.) said that He is not asked because He only does what is wise and right …If anyone finds that any uneasiness in anything He decreed , he would have disbelieved,and that he who refutes any of His deeds would have denied( the truth) …
Excerpts from ‘AfaqArrouh’( SahifaSajjadiaexplanation book)