Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part III — Page 123
Footnote Number Eleven — Sixth Objection 123 that regard. And as for your conviction regarding the Day of Reckoning, and the doors of enlightenment that the law of nature has opened for you about it, suffice it to say that all you possess in this respect is a bundle of baseless speculations and superstitions, let alone certain knowledge of the minute details of the Reckoning. First of all, you are not even sure that reward and punishment are a reality and that God will certainly recompense man for his actions. For if you know this, then please prove by a rational argument why God should be obliged to reward mankind for their righteousness and why He should hold evildoers to account for their sins and transgressions. Whereas God is under no obligation to grant eternity to the human soul as opposed to the souls of other animals, why would it be obligatory for Him to reward and punish man exclusively and spare the others. Does God derive any benefit from your good deeds or does He suffer pain from your bad deeds, so that He may reward the virtuous for the comfort He received from their good deeds and take revenge from the evildoers for pain He has suffered. And if doing good or evil neither personally benefits nor harms Him, it does not matter to Him whether you obey Him or not. And if that is the case, then how can it be proved with certainty that reward and punishment must be a conse- quence of actions under all circumstances. Would it be in accord with justice if someone did something on his own without being asked by another person but then started demanding recompense from the latter. Certainly not. For instance, if Person X were to dig a ditch or erect a building without Person Y having asked him to do it, then, even if we were to assume such a ditch or building were of great benefit to Person Y, the law of justice does not bind Person Y to compensate Person X for his labour and toil, which he carried out of his own accord without any instruction or order from Person Y. So when our virtues do not benefit God even slightly—and even if the whole world became good and virtuous it would not add an iota to the Kingdom of God, nor would it detract anything if they were all to