Friday Meditations – The Will to Change
From The Friday Prayer - August 19th, 2022
On Piety
Encouraging taqwā is the central purpose of the Friday Prayer. Taqwā is typically rendered as “piety” or “God consciousness” in English. It is helpful to think of piety as a spiritual power that helps us navigate the world on our own terms – that is, in line with our decision to harmonize with the Divine.
Said another way, taqwā—piety—shares similarities with other human capacities. Intelligence, for instance, is a power that we can sharpen through learning how to think systematically, gaining control over one’s biases and emotions, and through the accumulation of accurate information. The power of intelligence allows us to manipulate the world according to our goals: it helps with long-term planning, accumulating and managing wealth, interacting well with others, and in making moral decisions. These choices impact the state of our lives. We can attempt to improve our world according to our wills, as facilitated through our intellects.
Muscular strength is a simpler example. The stronger your body is, the easier it is for you to manipulate the physical world around you.
Similarly with piety. It isn’t a stale, abstract concept. It is the human’s dynamic power to manipulate the world—and, importantly, one’s self— according to Islamic ideals and principles.
On the Will to Change
One key element in building the power to revere God is recognizing the will to change.
Surat al-Raʿd 11:13
إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُوا۟ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ
Indeed God does not change a people’s lot, unless they change what is in their souls.
We understand several things from this verse
God has given us will. He would not have informed us of this Divine norm—that a change in our situation won’t be facilitated by God until we take a step in that direction—without also giving us the capacity to fulfill that condition. God is Wise (al-Ḥakīm) and wouldn’t tell us, “work hard” without giving us the power to will ourselves to work, as that would be fruitless and contrary to wisdom.
We are free—with all its implications. God informed us of the best way to live in this world and has given us the freedom to navigate life wisely. This freedom implies that we need to build the requisite power to achieve harmonizing with Him.
In our daily lives we live by this understanding. Life requires some level of material comfort. Material comfort is attained through hard work and seeking sustenance. So, some of us struggle through years of education to get a degree and then to land a job. Others of us work hard to learn the necessary skills to homestead off-the-grid. In any case, we understand the work that must be done and then we move forward with vitality.
However, when it comes to thinking about life and death holistically—that is, through a religious lens—we often scoff at the notion of freedom. We’d much prefer that God take us by the hand and force us to live life well without us expending the required spiritual and intellectual power to live life well. This is one of the central challenges of living a life upon spiritual principles rather than purely material bases: to take up the mantle of self and social reform.
In sum: Humankind is the author of their book of existence. We create our circumstances through our God-given and God-nourished abilities.
So, how do we make this practical? Some brief reflections:
Change first occurs in the soul or self (al-nafs).
At the level of the soul, we must understand virtue—what traits and behaviours harmonize with the Divine and which are distortions? Upon clarifying one’s moral compass, we keep ourselves on the path through taking ourselves to account regularly (muḥāsabah) and watching over our souls at every moment (murāqabah).
At the level of the mind, we must study the history of civilizations. Through this history, we take lessons from the ever-shifting and complex interplay of spiritual, political, economic, and other social factors that lead to the different moments of success and regress in human life. Additionally, we must study our current reality in all of its complexity and evaluate it. Through this, we can effectively identify what elements lead to benefits and which lead to harm.
Islam is not just a monastic inner quest. Rectifying one’s character is an inner movement that explodes onto the external reality. So, as we reform ourselves and evaluate our circumstances we must communally struggle to create social realities that facilitate our paths toward the Divine.
As we attain Divine assistance and our circumstances revive, we can both take comfort in and heed the corresponding Divine norm found in:
Surat al-Anfāl 8:53
ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَمْ يَكُ مُغَيِّرًا نِّعْمَةً أَنْعَمَهَا عَلَىٰ قَوْمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُوا۟ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ ۙ وَأَنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ
That is because God never changes a blessing that He has bestowed on a people unless they change what is in their own souls, and God is all-hearing, all-knowing.
This verse is distinct from the prior verse. This verse informs us that if we are currently being blessed as a community, God will maintain that state of blessedness until and unless we collectively turn wayward. This further emphasizes our point earlier that we are the authors of our reality through God’s granting us will.
The quest for enlightenment never ends. But He will help stabilize our affairs so long as we are individually growing and collectively growing as a community.