Who We Really Are

Sura 96 of the Quran is considered to be the first poem Muhammad received from the angel Gabriel.  You can read it here.

The story goes like this:

Muhammad was born the son of a middle class merchant. He never learned how to read or write. He married a wealthy widow, and spent much of his time away from people, seeking the true God.  Muhammad determined already that Allah, the God of Abraham, was the God he should seek.

Then, out of the blue, he received a message from the angel Gabriel, in the form of a poem.  The beginning of this poem was the command "Recite!" or, otherwise translated "Read!".  Muhammad was confused, as he couldn't read, but as he received the words of the poem, he found that he had become literate.

However, all of that isn't what the Sura is about.

Instead, it is about  secularists, or people who are practical secularists.  It says, "Men think they are self-sufficient, and so transgress all bounds."  The true path, however, is the path of God.  The one who denies others the right to seek God will be judged by God.

When this was spoken, it was not spoken about atheists or agnostics.  Rather, it was about people who believed in their god or gods, and prayed at the right time, but lived their lives the way they wanted to, thus denying any real belief in God.

To believe is to act.  We know what a person truly believes by how they treat others, how they act when no one is looking, how they spend their money.  God will judge every human according to his or her deeds, so says Jesus and the rest of the NT.  Every deed, especially the hidden ones.  Make no mistake, God is not mocked, He knows who we really are and our eternity is determined by our true self.