Saturday, September 20, 2008

What is the Purpose of our Life?


The information which is to be shared, may seem to be bit extensive but when you consider the capacity of the human brain and the amount of information that it can store and that it can decipher, then a few pages of information tonight, I’m sure won’t overburden you.
All of you have an equal responsibility and that responsibility is to listen with an open heart and an open mind.
In a world full of prejudice and cultural conditioning, it is very hard to find people that are able to take a moment to think about life objectively. And try to arrive at the truth about this world and the real purpose of our life. Unfortunately, when you ask most people the question what is the purpose of our life, such a fundamental and important question, they will not tell you what they have concluded through observation or analytical reasoning. Rather, in most cases, they will simply tell you what someone else said. Or they will tell you what is commonly presumed by others; what my father says the purpose of life is, what the minister of my Church says the purpose of life is, what my teachers says, what my friends says etc. If I ask anyone about the purpose of eating, why do we eat? Everyone will say in one word or another, its for nutrition because it sustains life. If I ask anyone why they work, they will say because it’s a necessity in order to support themselves and to provide the needs of the family. If I ask anyone why they sleep, why they wash etc. They will answer this is a common necessity for all human beings. We can follow this line of questioning with 100 questions and get same or similar answer from anyone in any language in any place in the world. Simple!
Then I ask you the question, why is it, that when we ask the question, what is the goal and the purpose of life, that we get so many different answers? That’s because people are confused, they don’t really know. They are stumbling in the dark. And rather than to say I don’t know, they just fall for any answer that they have been programmed to answer. Well think about it tonight!
Is our purpose in this world simply to eat, sleep, dress, work, acquire some materials things and enjoy ourselves? Is this our purpose? Why are we born? What is the object of our existence? And what is the wisdom behind the creation of men and this tremendous universe? Think about that question. Some persons argue that there is no prove of any divine origin, there is no prove that there is a God, there is no proves that this universe has come about for any divine purpose; there are people who argue this way. And they say that perhaps this world came about by chance. A big bang and this whole great world, with all its orchestration just came together. And they argue that life does not have any definite purpose and that there is nothing that can be proven through by the logic or science that there is a God or purpose or any divine reason behind this world.
In the Qur’an it’s mentioned:
To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and Allah has power over everything. Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding, men who celebrates the praises of Allah standing, sitting and lying down on their side and they contemplate the wonders of the creation in the heavens and the earth with the thought, “Our Lord, not for any foolish purpose has thou created all of these. Glory be to thee, give us salvation from the penalty of the hellfire.
Now here in these verses, Allah has mentioned very clearly to us by first drawing our attention to the creation of ourselves, the different postures of the human body, the different attitude of the human psychology. He draws our attention to the heaven, the alternation of the night and the day, the firmament, the stars, the constellation and then He says to us, “He has not created all of these for any foolish purpose”. Because when you see the design of it, you know it that the design of it is very powerful and very precise. And something very powerful and very precise that is beyond your own calculation and imagination, it cannot foolish. It cannot be just thrown together.
If you took 10 marbles and number them 1 to 10 and all of them with different colours and you put them inside of a bag and shook the bag and then closing your eyes reached inside that bag, and I told you, pull out marble number 1 and then marble number 2 and then pull out marble number 3 in order. What’s the chance of your pulling out of these 10 marbles in order? Do you know the chances are? Its 26 millions to 1. So what’s the chance of the heavens and the earth being thrown in a big bang and orchestrated like they are. What’s the chance of that?
My dear respected fellow humans we have to ask ourselves a further question. When you see a bridge, a building or an automobile, you automatically consider the person or the company that constructed it. When you see a plane or a rocket, a satellite or a large ship, you also think about how incredible of a vehicle that it is. When you see a nuclear plant in orbiting space stations or a super international airport, you have to thoroughly impressed with the engineering dynamics that are involved.
Yet, these are just things that are manufactured by human beings. Then what about the human body; with its massive and intricate control system? Think about it.
Think about the brains; how it thinks, how it functions, how it analysis, sort information, retrieves information, distinguishes and categorizes information in a millionth of a second! And does it constantly. Think about the brain for a moment. This is the brain that made the automobile, the rocket. Think about the brain and who made that. Think about the heart how it pumps continuously for 60 or 70 years, in taking and discharging blood throughout the body and maintaining that steady precision throughout the life of that person. Think about it.
Think about the kidney and what kind of functions that they carry – the purifying instrument of the body, which performs hundreds of chemicals analysis simultaneously and also controls the levels of toxicity in the content of the body. And it does this automatically.
Think about your eye – The human camera that adjust, focus, interpret, evaluate, and applies colour automatically; the natural inspective and adjustment to light and distance. All automatic, think about it!
Who created that? Who has mastered that? Who plans that? And who regulates that? Human beings themselves? No of course not.
What about this universe? Think about this. This earth is ONE planet in our solar system. And our solar system is one of the systems in the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is one of the constellations in this galaxy. And there are millions of galaxies like the Milky Way. Think about that and they are all in order. They are all precise. They are not colliding with each other. They are not conflicting with each other and they are swimming along in an orbit that has been SET for them. Have human beings set that into motions? And are those human beings maintaining that precision? No of course NOT! Think about the ocean, the fish, the insects, the birds, the plants, bacteria, and the chemical elements that have not been discovered and cannot be defected even with the most sophisticated instruments. Yet each one of them has a law that they follow.
Did all of these sequence, balance, harmony, variation, design, maintenance, operation and infinite numeration, did this happen by chance? And also do these things functions perpetually and perfectly by chance? And do they reproducing themselves and maintaining themselves also by chance? No of course not.
That would be totally illogical and foolish to think and in the least, it will indicate that however it came to be, it is totally outside of the realm of human capability. We will all agree to that.
The being, the all mighty power, God, the creator who has the knowledge to design, to proportion, who has created all of these and is responsible for maintaining all of these, is the only one that is deserving our praise and gratitude.
If gave each one of you a $100 for no reasons, you would at least say thank you. What about your eyes, your kidney, your brain, your life, your birth, your children – what about that? Who gave you that? Is He not worthy of praise and thanks? Is He not worthy of your worship and recognition?
That in a nutshell is the purpose and the goal of this life.
Allah the all mighty said to us in the Qur’an: “I have not created the Jinn (the spirit) nor the human beings for any other purpose except to worship me". This what the almighty says. So our purpose of this life is to recognize the creator, to be grateful to the creator, to worship the creator, to surrender ourselves to the creator and to obey the laws that He decided for us.
In a nutshell it means worship. This is our purpose on this life. And whatever we do in the course of that worship, that system, the eating, the drinking, the dressing, the working; all of these are just consequential but we have been created to worship.
That’s the purpose of our life. Don’t think that anyone who is scientific or analytical, they won’t have much argument with that purpose. They may have some other purpose within themselves. But that’s something they have to deal with between themselves and all mighty God.

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