As My Servant Deems Me to Be

 "God most high says, 'I am as my servant deems Me to be. I am with him when he remembers Me. Whosoever remembers Me within himself, I shall remember him in Myself. Whosoever remembers Me in company, I shall remember him in company better than them. Should he approach Me by a hand, I shall approach him by a cubit, and should he approach Me by a cubit, I shall approach him by a fathom. Should he come to Me walking, I shall go to him running.'" Hadith

I'm certain I've discussed this passage before as well, as it is one of my favorites. It is a hadith, although technically a hadith qudsi or "sacred hadith." A hadith is a saying associated with the Prophet. As I've discussed previously, I have issues with the hadith, not so much the idea behind them but rather their practice. There are thousands and thousands of hadith, and an astonishingly high percentage of them are of rather doubtful legitimacy. There's a whole school of Islamic science based on tracking down the legitimacy of hadith, based on a series of specific criteria (it's actually quite fascinating). Many are outright forgeries, while others may well be true, but simply can't be proven to have actually come down to us from the Prophet over the centuries. If you attend a Friday service in a local mosque you're probably as likely to hear a hadith quoted as a passage from the Qur'an itself. There have been times when I heard a hadith quoted as a central point of a sermon that I, even with my limited knowledge of the subject, knew to be of somewhat problematical authenticity. Still, they are a central part of the Islamic world, and they're not going away anytime soon, but it would be nice of Imams would be a little more deliberate in pointing out that the hadith which is sitting at the center of that week's talk was debated by Islamic scholars. A hadith qudsi is a hadith that quotes God, but isn't in the Qur'an (it's more complicated than that, of course, but for our purposes here I think that will suffice); consequently, they're held to be especially significant.

After that somewhat lengthy intro, I suppose I should actually talk about why I love this hadith so much. As I mentioned previously, I'm carving off time every morning for more reading, study, and reflection, and not falling into the trap of leaving it to Ramadan to "get caught up." Seyyed Hossein Nasr quoted this hadith in his commentary on the Quranic passage, "So remember Me, and I shall remember you. Give thanks unto Me and disbelieve not in Me." (2:152) Obviously, the notion of continually remembering God is an immensely important concept, and in this case I mean the necessity of keeping God and faith in our hearts and minds every moment of the day. I don't think that faith is based on huge, showy, public events, but rather the constant work of reacting to the world around you - essentially, the hundred times a day when you have the opportunity to do small kindnesses for other people. To me, that's the work of faith. That said, I've always been fascinated by the opening line, "I am as my servant deems Me to be." The following lines speak to God's desire to have a relationship with believers, and her/his/its desire to go the extra mile (or cubit) to reach that relationship. In that sense, each individual determines their relationship with God, even if God is dedicated to working even harder than the believer. However, does this passage go even further? If everyone's relationship with God is different, does that also mean that God is different for each of us? That is, God is what each believer "deems Me to be." I'm enough of a Stoic to understand that everything in the world is really defined by our perception of it - or, as Epictetus would remind us, "It's not the event, but rather our response to the event," that shapes our perception of the significance and meaning of the event. Everything in this world is based on what we bring to that interaction, but we tend to think that the divine would exist outside of the tyranny of senses and memory. It's certainly another reason to not fall into the trap of imagining God in human form, something the Jews and Muslims avoid but a trap the Christians fell into pretty early (too much time hanging around the Greeks and Romans, no doubt).