Question
I am forwarding a question of an atheist who wanted to know why we should have faith in the words of God? His other question is that why does God punish His people if they are not willing to obey His message? I hope these questions are clear.
Answer
1.Once we are convinced that there is God, and once we know His characteristics including His wisdom, being just, merciful, supreme, knower of unseen and seen, guardian of every thing, etc. then the correct question will be why we should not have faith in his words and if we cannot have faith in the words of such superior being, then whose words we can have faith in?
2. It is not accurate to say God punishes people because they are not willing to obey His message. A more accurate statement is that God punishes people as the result of their own extreme arrogance (Qur’an, 39:60) and them being totally dominated by their own crimes (Qur’an, 2:81). This is simply because the whole world has been made as a testing scene for human being (Qur’an, 67:2), where he can make himself good enough to receive God’s eternal reward or bad enough to receive His punishment in the hereafter. Human being himself accepted to be tested when he accepted the Trust (Amana) that God was offering (Qur’an, 33:72). The trust was his free will, and associated with this, was his ability to think and to distinguish between good and evil.
Answered by: Farhad Shafti
Date: 2015-03-21
