23. The World is Hiding (1)

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I have long wondered why the world is hiding from me. People say that I am ‘in’ the world, that the world is greater than I am, that it was here before me and will be here after I am gone. But when I ask them where the world is, they become confused. They start waving their hands around wildly in all directions and say, “This! All this! This is the world!” When I look, however, I see nothing but the things that they are waving at – the sky, the ground, the trees, the streets, the people, and so on.

I ask for clarification. They answer with more invisible abstractions – the environment, society, nature, the Earth, space, the universe . . . but I have never seen any of those things either. So I reply, “One tall tale at a time, please. I hear people talk more about the world, so let’s stick to that for now. I still cannot see (or hear, taste, smell, or touch) the world.”

I am open to persuasion, but I will not believe in something simply because everyone else does. Call me a nonresistant agnostic, if you will. Show me, and I will believe. If you cannot, however, the fault is not mine. The world that people are always referring to is hidden from me, yet my senses are as good as theirs. Where is the evidence?

When people hear me speak in this way, they become angry. They accuse me of deliberately abandoning the meaning of words. But of what use is a word if it does not name something to which I can meaningfully relate? When I ask them how they relate to the world, they begin to stutter and stumble around in search of something concrete. Eventually they mention how they engage with, or how they think or feel about, tangible objects that are not the world, but merely (what they call) parts of the world. But how do I know that they are parts of anything if the whole is so incomprehensible and remote?

I conclude, therefore, that the world has yet to demonstrate its existence to me. The world is hiding.

Modern atheist philosophers have asked, in a similar vein, why a loving God Who desires our guidance and salvation would intentionally ‘hide’ from fair-minded, neutral seekers of truth. ‘We’re looking,’ they say, in effect, ‘but not seeing what we should be seeing if God is what believers claim Him to be. It does not make sense that Someone Who claims to be the Truth, and also Compassionate, would erect so many roadblocks to human understanding if He truly is humanity’s Greatest Good, the highest goal of spiritual achievement. What we are seeing, namely nothing, is what one would expect to see if God was nothing more than an artifact invented by ancient religions, and now only an embarrassing relic of the past and an obstacle to scientific progress.’

This demand to be shown God or see some proof of His visible existence, as if He could be called out from His hiding place like an animal in a zoo, is certainly not modern or innovative.

On the one hand, the doubters hold Him responsible for everything, if He exists. On the other hand, if He exists, these same critics want Him responsible to them. The presumption latent in these demands is astounding. But a need for signs “that my heart may be at peace” (Q2:260) is what makes us human, and so is not always spurned.

After a prayer from ‘Isa (peace be upon him), the reply comes:

The clear message here is that the more you know of the truth, the greater your responsibility is to it, and the greater the penalty if you shirk that responsibility. Mere knowledge without a corresponding commitment does not confer impunity or even salvation – quite the contrary. Rather it increases one’s own peril if one defaults.

Remember that Iblis, who refused to bow to Adam, had more knowledge of AL-LAH than any human scholar has ever had (which is why he said, I fear AL-LAH – and GOD is strict in punishment.” (Q8:48)). Yet the curse he bears, and the punishment he faces, are that much greater likewise on account of his betrayal of the moral burden that always attends significant knowledge.

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