"Does man suppose that he would be left aimless?"
Quran 75:36
This very brief passage is drawn from the 75th surah, al-Qiyamah, "The Resurrection." It seems like I've talked about it before, or maybe it was just a similar passage elsewhere in the Quran. I like this particular passage because it brings us back to the bigger core question of why any of us are here in the first place. Nasr makes the point that we were created because God simply could not not create us. The good always want to share their goodness, so by definition the ultimately Good will have to share its Goodness, and so we had to be created. This isn't like the Popol Vuh where the gods kept creating and erasing early creatures because they weren't particularly good at worshiping the gods, but instead in this instance humans were created because God wanted to share his Goodness, or maybe it's better to think about sharing the beauty of the world, even though at this moment it doesn't feel very beautiful. However, it doesn't stop there, because just throwing us in the deep end of the pool means that we're going to flounder more frequently than we'll going to win a gold medal in the 100 meter free style. So, there has to be a point to all of this, which also brings us back, in some ways, to the general question of free will. If we were created because of goodness, then shouldn't our lives be about goodness? If we're good to our fellow human beings, then we're, I would argue, by definition being good to God, and thus there is an aim to life.
Quran 75:36
This very brief passage is drawn from the 75th surah, al-Qiyamah, "The Resurrection." It seems like I've talked about it before, or maybe it was just a similar passage elsewhere in the Quran. I like this particular passage because it brings us back to the bigger core question of why any of us are here in the first place. Nasr makes the point that we were created because God simply could not not create us. The good always want to share their goodness, so by definition the ultimately Good will have to share its Goodness, and so we had to be created. This isn't like the Popol Vuh where the gods kept creating and erasing early creatures because they weren't particularly good at worshiping the gods, but instead in this instance humans were created because God wanted to share his Goodness, or maybe it's better to think about sharing the beauty of the world, even though at this moment it doesn't feel very beautiful. However, it doesn't stop there, because just throwing us in the deep end of the pool means that we're going to flounder more frequently than we'll going to win a gold medal in the 100 meter free style. So, there has to be a point to all of this, which also brings us back, in some ways, to the general question of free will. If we were created because of goodness, then shouldn't our lives be about goodness? If we're good to our fellow human beings, then we're, I would argue, by definition being good to God, and thus there is an aim to life.
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