The following series on Free Will is a slightly edited version of my lecture at Rutgers University Annual Conference, Road to Revival 2019.
Everything is created by and under the dominion of God. And that’s the first thing we have to understand in order to understand the will of God. Secondly, we must understand that everything but God is a creation even human free will: and we must understand that God is not like his creation, ‘Laysa Kamithli shay’, nothing is like God. These two things are the first things we must know before entering a conversation about the will of God and human free will.
If God has already destined what is and is not why should I try to be good? If God wants me to be bad, why should I try to be good? If God wants me to be a disbeliever, why should I believe? These are often the first questions that come to mind when we attempt to understand Divine Destiny. In the book, ‘A History of Knowledge’ by Charles Van Doren, he states, “You cannot have faith —which is absolute certainty of God’s existence—without God’s grace”. Charles Van Doren is not a theologist but his words are, nevertheless, true. You cannot escape the Qadr of Allah.
And thus we find ourselves in an internal conflict, if I cannot truly choose then why choose at all?
Yet this line of thinking conflates two kinds of truths, two kinds of experiences. In the Quran God questions Jesus about what he taught his followers. He says in Surah Maidah, “And [beware the Day] when Allah will say, “Oh Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?’” He will say, “Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that which I have no right to say. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen”
While this does not touch on Qadr specifically, it demonstrates to us what our approach should be when dealing with our reality vs. God’s reality. We know that like Jesus Christ, on the day of resurrection we will all be questioned about our choices, our actions, how we spent our life. But we won’t be questioned because God is ignorant of our actions. We will be questioned because that is the way of God, He is the Questioner and we are the questioned. We may say, “That doesn’t make sense why would God question if he already knows?” But to do so would be like the laymen questioning a brick layer as to why he lays the brick like this and not that, only an ignorant and arrogant person would say, “No you must do it this way, this way makes more sense” based merely on opinions and conjecture but not knowledge.
So Jesus Christ, being much wiser than us, does not simply say when questioned by God “Well, you know I didn’t say that”. In his adab and wisdom he first praises God, answers his question and only after doing so acknowledges that God knows what he does not know. Despite having knowledge that God is the ultimate Doer, he still took responsibility for his actions.
There are certain levels of knowledge we all possess, I know some things you don’t know, you know some things I don’t know but God is the All Knower. Just as there are levels of free will even within the world. Someone with an aching leg does not have the same free will to walk a mile as someone in full health. Someone with intellectual disabilities does not have the same free will to do well on a test as someone with natural abilities. Adults have more free will that children, children more free will than pets, the free more free will than those incarcerated. The level of power we have over our own lives to freely make decisions and choices and the amount power we have to reach those outcomes is and will always be varied. So is it really so impossible to understand that just as one can have knowledge but God has the ultimate knowledge, one can have free will but God is the ultimate Doer. When we talk about Divine Destiny we are talking about absolute power. The will of God and the will of the human being are not in competition, they are operating in different realms.
The responsibility of our free will as human beings is to always choose the best option, when we choose good we’re rewarded whether we fulfill it or not, when we choose bad —by the grace of God, we are not punished if the bad deed is not fulfilled. So what is the hardest of all aspects of Qadr to grasp? It is knowing that God knows whom will go to hell and whom will go to paradise. Though I prefer it is less so that we aren’t able to grasp —because all attribute and realities of God are hard to grasp, but that it is painful. We think, if God has destined I go to hell, why try? But before we get to the task of contemplating such a question we should also ask ourselves, do we have a choice? Do we have the choice to not choose? Is it possible? No, it’s not possible, even to choose “not to choose” is a choice.
Yet we also have to understand that time and space are creations of God. When we hear ‘God already knows who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell’. What we hear is, ‘Isn’t it cruel that God has already determined some people are going to hell before they did anything?’ But ‘doing’ happens in space/time and God is not limited by space/time, there is no ‘before and after’, God is not limited in His knowledge. Death and birth and all in between are not a mystery to God, he’s not operating on human time. What we do know is that God is just and every single one of us will be given our just due. Who ends up in heaven and who ends up in hell, God knows but we do not know, we do not and cannot know our final abode. All we have is choice, the freedom to choose in the time and space in which we exist in the world. Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “Knowing that you cannot know the reality of Allah is knowledge itself.”
This post series is about 6 parts, 2 of which will be on the blog, the rest will be on Patreon. Support our work and read the whole series by becoming a Patreon member (click below to join).
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Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash
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