By Alperen Ozalp

1. By Alperen Ozalp

2. Outline • Introduction • What is the purpose of life? • To Know God • Reason, Knowledge and Salvation • Surrendering to God • To receive and Experience Attributes of God • Is this life a test? • Is this life a struggle? • Learning in Test and Struggle • Forgiveness

3. Introduction • Is purpose of life restricted to following the good life according to the requisites of civilization? • Is the sole aim of the feelings and senses included in the machine of your life is restricted to satisfying the low desires of the soul in this fleeting life?

4. What is the purpose of life? • There are two aims: • 1st to recognize the True Bestower, and offer God thanks and worship. • 2nd is to know and experience the Divine Attributes of God in the world, and by experiencing them, to believe in them. • Through these two basic aims, human becomes a true human being.

5. TO KNOW GOD • The wonders of creation, such as the gestation of animals, the movements of the heavenly bodies, atmospheric phenomena, the variety of animal and vegetable life so marvelously well adopted to human needs. All those things are signs for those of insight (3:190) (5:53-58, 102-103; 10:42-43; 22:45-46; 59:14) (2:166-171; 25:44-46) He who created the eye of the mosquito is the one who created the sun.

6. A challenge to Reason and Knowledge • Muslims believe that religion must make sense, that must be wisdom and rationale behind everyone of its elements. While admitting the limitations of human thought, nonetheless give reason a vital role. The source of this insistence is undoubtedly Quran.

7. REASON: Quran asks almost incredulously • Do they not travel through the land, so that their hearts may thus learn wisdom? (26:7) • Do they not travel through the land, so that their hearts may thus learn wisdom? (22:44) • Do they not examine the earth? (26:7) • Do they not look at the sky above them? (50:6) • (88:17), (56:63), (2:269), (29:42-43), (39:9)

8. KNOWLEDGE: First command READ • The very first revelation: • Read, in the name of your Lord, who created – created human from tiny thing that clings. Read, for your Lord is the Most Bountiful, who taught the use of the pen, taught human what he did not know. (96:1-5) • The use of pen: KNOWLEDGE

9. SALVATION is obtained through… • Quran enjoins us to study critically our behavior and beliefs. • Salvation is obtained • through searching out and surrendering to GOD. • We will show them our signs in the farthest reaches and within themselves until it is clear to them that it is the truth. (41:53)

10. SURRENDERING TO GOD Belief in God requires reflection on the creation, together with knowledge of God and worship of God, and results truthful acts and harmonious behaviors. • We grow in • Virtue • Wisdom • Justice • Mercy • Forgiveness • Righteousness • Concern and love • Compassion, patience and generosity

11. To receive and experience God's attributes • We are to pursue them not only to make the world a better place, When I have fashioned human, breathed into him of My Spirit. (15:29) • We grow in our ability to receive and experience God’s mercy, forgiveness, compassion, justice, righteousness and love. We build a strong personal relationship with God

12. To receive and experience God's attributes The aims of the Quran are to provide a barrier against the appetites of man thus encouraging him to engage in higher pursuits, giving satisfaction to his higher aspirations and directing him towards the achievements of human perfection.” (Beziuzzaman Said Nursi)

13. Why were we not created with these qualities from the start? • Quran emphasizes three essential components of human’s moral –spiritual evolution: • Free will, • ability to choose • Intellect, • learning from one’s choices • Struggle

14. Why do we have to experience this life? • Quran insists that, in the design of God, our earthly life is a necessary stage in human existence: Those (are believers) who remember God standing and sitting and lying down, and reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth (saying): “Our Lord, you did not create all this in vain.” (3:191)

15. Why do we have to experience this life? • And We did not create the heaven and the earth and whatever is between them as a game. If we wished to take a pastime, We would have taken it by Ourselves, if We were to do that at all! (21:16-17) • Do you think that We created you for nothing and that you will not be returned to Us? The true Sovereign is too exalted above that. (23:115-116)

16. Why do we have to experience this life? “Man came to this world to be perfected by means of knowledge and supplication. In regard to his nature and abilities everything is tied to knowledge. And the foundation, source, light, and spirit of all true knowledge is knowledge of God, and its essence and basis is belief in God.” (Bediuzzaman Said Nursi)

17. Is this life a test? • We are tested in this world so that we may become • clarified, • purified • attain virtue and perfection through our choice (free will) • We find trials and tests in every aspect of our lives.

18. Is this life a struggle? • To remember the life’s ultimate purpose in difficult times. • Assuredly we will try you with something of danger and hunger and loss of some worldly goods, and of lives and the fruits of your labor. But give glad tidings to those who are patient in adversity,- those who, when calamity befalls them, say, “Truly, to God we belong and, truly, to Him we shall return.” (2:155-156)

19. Is this life a struggle? - 2 • You will certainly be tried in your possessions and yourselves. (3:186) • Oh you who believe! Be patient in adversity, and vie with one another in perseverance, and be ever ready, and remain conscious of God, so that you may attain success. (3:200)

20. LEARNING IN TEST & STRUGGLE • It is by learning from one’s own mistakes, • Rising above our mistakes, that we learn and progress to higher levels of goodness. • Excepting the one who repents and believes and does righteous deeds- then for those, God will change their evil deeds into good deeds, for God is Most Forgiving, Most Merciful. (25:70)

21. God is responsive to those who seek Him: • And if my servants call on Me, surely I am near. I heed the call of every caller. So let them with a call unto Me and let them believe in Me, in order that they may be guided aright. (2:186) • When you approach God by an arm’s length, He approaches you by two, and if you come to Him walking, He comes to you running. (Hadith, saying of Muhammed)

22. Sin as self destruction, rebellion against one’s true nature. • Evidence have come to you from your Lord. Then the one who sees does so for his own soul, and the one who is blind, it is upon himself. (6:104) • We have revealed to you the Book for mankind with the truth. Then the one who is guided, it is for his own soul, the one who strays, his straying is only upon himself. (39:41) • They did not do injustice to Us, but rather they wronged their own souls. (7:160)

23. Forgiveness • O My servants who have sinned against yourselves, never despair of God’s mercy. Surely God forgives all sins. He is the Most forgiving the Most Merciful. (39:53) • In reality we are doing injustice and violence to ourselves by oppressing and robbing ourselves of our spiritual ascent.

24. Summary The purpose of our creation is to reach our utmost goals of belief, knowledge, and spirituality; to reflect on God. This worldly realm is the field of testing and learning that we may experience God attributes and believe in them.

25. Questions?

26. Backup Slides-1 The purpose of our creation is obvious: to reach our utmost goals of belief, knowledge, and spirituality; to reflect on the universe, humanity, and God, and thus prove our value as human beings. Fulfilling this ideal is possible only through systematic thinking and systematic behavior. Thought will provoke action, and thereby start a "prosperous cycle." This cycle will produce more complex cycles, generating between the heart's spirituality and the brain's knowledge, and thereby develop ever-more complex ideas and produce larger projects.

27. Backup Slides-2 To reach this goal, we must use our willpower, a voice heard by the All-Powerful One, and develop our abilities and skills to their furthest extent, thus proving ourselves to be willful beings. Our duty is to reflect upon our place in life, our responsibilities, and our relationship with this vast universe. We should use our inner thoughts to explore creation's hidden side. As we do so, we will begin to feel a deeper sense of our selves, see things differently, witness that events are not what they seem, and realize that events are trying to communicate something to us.

28. Backup Slides-3 The wisdom of it concerns the charging of duties; Adam was sent charged with such a duty that the unfolding of all mankind's spiritual progress and the revealing of all mankind's potentialities and man's essential nature being a comprehensive mirror to all the Divine Names, are the results of it. If Adam had remained in Paradise, his rank would have been fixed like that of the angels; man's potentialities would not have unfolded. In any case, the angels, whose ranks are unchanging, are numerous, and there is no need for man to perform that sort of worship. Indeed, since Divine wisdom required a realm of accountability appropriate to the potentialities of man, who would traverse infinite degrees, he was expelled from Paradise for his well-known sin, sin being the requirement of man's nature and contrary to that of the angels. That is to say, just as Adam being expelled from Paradise was pure wisdom and pure mercy.