Nassir H. Sabah
How do we serve God? God is not served simply by praying every so often, then forgetting Him the rest of the time.
A good servant serves his master by obeying him and seeking his favors. Likewise, a human being serves God by submitting to His will and seeking His loving-mercy so as to attain eternal bliss in Heaven, which is the ultimate purpose of this worldly life.
God has endowed our human species, Homo sapiens, with characteristic mental and physical attributes, to the exclusion of the other 700 million or so animal species that have inhabited our planet. These attributes include astonishing mental capacities such as abstract thinking, vivid imagination, and advanced reasoning and cognitive skills.
These characteristic attributes privilege humans to be God’s agents and representatives on Earth. Consequently, humans should act on God’s behalf and reflect what can be humanly reflected from His glorious and perfect attributes, the most consequential of which is His loving-mercy. Love alone can be passive, without practical consequences, but loving-mercy is love-in-action that mandates acts of compassion and benevolence.
Humans should therefore manifest loving-mercy through virtuous conduct and moral behavior towards all around them, including other human beings, other forms of life, and the environment.
Virtuous conduct is the outward reflection of having good and beautiful morals and character in the service of God. Virtuous conduct is not only in words but more importantly in deeds and in all manner of dealings with others. It is behaving with tolerance, understanding, compassion, and justice towards all while avoiding all forms of immorality, injustice, corruption, oppression, and exploitation.
A very important aspect of virtuous conduct is helping others, especially close or distant kin. The help could be because of financial need, illness, misfortune, or in furtherance of some worthy endeavor. The virtuous conduct could be in small acts such as being kind to animals, putting a happy smile on the face of a child, or being gracious to a stranger.
What is the worldly benefit in serving God? The virtuous conduct in serving God is the behavioral manifestation of a spirituality that is a state of being predicated on a sense of close connectedness with God Almighty, the creator of the universe and the guide and sustainer of everything in it.
This spirituality is the foundation for continual and comprehensive self-development, focusing principally on the spiritual, psychological, moral, and intellectual advancement of personality and character and driving towards a target state of sublime serenity, peace of mind, and self-fulfillment. This self-development in the service of God is what gives meaning to life and makes us better human beings.
Self-development can be assessed by the answer to the simple question that one should ask oneself every day: “Am I a better person today than I was yesterday?” The answer is the measure of real success in our worldly life.
Let us all strive to become better human beings!
