The Solution. (Part 3)

Being a mathematician that Lang was, he solved the issue.
Lang made three lists.
1. Qualities of human: Compassion, love, mercy, forgiving nature, kindness, warmth, generosity, protecting the weak, defending the oppressed, seekers of knowledge and wisdom, truthfulness, peaceful.
2. Attributes of God: The Merciful, the Loving, the Compassionate, the Forgiving, the Generous, the Protector, the Helper, the Knowledgable, the Wise, the Giver of Peace.
3. Intellect? Choice? Suffering?

If you think about it, the qualities of humans in this list cannot exist without the presence of intellect, choice and suffering.
How can truth be called truth if not said by choice?
You can programme a computer to never display incorrect information, but that doesn’t make it a truthful computer. If its programmed its not truth.
You can programme an xray machine to help the sick, but that doesn’t make it compassionate.
All these qualities of being truthful, compassionate, caring, love etc, they are all borne out of choice, reason and suffering. Take one of the three out and you can have none of those essential qualities.

By definition you cannot call it compassion if it’s done without choice.
Compassion cannot exist if suffering does not exist.
A creature without intellect cannot be called compassionate.

A person cannot be called “truthful” if he wasn’t a creature of choice and intellect.
Truthfulness would never be a virtue if suffering didn’t exist because of it.

And lets come to love.
Imagine the love between a man and a woman. The love of a husband and wife.
How can love be called love, if choice didn’t exist? I am reminded of something my husband repeatedly used to say to me, especially after the early days of our marriage. Ours was an arranged marriage, we asked our parents to find a spouse and they did.
My husband has some different principles than mine, he always thought he would have a love marriage, and after our marriage he repeatedly needed reassurance from me that I am with him by choice. Whenever I said some words of love to him, he would ask, “would you still say this to me even if we weren’t married and bound by that piece of paper?”
Basically he needed reassurance that I loved him by choice.
So love, which is arguably the most important emotion a human being can feel, something that defines humanity, cannot exist without choice.
What does a couple say each other during their wedding vows? “for better and for worse, in sickness and in health”
Being there for each other in bad times, is what makes love grow, what tests the authenticity of true love.
Don’t we say all the time? When times were bad, it showed me who my true friends were. Love and friendship show their true colors when times are bad. Everyone is “there for you” in good times.
So love cannot exist without suffering.

Using this mathematical expression, you can take ALL of those essential qualities of a human that makes him special, that define him as a “good” person, and try to see if they can exist without these three things: choice, intellect and suffering. You will have your answer.

This is why the Quran talks about sin as self-destruction. It says that when we sin, we oppress no one but ourselves, we destroy ourselves and our humanity. When we go opposite to those qualities we refuse the chance to experience that beautiful relationship with God in this life and the next. We put ourselves in a darkness where we don’t belong, and that is worse than any hell that exists.
Or we could find what we have been searching desperately for all along. We can fill that mysterious void.
The choice is ours.