Lately I have been thinking about what makes a person good or bad, evil or pious.
Often we look at a person’s actions and categorize them as good or bad – the really bad ones are categorized as evil and if you interact with a person who is generous and soft spoken and smiles a lot then they are put into a box of being ‘good’.
Today I was having a chat with someone about politics in Pakistan, how Imran Khan’s party sold him out and impeached him because the other party paid them a high sum. I was shocked that so many people are corrupt. The person said, that you know, you think you are not corrupt because you just have not been offered a price that you’d sell yourself for. You have been blessed to not be tested that way. But what if someone did ask you to do something and they were making you, let’s say, a billionaire..what would you do?
Good question: The me today would say I would never do anything evil or so corrupt to be sold for any price…but do I want to make such a bold statement so that God tests me just so I can see what I am really made of?
Have I never had evil thoughts about someone or something?
There have been times I have wanted to kill someone, or wanted them to go to hell and rot, or thought about just taking something I wanted because I simply wanted it without asking for it or paying for it. Granted these thoughts might have come many years ago and I stopped myself because I am always aware Allah is watching my actions, but nevertheless, no matter how pure I want to be, or try to be or how good someone thinks I am, there is no doubt that the seed of evil is in me. It’s in me, it’s in you. I guess there’d be no point of existence if it weren’t there.
God didn’t have to create us. He didn’t have to create an earth for us. We could’ve just lived in heaven. But he made heaven so amazing that He wanted us to work for it and earn it. So here we are. He gave us Shaitan as a challenge, our obstacle course and Shaitan knows us sometimes better than we know ourselves. But we have that seed in us that gets attracted to Shaitan’s ways or listens to Shaitan if we let it. He wants us NOT to go to heaven because he was kicked out and we have to make sure we make it past all the levels by ignoring his whispers.
We just have to be mind of that seed in us and not give it the water and nourishment it needs to grow. Taking every step mindfully, saying things mindfully, seeking forgiveness when we trip and being even more mindful after that…these are all ways to deprive that seed from growing – keeping it in it’s dark place so that Shaitan cannot get to it and give it the atmosphere it needs to grow.
But make no mistake, no matter how nice you think you are, or I am, there is evil in you, and evil in me too.
The Saudi Expat 