09-22-2006, 02:14 PM
Submitting to God's will (or Allah) is nothing more than loving God and loving one another. It isn't very complex.
If you take the 10 Commandments, they are all about self-restraint. Do this, don't do that, etc. That is the concept of "submission." Similarly, jihad or struggle, is because living by the laws of God is difficult.
Doing things like praying a certain way is easy. Those are just physical behaviors. Following and obeying God is a spiritual and intellectual challenge.
My website is "behappyandfree" because life is about a spiritual accomplishment. Redemption isn't a team effort like a football game where we can run a play and say we all won as a team. That isn't to say that these practices don't have some spiritual value for the individual, but they are NOT "Deen."
God wants the obedience and love of our Spirit, not of our body. Hypocrites always move their body in a certain way and claim they are holy, but their spirit may not be. One only has to look at the history of man and all the holy wars. Osama doesn't obey God any better than Bush or previous Popes. They all find an excuse to kill and to not obey God. Rather, they change God's words, to say that God approves.
Pray how you wish. Prayer is good. But I would not think or say that God approves of one way as best or proper. Don't forget, evil comes in the form of traditions, too. Just as we teach each other the good, we also unwittingly teach evil, which is why the struggle to be obedient persists. It is difficult for everyone to live a moral life in an immoral world. The bigger problem being that people (hypocrites) teach immoral choices as moral, and so we are forced to spend our lives discovering the mistakes of our fathers.
Praying to Mecca is a "new" idea, as you admitted. To me, it is more akin to the pagan worship of the Pharoah or Emperor, which means it is just an old idea redirected. It is not part of God's laws. Again, there is nothing wrong with praying. However,it is the thinking that your prayer is somehow perfected above all others that seeds division, even among Muslims. Why? Because it puts emphasis on acts and not on faith.
The reason that I bring up the concept of "religion" is because people feel a sense of power in the labels that they identify with. That "power" does not come from God, it is the masked pride of the devil. That is why the high things must fall and the low things brought up. Everything meets in the middle, but we have to let go of our bad habits to get there, regardless of where we start.
We are bound together because we share the same struggle not just to obey but also to understand. The labels and habits are very minor things, and the more importance we put on them the less we understand issues of faith and spirit. These divides are because those who lead ceremonies sometimes seek to honor themselves, not God. And the same is true as well of those who participate in ceremonies, to some extent.
Jesus speaks about this hypocrisy, and I am sure the Qu'ran does as well.
Matthew 23:23
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.
The big problem with hypocrisy is that the hypocrite is unaware of himself. He is, by definition, saying something right and doing something wrong. I am a hypocrite because I struggle to do that which is right. Perhaps there needs to be another word for this stage, since I am aware of myself whereas the hypocrite is potentially unaware. Yet, in both cases it is easy to act holy, it is not so easy to BE holy.
No ego allowed. :-)