Can a man spend his entire life for God?
God informs us about the real meaning of the life of this world in Surah 67, verse 2.
He who created death and life to test which of you is best in action,
He is the Almighty, the Ever-Forgiving.
As stated in this verse, everybody is tested in his deeds.
Those who do good desire to earn the pleasure of God and to enter Paradise.
And they know that they therefore need to spend every moment of their lives engaged in such an effort.
Some people, however, are mistaken on this point.
They think that only performing prayers and avoiding what is forbidden are for the pleasure of God.
And that the rest of the time is not connected to the religion.
In fact, man should try to earn the good pleasure of God at every single moment,
In every word, in every thought, and in every deed.
A person who intends to devote every moment of his life to God,
Always speaks in a manner that will be pleasing to him.
He reminds people of God,
Forbids them what is wrong,
And commands them to do what is right.
At every instant,
At every instant, he considers how he can best earn the good pleasure of God.
To spend one's entire life for God is among the basic demands of the religion.
Therefore, in Sura 6, verse 162,
God commands believers to
Why should not man deem himself self-sufficient?
The main purpose of a person who fears God is to be morally pleasing to him.
This person knows that he needs to improve himself
And to engage in a continual effort to be better in behavior.
Because virtues such as sincerity,
Honesty,
Diligence,
Self-sacrifice,
And modesty have no upper limits.
In other words,
No one can say,
I have achieved model behavior.
It couldn't be any better than this.
A person's spiritual improvement will be rapid if he sees himself as imperfect and seeks to become better.
Such a person purifies himself of his wrongdoings and progresses towards even better behavior every single day.
If someone sees himself as sufficient in any manner,
Then he will not attempt to seek or to make any improvement.
As a matter of fact,
He is unable to find his faults and imperfections and so cannot amend them,
Which prevents improvement.
God states in Surah 96 verses 6 and 7 that imagining oneself to be self-sufficient is a serious mistake.
No, indeed,
Truly man is unbridled seeing himself as self-sufficient.
For that reason,
Man should not deem himself sufficient,
Neither in performing good deeds that would please God,
Nor in spiritually improving himself.
Using the reason that God granted to him,
He should always ask for improvement.
Do concepts such as impatience and despair have any place in the lives of believers?
In verse 200 of Surah 3,
God advises the faithful to be patient in times of difficulty.
You who believe,
Be steadfast,
Be supreme in steadfastness,
Be firm on the battlefield,
And heed God,
So that hopefully you will be successful.
Believers use their intellect,
All material and spiritual means,
And make the best possible effort in order to overcome difficulties.
Yet on the other hand,
Knowing that hardships are special conditions that God creates to test them,
And that there is an absolute good hidden behind these events,
They put their trust in God.
Trust in God is essential in the steadfastness of believers.
They have an explicit trust that God creates every event with absolute wisdom,
And that in answering the prayers of believers,
He will remove these difficulties.
That is why believers never experience such feelings as despair and hopelessness.
Stating in Surah 39,
Verse 53,
Say,
My servants,
You who have transgressed against yourselves,
Do not despair of the mercy of God.
Truly God forgives all wrong actions.
He is the ever-forgiving,
The most merciful.
God commands believers not to despair of the mercy of God,
No matter what happens.
How is extravagance referred to in the Koran?
God has forbidden his servants to be extravagant,
Revealing what the criterion when spending should be.
Those who, when they spend,
Are neither extravagant nor mean,
But take a stance midway between the two.
Muslims spend everything they have in the way of God,
And in the way that would please him most.
They do not forget that what they have is what God has given them as a blessing,
And that they are not the real owners of any of them.
When they have to make sacrifices,
They spend everything they have as commanded by the Koran.
Yet, when it would be unnecessary expenditure,
They avoid spending even a single penny wastefully.
God in the Koran has commanded believers to give their goods to those in need,
But not to squander them.
Give your relatives their due,
And the very poor and travelers,
But do not squander what you have.
Squanderers are brothers to the Satans,
And Satan was ungrateful to his Lord.
On the other hand,
Avoiding extravagance should not be misunderstood as to mean avoiding the gifts of God.
He states in the Koran,
Eat and drink,
But do not be profligate.
He does not love the profligate.
In this verse,
God has told believers to enjoy his gifts,
And has forbidden them only to spend wastefully.
Today, however,
In societies remote from religion,
Extravagance is not paid the attention it is due.
In restaurants and houses,
Plates of food,
Pounds of bread,
Fruits and vegetables,
Are thoughtlessly thrown away.
But God has forbidden extravagance,
Whether insignificant or insignificant amounts.
Therefore,
People should try to find a way to make use of all gifts before they spoil,
Instead of throwing them away saying,
This has gone off,
Or we cannot use this.
Only in this way,
They can give these gifts their due value.
Otherwise,
The result is scarcity and ingratitude to God.
How is jealousy referred to in the Quran?
Envy is condemned in the Quran.
God has revealed that he created the soul of mankind prone to envy,
But that believers should be wary of it.
But people are prone to selfish greed.
If you do good and have fear of God,
God is aware of what you do.
Jealousy comes as a result of not accepting that somebody else is superior to oneself.
This indeed is an attitude which may lead a person even to haughtiness against God,
Because it is God who grants people everything they possess.
He gives as he wills and no one can ever prevent this.
Apart from this,
It is also related in the Quran that Satan rebelled against God by not prostrating himself before Adam.
We are informed that he regards himself superior to Adam.
So we face an important fact at this point.
Jealousy is in fact an attribute of Satan.
And anyone who fears God should strictly avoid it.
Where does calling others by offensive nickname stand in the Quran?
People who do not live by the religion of God deride other people by calling them by offensive nicknames in attempt to dishonor them and thus exalt themselves.
Believers, on the other hand, never behave in such a poor manner.
God strictly prohibits believers from doing so, stating that those who do not obey this injunction are evildoers.
You who believe, people should not ridicule others who may be better than themselves, nor should any woman ridicule other women who may be better than themselves.
And do not find fault with one another or insult each other with derogatory nicknames.
How evil it is to have a name for evil conduct after coming to faith.
Those people who do not turn from it are wrongdoers.
Those who conform to the morals of the Quran never behave in this indecent way, which is disapproved of by God.
They address each other in the most pleasing way and deeply respect each other as sincere servants of God.
What does the Quran say about mockery?
Mockery is an example of poor morality which God certainly does not approve of.
There are many manifestations of mockery in irreligious societies,
including mocking the imperfections or defects of others and calling one another by unpleasant nicknames.
In the Quran, God warns people against this evil act as follows.
Woe to every fault-finding backbiter.
Another type of mockery referred to by God in the Quran is that of believers by unbelievers.
It is revealed in the Quran that unable to grasp that the believers were on the true path,
people who believed themselves to be superior to the believers mocked them.
Some of the verses on this subject read,
Those who did evil used to laugh at those who believed.
When they passed by them, they would wink at one another.
Yet, God reveals that these people are greatly mistaken
and heralds the tragic end they will come to as follows.
So today, those who believe are laughing at the disbelievers on couches, gazing in wonder.
Have the disbelievers been rewarded for what they did?
Furthermore, God describes in the Quran those who hold Islam and His revelations to mockery
and reveals that these people reject every warning from God and His messengers.
They are the people who do not measure the power of God to its full extent
and ignore the fact that they will be judged in His presence.
Yet, these people will be bewildered in the hereafter
and will be repaid for the mockery they used to engage in.
This fact is clearly mentioned in the Quran as
Those are the people who reject their Lord's signs and the meeting with Him.
Their actions will come to nothing and, on the day of rising,
we will not assign them any weight.
That is their repayment, hell, because they disbelieved
and made a mockery of My signs and of My messengers.
What is the place of gossip in the Quran?
In the Quran, God forbids believers from backbiting
and refers to it as an indecency.
Do not backbite one another.
Would any of you like to eat his brother's dead flesh?
No, you would hate it.
And heed God.
God is ever returning.
Most merciful.
As commanded by this verse,
people who live by the religion
and are like brothers and sisters to each other
strictly avoid this behavior.
On the contrary,
believers remember only each other's good intentions
and always try to highlight their good attributes.
They do not try to find defects or faults in those who are submissive to the will of God.
Gossip is a corruption that never exists among believers who maintain the limits set by God.
When believers notice an imperfection or other defect in another,
they do not backbite, but instead admonish the person directly so that he will amend his unacceptable behavior.
How is suspicion defined in the Quran?
Acting on suspicion and conjecture is another thing God does not approve of.
God has indicated in many verses in the Koran that acting on suspicion is a characteristic of the societies of ignorance and that it brings no good to mankind.
He has commanded his believing servants to avoid suspicion.
Acting on this advice of God, believers do not develop any ideas on any issue based on unfounded information.
Any word they utter or any idea they communicate is always in compliance with Koranic morals, always based on absolute evidence and always just.
They do not arrive at suspicion based decisions about a person without asking his opinion or gathering valid evidence against him.
The attention that believers pay to this issue is a result of their fear of God.
Knowing that they will encounter every action they perform in the hereafter and fearing the punishment of God, believers are very careful and just in this respect.
God describes suspicion in the Koran in these words,
You who believe, avoid most suspicion. Indeed some suspicion is a crime.
How should a Muslim spend his time?
We see in the Koran that the concept of spare time does not apply to believers.
Every instant of a Muslim's life is indeed occupied.
Because someone who fears God and scrupulously abides by his commands works to perform even more auspicious deeds.
A believer who fears God and meticulously obeys his commands performs continuous good deeds in order to do more good and thus to be among those closest to God.
He spends his time in prayers that God has indicated in the Koran.
Whenever he has finished one piece of work he embarks on another one.
He continuously seeks goodness and beauty.
There are no interruptions, pauses or limits during these efforts.
Finishing one piece of work to believers merely indicates the need to start a new one.
This is because a believer is well aware that he should spend every moment of this world making efforts to earn God's contentment
and that in the hereafter he will have to account for every instant.
These efforts made by believers are referred to in the Koran as follows.
So when you have finished work on and make your Lord your goal.
Since all that a believer does he does in order to gain the good pleasure of God, everything he does in his daily life becomes an act of worship.
When he is weary he rests for the sake of God and when he is hungry he eats for his sake.
He sleeps or washes for the sake of God.
The important thing is never to forget God as one does all these things.
To give thanks to him and to see everything as auspicious.
How can one turn away from worthless and useless things?
What are worthless and useless?
One can turn away from worthless and useless things if one acts in order to gain the good pleasure of God alone.
Believers know that they need to use the time granted to them in this world in the most efficient way.
Because what they do in this world determines their permanent abode.
Therefore, in every deed they perform they aim to gain a good deed for the hereafter.
Naturally they talk, have fun, eat, laugh, think and work the same as everyone else.
But in doing these things they always bear good thoughts in their minds which will be beneficial to other people and to the religion.
Apart from these things all believers acts serve a purpose.
They always turn towards to good deeds that will most gain the pleasure of God.
They use their time efficiently by properly distinguishing between all worldly matters.
They do this by use of their conscience and reason, decide what is worthless and what is useful, and act in a totally determined manner.
The attitude adopted by believers when they hear worthless talk is related in the Quran in these words.
When they hear worthless talk they turn away from it and say,
We have our actions and you have your actions. Peace be upon you.
We do not desire the company of the ignorant.
Taking this superior morality described in the Quran as an example is a major source of ease for everyone.
It is also good behavior that will be pleasing to God.
What do believers show patience in?
One of the distinguishing attributes of believers is their steadfastness.
However, the concept of steadfastness that we learn from the Quran does not mean endurance at times of hardship.
What is recommended in the Quran is to display patience when it comes to choosing the kind of behavior that will be pleasing to God
and in all situations, in other words, at all times.
Everyone who has faith knows that God tests people in this world with difficulties or sickness.
For this reason, such people are patient and place themselves in the hands of God, even in the face of the worst sickness or difficulty.
They turn to God in all things, in the knowledge that it is He who gives difficulty and sickness, and that only He can take them away.
God tests believers with a variety of situations, such as hunger, fear, and loss of goods or prosperity.
The believer described in the Quran perseveringly seeks the good pleasure of God regardless of the circumstances.
In prosperity, He gives thanks to God. In case of difficulty and hardship, He puts his trust in Him.
For Him, the benefits of the religion and believers are always superior to personal benefits.
He fulfills every detail of a virtuous character throughout His entire life.
He is sincere, honest, generous, diligent, and eager.
He always speaks in generosity and gentleness, and always tries to serve the religion.
Briefly, He applies everything that God points out as being good.
As a reward for this, God gives His steadfast servants glad tidings in Surah 2, verse 155-157 as
We will test you with a certain amount of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and life and fruits.
But give good news to the steadfast.
Those who, when disaster strikes them, say,
We belong to God and to Him we will return.
Those are the people who will have blessings and mercy from their Lord.
They are the ones who are guided.
If you want to have a pleasant reward in this world and the hereafter,
then be patient and be of good morals in the face of all difficulty and sickness.