Ideas Inspired by the Qur'an

How Does it Feel to be God?

“We were created to receive His Love — which is our initial experience after birth if we are born into a loving family — and then to transmit it and reproduce it … and gain thereby some inkling of how it feels to be God.” (IIQ, page 187)

The Qur’an — and every chapter of the Qur’an but one — begins with “In the Name of GOD, the Gracious, the Compassionate.” So often is this phrase recited that the frequency may be blurring the magnificence and mystery of it for Muslims.

It is as if GOD is urging us from the outset, ‘You have My Name — call Me! You see that I am Gracious — thank Me! And you hear that I am Compassionate — feel Me!’

In GOD we have the Perfect Lover — respectful yet passionate, plain-spoken yet eloquent, gentle yet powerful. It costs Him nothing to give us a whole universe to play with, but He is both too Proud (Al-Mutakabbir) and too Noble (Al-Karim) to give in to us if our demands are thoughtless, impious, or harmful. Such is His Magnificence.

Some will say that He needs to suffer to feel like us, to redeem us. (Christians: please take note!) But that was not His purpose in breathing life into the human being. But they will never cease to be contentious, / Other than the ones to whom your Lord shows Mercy; and for that He did create them. (Q11:118-119) GOD created us to express His Mercy, unconditionally, as one of His signs. As for OUR feelings, He knows them intimately; He creates them, moment by moment. But do we feel His Mercy? That is a feeling, a sign, worth knowing … moment by moment.

We can start by getting to know the feelings we already have as human beings. Muhammad (GOD bless him and give him peace) was elevated to prophethood with his feelings intact; he did not purge them by retreating to mountain caves or repudiate them in meditative poses on lotus leaves or fluffy white clouds. He wept out of pity and grief — much more than any of us do today. He felt joy, and expressed that in prostrating to GOD rather than dancing and shouting. And he felt anger; he knew it better by being able to control it, just as a rider who can soothe and mount his horse knows the animal better than one who lets it gallop off.

All of these feelings, among so many other shades of emotion, are forms of knowledge implanted in us by GOD, and thus important to probe and explore. But not all emotions are valid, and almost none of them can be allowed free rein. Each one is a book to be studied and mastered. A genuine student reads his book — the one written on his heart — rises from his study when his grade is confirmed, and goes to seek the Author.

But why should GOD care what we feel? And why would He want to share His greatest feeling, His Mercy, with us? That, dear reader, is a Mystery.