Third Question
Allah the Most High sends calamities and inflicts tribulations; isn’t this an injustice towards the innocent in particular, and animals even?
The Answer: Allah forbid, sovereignty is His. He holds sway over His possessions as He wishes. Moreover, a skilful craftsman makes you a model in return for a wage and dresses you in a bejewelled garment that he has artistically fashioned. Then in order to display his art and skill, he shortens it and lengthens it, measures it and trims it, and he makes you sit down and stand up. Can you say to him: “You have made the garment that makes me beautiful ugly. You have caused me trouble, making me sit down and stand up.”? Of course, you cannot say that. If you did, you would be crazy.
In just the same way, the All‑Glorious Maker has clothed you in an artistically wrought being bejewelled with such faculties as the eye, the ear, and the tongue. To display the embroideries of various of His names, He makes you ill, He afflicts you with tribulations, He makes you hungry, He fills you, He makes you thirsty; He makes you revolve in states like these. To strengthen the essence of life and display the manifestation of His names He makes you pass through numerous such conditions. As is indicated in the comparison, if you ask: “Why do you inflict these calamities on me?” a hundred instances of wisdom will silence you.
In any event, calm, repose, idleness, monotony, and arrest from motion are forms of non‑existence, and harm. Motion and change are existence and good. Life finds its perfection through motion, it progresses by means of tribulations. Life performs various motions through the manifestation of the divine names; it is purified, finds strength; it unfolds and expands; it becomes a mobile pen to write its own appointed course; it performs its duty and acquires the right to receive reward in the hereafter.
Briefly, these are the answers to the three questions you were arguing over. Explanations of them are to be found in the thirty‑three Words.
My Dear Brother! Read this letter to the chemist and to anyone who heard the argument that you deem suitable. And convey my greetings to my new student, the chemist, and tell him the following:
It is not permissible to have a heated discussion about subtle matters of belief like these in a social gathering. If it turns into an uncontrolled contest, while being a panacea it becomes poison. It is harmful for both those who speak and those who listen. It is permissible to discuss such matters moderately and fairly, exchanging ideas.
And tell him that if doubts occur to him about matters of this sort and he cannot find the answer in The Words, he may write to me privately.
And tell the chemist that it occurred to me that the dream he had about his late father might mean this: since his late father was a doctor, he may have helped some people who were close to Allah the Most High, and at the time of his death the spirits of those blessed people who were grateful to him were seen by the one closest to him, his son, in the form of birds. It occurred to me that they came to meet him with a sort of welcome and this would be intercession for his spirit.
I send greetings to all the friends who were together here that night, and I pray for them.
The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!Said Nursi