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Saturday, June 09, 2007

Life

 


Have you ever questioned yourselves what God created this universe for? The earth with the other planets, human beings, animals, plants, etc.

When I was in elementary school (I went to Islamic school), I learned twenty traits of God, from wujud, qidam, baqa’, … till mutakalliman. Do you know that? The second trait, qidam, means the earliest. God has existed much earlier than the others. I imagined God was all alone at that time, in this very spacious arasy. The fifth trait, qiyamuhu binafsihi, means berdiri dengan sendirinya, or independent. I imagined, using my limited capability of imagination, God didn’t have anything to do. Perhaps God was lonely? To overcome that loneliness, (referring to God’s fourth trait, mukhalafatulil khawaditsi, meaning God does everything by Godself, God doesn’t need any help from other creatures) God created malaikat, without passion. No wonder, malaikat never have any idea to do anything else but things that God decided them to do. Since created, malaikat Jibril has given divine revelation to some prophets. Until the doomsday, that will be the only thing Jibril will do, nothing else. Since having no passion, Jibril never wants to cheat, let’s say by keeping the divine revelation for himself/herself. Oh well, in Islam, malaikat doesn’t have sex, right, not male, not female. :)

Facing a creature without passion definitely is very boring, do you agree? Therefore, then God created another creature, syaithon, alias Satan, with only passion. It was also boring. The most perfect creature God has ever existed, human being, was the following creature. God created Adam. (Have you ever heard, anthropologists do not believe that Adam is the first human being in this world, while for Black people, they believed that Adam is the first white man. Before Adam, then, all human beings had black skin. :)) God completed human beings with passion and brain. Humans are supposed to use their brain to control their passion.

Going back to the main topic of this article, God created all this universe to make God busy, not feeling lonely. Observing human beings with their greed will be fun. Do you agree? Human beings that think their conviction is the right one, and underestimate other people, will then encourage them to fight other people, to force them to follow their way of thinking. People like Amrozi that judge people with other religions are just rubbish, so he feels justified to kill them all. Other people who think that their religion is the best, so they busy themselves to provoke other people to convert their religion, by saying bad things about other religion. Don’t they realize that it all started from indoctrination we’ve got since we were a kid?

Since I was a kid, I have been indoctrinated that Islam is the only religion justified by God, only Muslim people will go to Heaven, the others will go to Hell. My rebellious nature made me question myself why this only right religion doesn’t treat women fairly? (e.g. women are supposed to ask their husband’s permission before doing something, while men can do anything they want without their wives’ approval, women are supposed to ‘serve’ their husbands in bed anytime their husbands want, no matter whether their wives consent it or not, etc). I got the answer from my study, feminist literary theory with its main principle Reading as A Woman made me open my mind and eyes, it is not Islam that is gender-biased, but the men behind it, men with their gender-biased way of thinking interpret Al-Quran using their limited capability. When reading Jurnal Perempuan no 32 with the main topic “Perempuan dan Fundamentalisme”, I found out that other religions are also gender-biased, some of them are even worse than Islam in viewing women’s roles in society.

I am wondering why my writing deviates far from the main topic I want to tell you? J

When I feel my life empty, friends, I sometimes ask myself why God created all these things? Only for God’s amusement? Later, in the doomsday, we all will perish. All will be back to the previous time. God will be all alone again. (For those who have been indoctrinated that there will be life after death, they then will be waiting for the time to go to heaven or to hell. For those who have been indoctrinated that everything will end when their life ends, no life after death, then.) As a thoughtful and broad-minded people, we are not supposed to judge easily that other people’s conviction is wrong, are we?

Again, dear friends, no matter how many things we have done for our society, or for ourselves, or even nothing we have done, we all will “drift away” to the following kind life (if there is one). Then what?

This world has existed for many many centuries. Billions people have died before us. Then what? Time for us will come too. Also to our offspring. Then what? Does it give any benefit for God, as the Creator?

I still don’t find the answer of my own question what God created all this universe for. I believe God exists. But …

Anybody can help me?

Nana
Yogya, 051205

2 comments:

Ivo Cerckel said...

1.
Perhaps, "we” have been created in order that some of "us” may have a passion,
not for freedom and demokracy,
but for TRUTH and justice which (the latter) is the recognition of truth.
2.
Whereas in the Muslim world, theology (KALAM) is considered to be a defensive apology whereby all means are being assembled in order to defend and illustrate the revealed law,
philosophy (FALSAFA) has always been considered to be a foreign reality, hence its Arabised Greek name of falsafa.
3.
Jewish philosopher MAIMONIDES (1135/11138 – 1204) therefore argued that the defenders of kalam were not so much interested in accounting for facts, but in forcing the world to accept their preconceived ideas.
4.
al-KINDI (c. 800 – c. 866), one of the great philosophers of the golden Baghdad Age (750 – 850 AD),
with the BAGHDAD HOUSE OF WISDOM in the years 830,
an original institution without any equivalent in history,
original institution which assembled all translators of Ancient Greek Philosophy,
wrote however in the Aristotelian tradition,
but his philosophy cannot be considered to be Aristotelian or neoplatonic.
(Alain de Libera, “La philosophie medievale”, Presses Universitaires de France, 1998, 3rd ed., pp. 73 and 92-98)
3.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) did not write much on truth, I think.
In “De Veritate” (Truth), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote that truth is ad-equation between the thing and the intellect (adaequatio rei et intellectus).
Perhaps the notion of HULUL "divine incarnation” (in the intellect), which is being defended in Sufism, can provide some help.
As Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1328), said in “Thus spake Sister Catherine” (“Also sprach Schwester Kathrei”)
when you awake from coma, you realise that you have been, AND STILL ARE, where you were before you were created.
You realise that you have been made One again with your Creator.
4.
MORE QUOTES FROM KATHREI (not in order of appearance)
4.1.
Was ich gefunden habe, das kann niemand in Worte fassen.
What I have found, nobody can put into words.
4.2
Er sprach: Hast du nun alles, was du willst? – Sie sprach: Ja, ich bin bewähret
Her confessor asks her: Do you now have everything you want? – She replies, Yes I have been confirmed (be-TRUTH-ed, be-waehr-et, Wahrheit is Truth, wahr is true).
4.3
Wo ich stehe, da kann keine Kreatur in kreatürlicher Weise hinkommen.
Where I am, there no creature can arrive in the manner of a creature.
4.4.
Ich bin da, wo ich war, ehe ich geschaffen wurde, da ist bloß Gott und Gott. Da gibt es weder Engel noch Heilige, noch Chöre, noch Himmel. Manche Leute sagen von acht Himmeln und von neun Chören; davon ist da nichts, wo ich bin.
I am there where I was before I was created, that is bare God and God. Over there, there are no angels and no saints, no choirs, no heavens. Many people say that there are eight heavens and nine choirs. Nothing of that, where I am.
4.5
Sie sprach: Ich gebe euch einen getreuen Rat. Ihr wisset wohl, dass alle Kreaturen von Nichts geschaffen sind und wieder zu Nichts werden müssen, ehe sie in ihren Ursprung kommen.
She said: I give you a trustworthy advice. You should know that all creatures have been created from nothing and that they must again become nothing before they can arrive in their origin.
5.
“We” have been created in order that some of "us” may have a passion for TRUTH by having God live inside them so that they can know the truth of their origin.
Perhaps I should rephrase the “so that they can know the truth of their origin”.
Have we been created in order to again become nothing before we can arrive in our origin?
Arche (orgin) and telos (aim, purpose) were the objects of Ancient Greek philosophy.
Perhaps you know what we have been created for?
==
Ivo Cerckel
Siquijor house of WiSdom
ivocerckel@siquijor.ws

Anonymous said...

it'S not often I see Meister Eckhart is quoted.