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We are just beginning to look at how AL-LAH uses symbolic language to make Himself relatable to us. I need to stress again that we are not describing GOD. We are not capable of doing so, nor, in any case, is He an object that can be described. He uses metaphors, such as the Light of the heavens and the earth, to point our thoughts in particular directions, but like spotlights shining up into a clear sky, we never see the end of them. There is no solid object there to receive these rays and reflect them back to where we stand and watch. And so not one of these concepts defines Who GOD is. Rather they are only tools GOD employs to engage us in the quest for His ineffable presence. As such, any pair of symbols, Divine Forgiveness and Divine Vengeance, for example, can be as contradictory as the awareness that the same substance you drink to stay alive at home can drown you at sea. I will have more to say about this necessary ambiguity in Chapter 4.
THE LIVING GOD
Against the vast backdrop of virtually empty space, stellar furnaces, giant blobs of gas, and desolate planets of rock and ice, life in this universe is truly an anomaly. Its apparent rarity qualifies it for the status of miraculous. Organisms are waging a desperate struggle against extremes of heat and cold and deadly cosmic rays and, at a local level, here on Earth at least, seem to have made some progress. We are so accustomed to life around us, in all its cacophonous diversity, we tend to forget how strange and wonderful it is in this otherwise quiet cosmos. We should be gasping, if not for air, then certainly with surprise on waking up and finding ourselves, once again, in an environment friendly to human life and the writing of books, among other things.
Light itself is a miracle, even as scientists tend to render it commonplace by their equations and formulas. Life, however, is another matter altogether, and not just another matter; it utilizes matter and thus transcends it, giving us something incalculable and inexplicable. And so if AL-LAH is ever going to be more than just a concept to us – Someone, as we think ourselves to be, Who is incalculable and inexplicable – He has to be Alive.
وَتَوَكَّلْ عَلَى الْحَيِّ الَّذِي لاَ يَمُوتُ وَسَبِّحْ بِحَمْدِهِ وَكَفَى بِهِ بِذُنُوبِ عِبَادِهِ خَبِيرًا
But how can we understand a life that is not subject to death, nor birth, nor growth, nor change? Our entire concept of life is inextricably bound up with time and change . . . yet AL-LAH is timeless and unchanging. How does a life without time or change even make sense?
The simple answer is that it does not – to us. Life is a symbol or sign of AL-LAH, in the same way that He is not physical light, but elects to represent Himself to us as Light. More precisely, He describes Himself as the Living (al-Hayy) and the Enlivening (al-Muhyi), but not as Life itself, probably because we humans cannot imagine life without birth and death, both of which are irreconcilable with the Eternally Divine. In interactions among ourselves, we do not speak or listen to Life, appreciate Patience and Gratitude, fear Vengeance, and seek advice from Guidance; rather we engage with living persons who are patient or grateful, and who may be alternately powerful enough to hurt us or wise enough to help us. Life in the abstract does not elicit a response from us; our dealings are always with the living – particular possessors of life. Life is the stage on which these beings, including ourselves, appear.
If Life is the general category in which living beings occur, then how is AL-LAH, the Living, ‘above’ Life? He ‘lives’ by being the single Unifier of all categories – the ultimate unpossessed Possessor of every positive value, such as love, power, truth, peace, and life itself. We, His creatures, are raised into life, whereas He raises Life into a manifestation of a greater whole, namely His Divinity. From this perspective, all life is divine – and hence worthy of respect – because it ultimately derives from a divine quality more precious than the mere power to create and holier than life itself. Likewise, at the lower level of life in this world, we do not so much ‘have’ life as we are lifted into it by an act of GOD, and participate in it as something greater and worthier than ourselves.
The GOD You Already Know 