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Lesson Sixteen
Hardship, a
Cause of Awakening
Those who are drunk on the arrogance of power and success and who
have totally forgotten humane ethics because of the seduction of their soul and their
senses will sometimes find, in various corners of the world, that the occurrence of
unpleasant events makes them open to fundamental changes and developments that tear away
from them the veils of forgetfulness. They may even be guided to a path leading to some
degree of moral perfection and a future more fruitful than their present. They are people
in whom misfortune has induced a profound transformation. Considering the harmful effects of neglectfulness and the
intoxication of arrogance, on the one hand, and the numerous moral lessons taught by
misfortune, on the other, it can be said that failure and misfortune are relative insofar
as they contain great blessings; they contribute fruitfully to the building of man's
awareness and will. Hardship is, then, the preliminary to higher, more advanced states
of being; it prepares man for the recompense that awaits him, and from his response to it,
it becomes apparent whether he has attained the lofty degree of sincerity and devotion or
is sunk in decay. The Quran says: "We have aeated man in the embrace of
hardship." (90:4) Or, again: "We test you with fear, hunger, the loss of
wealth and possessions, death, and the loss of thefruits of your toil . Give glad tidings
to those who struggle manfully on this path that those who say when afflicted with
calamity and pain, 'We arefrom God and to Him we return on our path to
perfection,'—that it is they who receive kindness and mercy from their Lord together
with their suffering, and they it is who are truly guided." (2:155-57) Without doubt, God could have created a world without hardship, pain
and misfortune, but that would have meant His depriving man of freedom and choice; he
would have been let loose in the world as a creature without will or the power of
decision, just like any other creature lacking perception and awareness, formed
exclusively by nature and totally obedient to it. Would he then have deserved the name of
man? Having paid the heavy price of losing all his innate capacities and
freedom, his most precious resource, would he have advanced toward perfection, or decayed
and declined? Would not the world, too, have lost all goodness and beauty, these being
comprehensible only in terms of their opposites? It is plain that the power to distinguish and discriminate makes
possible the existence of good and evil, of beauty and ugliness. By giving man the
inestimable blessing of freedom and the ability to choose, God, whose wisdom is manifest
throughout creation, wished to display fully His ability to create phenomena bearing
witness to His wisdom and power. He placed within man's being the possibility of doing both good and
evil, and although He compels him to do neither, He always expects him to do good. God
does not approve of evil; it is righteous conduct that meets with His approval and, in
exchange for which He provides abundant, unimaginable reward. God warns man against
following the path of evil and threatens him with punishment and torment if he does
so. Thus, by using the power of choice that God has bestowed on him, man
can act as he should, conforming both to divine guidance and to his own conscience. But, if occasionally his foot should slip and he should commit some
sin, the path remains open for him to return to purity and light, to God's favor and
mercy. This is in itself a further manifestation of God's generosity and all-embracing
justice, one more of the blessings He bestows on His servants. Were God to give immediate reward to the virtuous for
their righteous conduct and acts, they would not in any way be superior to the corrupt and
the sinful. And if the evil in thought and in deed were to be always met with instant
punishment and retribution, virtue and purity would not enjoy any superiofity in this
world to vice and impurity. ***** The principle of contradiction, is, in fact, the basis of the
created world; it is what enables matter to change and evolve so that God's grace flows
through the world. Were matter not to take on different shapes as a result of its
encounter with various beings and were being unable to accommodate new forms within
itself, the differentiation and advancement of being would be impossible. A stable and
unchanging world would resemble stagnant capital that produces no profit. For creation,
change is the capital that brings about profit. It is, of course, possible that the
investment of a certain portion of capital should result in loss, but the constant motion
of matteras a whole definitely resultsinprofit. The contradiction that takes place in the
forms of matter results in the advancement of the order of being toward perfection. There is some question as to whether evil exists in the world in the
real sense of the word. If we look carefully, we will see that the evil of things is not a
true attribute; it is a relative one. Fire arms in the hands of my enemy are an evil for me, and firearms
in my hands are an evil for my enemy. Setting aside me and my enemy, firearms are in
themselves neither good nor bad. The course of nature can be said to be mathematical; that is, its
system has been established in such a way as not to answer all of our needs. We, however,
wish to fulfill all our uncountless desires without encountering the least hindrance, and
the forces of naturc do not answer the limitless wishes we cherish, wishes which are in
any event worthless from the point of view of our essential nature. Nature pays no
attention to our desires and refuses to submit to our wants. So when we encounter
unpleasantness in our lives, we become unjustifiably upset and we term the causes of our
discom- fort as "evil." If someone wants to light his lamp when there is no oil in it, he
will not start sighing and complaining orcurse the whole universe! Creation is constantly advancing toward a clear goal, through
unceasing effort and striving. Specific causes determine each step it takes, and the
changes and development it undergoes are not designed to meet men's approval or satisfy
their desires. It should be accepted that some of the occurrences of this world
will not correspond to our wishes, and we ought not to regard as injustice things we
experience as unpleasant. Ali, peace be upon him, the Commander of the Faithful, describes the
world as an abode of hardship, but nonetheless a good place for the one who knows it
properly. Although he encountered himself all kinds of hardship and unpleasantness, he
constantly drew men's attention to the absolute justice of God!. Another important point which must not be overlooked is that good
and evil do not represent two mutually exclusive categories or series in the order of
creation. Goodness is identical withbeing, and evil is identical with non-being; wherever
being makes its appearance, non-existence is also implied. When we speak of poverty, indigence, ignorance or disease we should
not imagine that they have separate realities: poverty is simply not having wealth,
ignorance is the absence of knowledge, and disease is the loss of health. Wealth and
knowledge are realities, but poverty is nothing other than the emptiness of the hand and
the pocket, and ignorance, the absence of knowledge. Hence poverty and ignorance have no
tangible reality; they are defined through the non-existence of other things. The same is the case with calamities and misfortunes that we regard
as evil and the source of suffering. They, too, are a kind of loss or non-being, and are
evil only in the sense that they result in the destruction or non-existence of something
other than themselves. Apart from this, nothing, insofar as it exists, can in any way be
called evil or ugly. If calamities did not entail sickness and death, the loss and ruin
of certain creatures, thus preventing their capacities from unfolding, they would not be
bad. It is the loss and ruin arising from misfortunes that is inherently bad. Whatever
exists in the world is good; evil pertains to non-being, and since non-being does not form
a category independent of being, it has not been created and does not exist. Being and non-being are like the sun and its shadow. When a body is
turned to the sun, it casts a shadow. What is a shadow? The shadow has not been created by
anything; it consists simply of the sun not shining in a given place because of the
existence of an obstade; it has no source or origin of its own. Things have a real existence by virtue of having been created
without reference to things other than themi in this sense, they are not evil. For a
worldview derived from belief in God, the world is equivalent to good. Everything is
inherently good; if it is evil, it is so only in a relative sense and in connection with
things other than itself. The existence of everything is unreal for other than itself, and
untouched by creation. The malarial mosquito is not evil in itself. If it is described as
such, it is because it is harmful to man and causes disease. That which is created is the
existence of a thing in and of itself, which is a true existence; speculative or
conditional existence has no place in the order of being and is not real. We cannot,
therefore, ask why God has created relative or conditional existence. Conditional or
abstract entities are inseparable from the real entities that give rise to them; they are
their inevitable concomitants and do not partake of their being. One cannot then speakof
conditional entities having been created. That which is real must necessarily derive its being from the
Creator. Only those things and attributes are real that exist outside the mind. Relative
attributes are created by the mind and have no existence outside it so one cannot go
looking for the creator. Furthermore, that which has the potential to exist is the world as a
whole, with all the objects it contains and the attributes that are inseparable from it;
the world represents an indivisible unit. From the vantage point of God's wisdom, either
the world must exist on the pattern that is peculiar to it, or it cannot exist at
all. A world without order or lacking the principle of causality, a world
where good and evil were not separate from each other, would be an impossibility and a
fantasy. It is not possible to suppose that one part of the world should exist and another
should not. Creation is a whole, like the form and figure of man, and its parts are
inseparable from each other. God is absolutely free of all need, and one consequence of this is
that He freely bestows being, like a generous man whose largess expects no return, or like
a skilled artist who is constantly busy with the creation of new forms . Such abundant
generosity and creativity define the essence of the Lord Whose signs are manifest and
evident in every phenomenon.
