not4me said:
So Iblis is wiser than Allah so he chose to disobey God b/c God didn't know that this contradicts "worship God alone" command!! (hasha lillah)
Aah! there r some weird things that you may read on the forum! Subhan Allah!
Where do you get this from? That's not what Halcyon said. And that's not what the story means to me.
There have been many times in my life when I have had to choose between what seemed to be contradictory commands. For example, speaking of bowing, the bible says "Thou shalt have no other gods before me (God)." And it also says "Honor thy father and thy mother." When I was seven my grandfather died, and at the funeral my parents told me to bow in front of my grandfather's coffin. (Not just bow from the waist but get on one's knees and touch the ground with one's head.) The Chinese practice ancestral worship. For you guys the choice may have been obvious but this was a real dillema for me at that time and I still regret the choice I made. The only thing that I can say is that I did what I thought was right at the time.
There have also been many times in my life when I've seen someone do something that I knew deserved punishment, if law and order is to be preserved, but I also knew was right in another sense. For example, the soldier on trial right now for refusing to deploy to Iraq. He's a soldier. He made a promise to serve. It's not his place to question the commands of his officers. But he feels this war is wrong. And I admire his courage to live by his convictions, even tho I think he has to pay some consequences for breaking the law.
God may know the right action for every situation. But I don't. I often see conflicting choices despite my efforts to do what is right. To me, this is the human condition. And to me the Sufi version of the Satan story best captures the tension of existence. Perhaps Satan made a mistake. Perhaps he's too prideful now to admit that he made a mistake. Perhaps God know's Satan's heart and is patiently waiting for Satan to mature enough to get over his pride, and the second coming of Jesus and final judgement, etc. of hinges on this one event. The point of this thread is to have compassion for those who make mistakes, is it not?
not4me said:
Anyway this is what the Quran says:
"It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels bow down to Adam, and they bowed down; not so Iblis; He refused to be of those who bow down."
"((Allah)) said: "What prevented thee from bowing down when I commanded thee?" He said: "I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay." Holy Quran
Yes, I know what the Qur'an says about this. Interestingly, the Qur'an, like the bible and other scriptures, does not state the motivations of the characters, only what they do and say.
We interpret the motivations. And the Sufi interpretation of Satan's motivations does not violate what's written here.
At any rate, whatever his motivations, Satan's refusal to bow to Adam is certainly a more interesting scenario than the idea of Satan being an angel who then decides that he can overthrow God.
I was representing the classical view of Satan.
