The Light of the Holy Qur'an — Page 145
T H e J O u r NA l—F AT e H M A S IH T H e J O u r NA l—F AT e H M A S IH 145 will of God, having cast aside all motives. With the exception of Islam, there is no religion in the world that has these objectives. Without a doubt, God has given the believers promises of vari- ous bounties in order to point out His Beneficence, but to those believers who aspire for the lofty status, He has indeed taught that they should worship God Almighty with a personal love. However, there are clear testimonies in the Gospel that the disciples of your Yas u ‘ were greedy and dim-witted. Hence, the guidance they received was commensurate with their ability and intellect and so was the Yas u ‘ whom they discovered, who dis- suaded the simpletons from worshipping [God] with the hoax of his own suicide. Should you contend that the Gospel , by teaching that God be called ‘Father’, alluded to a personal love for Him, the reply is that this thought is completely erroneous; for, when we reflect upon the Gospel, we find that the Mas ih [the Messiah] used the phrase ‘son of God’ in two ways: (1) Firstly , it was an old custom in the time of Christ that anyone who did good and charitable work and treated people with kindness and compassion, would openly declare that he was a ‘son of God’. His intent in uttering this phrase was that just as God showers His mercy on both the righteous and the sinner, and both the good and the bad benefit from His sun, His moon, and His rainfall; in the same way, it was his habit to show kindness to everyone, the only difference being that while God was Great in these works, he, on the other hand, was small. Hence, the Gospel described God as ‘the Father’ in the sense that He is Great, and described others as ‘sons’, for they are small, but equated them with God in the core feature; that is to