How Can We Tell High-School Students About God?

 

In Kastamonu a group of high-school students came to me and asked, ‘Tell us about our Creator, our teachers do not speak of Him.’

I said to them:

The sciences you study continuously speak of God, the Creator, and make Him known, each in its particular tongue. Listen to them, not to your teachers.

For example, a well-equipped, well-designed pharmacy in which there are many bottles and boxes containing medicines and pills made up of different components in precise measures doubtless points to an extremely skilful and learned pharmacist. The pharmacy of the earth is bigger and more perfect and better equipped than any pharmacy, with its life-giving cures and medicaments in hundreds of thousands of bottles and boxes, that is, all the species of plants and animals.  The pharmacy of the earth shows and makes known, through the measure of the science of medicine, even to  the blind, the All-Wise One of Majesty Who is the Pharmacist of the largest pharmacy of the earth.

As another example, a wonderful factory where thousands of sorts of cloth are woven from a simple material undoubtedly makes known a manufacturer and skilful mechanical engineer. Likewise, this traveling machinery or factory of the Lord which we call the earth, is bigger and more perfect than that human factory.  With its hundreds of thousands of parts in each of which there are hundreds of thousands of machines, the factory of the earth shows and makes known, through the measure of the science of engineering, its Manufacturer and Owner.

‘To take another example, a store or shop in which numerous varieties of provisions brought from all sides have been stored up in regular and orderly fashion doubtless makes known a wondrous proprietor, preparer and distributor of provisions and foodstuffs. This food-store of the All-Merciful One known as the earth, this vessel of the Glorious One, in one year travels regularly a very wide orbit, and houses hundreds of thousands of species of beings requiring different foods.  Passing through seasons on its journey, the earth fills spring with thousands of different provisions like a huge wagon and brings to the poor living creatures whose sustenance has been exhausted in winter, this depot and shop of the Lord, holding thousands of varieties of goods, equipment, and conserved food.  It makes known, through the measure of the science of economics which you study, the Owner, Manager, and Organizer of this depot of the earth, and makes Him loved.

‘Again another example: Let us imagine an army which consists of hundreds of thousands of tribes.  Each tribe requires different provisions, uses different weapons, wears different uniforms, and undergoes different drills, and is demobilized differently.  This huge army camped on a very wide area has a miracle-working commander who on his own provides all these different tribes with all their different provisions, weapons, uniforms, and equipment without forgetting and confusing any of them.  Then surely the army and the camp point to the commander and must make him loved and appreciated. The same thing happens in just the same way, on the camp of the surface of the earth every spring. A newly recruited Divine army of hundreds of thousands of species of animals and plants are given their varying uniforms, rations, weapons, training, and demobilization in entirely perfect and regular fashion by a single Commander-in- Chief without forgetting and confusing any of them. This makes known through the measure of the military science which you study, to the attentive and sensible, the Ruler of the earth, and its Lord, Administrator, and Most Holy Commander, causing admiration and acclaim, and makes Him loved and praised and glorified.

Another example: Suppose there is a strange, magnificent city which is illuminated by millions of electric lamps, some moving, some fixed, with fuel and power source never exhausted. This evidently makes known a wonder-working craftsman and extraordinarily talented electrician who manages the electricity, makes the lamps, establishes the power source, and brings the fuel, and causes others to admire and congratulate him, and to love him. In just the same way, some of the lamps—stars and planets—in the roof of the palace of the world, in the city of the universe, are a thousand times bigger than the earth and move with an amazing speed. Still they move in a very delicate order and do not collide with one another, nor are extinguished, nor their fuel exhausted..  The sun is a lamp and stove in the guest-house of the All-Merciful One, several billion years old and a million times bigger than the earth.   Astronomy says that for our sun to continue burning each day as much oil as the seas of the earth and as much coal as its mountains or as much logs and wood as ten earths are necessary.

The electric lamps of the palace of the world in the magnificent city of the universe point with their finger of light to an infinite power and sovereignty which illuminates the sun and other lofty stars like it without oil, wood, or coal. They do not allow them to be extinguished or to collide with one another, and they are bigger than the lamps in the above example and their management is more perfect.  Through the measure of the science of electricity and the testimony of those radiant stars, they make known the Monarch, Illuminator, Director, and Maker of this biggest exhibition of the universe; they make Him loved, glorified, and worshipped.

Another example: Let us imagine a marvelous book in each line of which a different book is finely written, and in each word of which a sura of the Koran is inscribed with a fine pen. The book is most meaningful, most expressive and all of its subjects corroborate one another.  It shows without doubt and as clearly as daylight its author together with all his extraordinary perfection, arts, and skills. It makes him appreciated with phrases like, ‘What wonders God has willed!’ and ‘Blessed be God!’ And just the same is the ‘macro-book’ of the universe.  We see with our own eyes a pen at work, inscribing on the face of the earth, which is a single one of its sheets, hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species.  These are in fact like hundreds of thousands of volumes, all together, one within the other, without any error, without confusion, so perfectly and finely as to compress an ode in a word like a tree, and the complete index of a book in a point like a seed. This infinitely meaningful compendium of the universe, this macro-Koran of the cosmos, in each word of which are numerous instances of wisdom, is greater, and more perfect and meaningful than the book in the example.  Through the extensive measure and telescopic vision of the science of nature that you study and the sciences of reading and writing that you practice at school, it makes known the Inscriber and Author of this book of the universe together with His infinite perfection. In the meaning of ‘God is the Greatest,’ it makes Him known. In the glorification of ‘Glory be to God,’ it describes Him. Through praises like ‘All praise be to God,’ it makes Him loved.

Like those mentioned, hundreds of sciences make the Majestic Creator of the universe known by His Names, each through its extensive measure, its particular mirror, its far-reaching view, and searching and instructing perspectives; they make known His Attributes and perfection.

The decisive proof explained above is a magnificent and brilliant proof of Divine Oneness. It is in order to teach this that the Koran of miraculous expression describes our Creator to us so often through the phrases, the Lord of the Heavens and the Earth, and He created the heavens and the earth.

I added:

Man is a living machine both subject to thousands of kinds of sorrow and capable of knowing thousands of different kinds of pleasure. He is a wretched being who, while being wholly impotent, has innumerable enemies of a physical and spiritual nature; who, while being wholly destitute, has countless external and inner needs, and who continuously receives the blows of decay and separation. Yet if, through belief and worship, he is connected to the Majestic Monarch, he finds a point of support against all his enemies and a source of help for all his needs. Everybody takes pride in the honor and rank of the highly-placed one to whom he is connected, especially if one is connected, through belief, to the infinitely Powerful and Compassionate Monarch.  If one enters His service through worship, and if (in doing so) one changes the announcement of one’s execution at the appointed hour into welcome discharge documents—you can easily understand by comparison how contented and obliged, how thankful, how full of pride one becomes.’

I repeat to the calamity-stricken prisoners what I said to the school boys, ‘The one who recognizes Him and obeys Him is prosperous even if he is in prison, while the one who forgets Him is wretched and a prisoner even if he lives in a palace.’

‘Even, while being executed, one wronged but unfortunate man said to the wretched wrong-doers who were executing him, ‘I am not being executed but being discharged from my duties and going to eternal happiness. Moreover, as I can see you even now condemned to eternal punishment, I am taking complete revenge on you.’ That fortunate wronged man then pronounced, ‘There is no god but God,’ and died happily.’

Glory be to You! We have no knowledge save what you have taught us. Surely, You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

 

This article has been adapted from Risale- i Nur Collection.