RELIGION WITHOUT REVELATION

Religion Without Revelation ~ 45 ~ In the early history of Israelites, there is the story of Joseph, who was separated from his father by his stepbrothers. Later, the same happened with Benjamin another real brother of Joseph. He too, without his father’s knowledge, was separated from him. These were terrible losses for Jacob the father, and it was but natural that he should be intensely miserable. Had he vented his negative feelings on his stepsons, there would have been great dissension and discord in his family. Instead, he diverted all this flood of feelings to God saying: ‘I express my grief and sorrow to God.’ There was a similar diversion of negative feeling when caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab dismissed the Islamic General Khalid ibn al-Walid. It was a rude shock to Khalid, but he redirected his hurt feelings to God, saying: ‘I fight not for the cause of Umar, but for the cause of God.’ Belief in the life Hereafter is the greatest gift to human society. It enables man to turn to God to seek compensation for the wrong done to him. Whatever he has failed to find in man he can expect to find that in God. In this way a God-worshipper’s