Transcription
I looked at that question and said, "That's my question. Why would you create this violent and pernicious creature when you could create angels?" You can't just get off that easy. You can't just tell me you know exactly what you're doing, not after what I've been through. And it began like this: That said, "Behold, your Lord said to the angels, 'I am going to place a vice-trend on Earth.'" The Arabic word is Khalifa; it means a representative or an emissary of mine. "I'm going to place a vicerun on Earth," and they said—the angel said—"Will you place there in one who will spread corruption and shed blood while we celebrate your praises and glorify your holiness?" And God said, He said, "Truly, I know what you do not know."
See, that's the verse that hooked me. That's the verse that caught my attention. That's the one that kept on making me read the story again and again and again. Because listen to the way it begins: "Behold, your Lord said to the angels, 'I'm going to place a representative of mine on Earth, a vice-rent of mine, an emissary, one who acts on my behalf.'" I thought, "That's not the way it goes. You're not supposed to be placing man under Earth in some positive role, some elective office. You place man that's on Earth as a punishment for a sin." Clearly, I knew the author didn't quite get the point, but still, it was an amazing line. But then I come to the next line, and it says, "And the angels say, 'Well, you placed therein one it will spread corruption and shed blood, well we celebrate your praises and glorify you.'" I looked at it again; I couldn't believe the question. They said, "Well, you placed therein one will spread corruption and shed blood while we, the angels, celebrate your praises and glorify you." I looked at that and I said, "Exactly, that would be my question. Why would you create this being supposedly for some positive role when he's capable of doing tremendous wrongdoing? When he could spread corruption and shed much blood, why would you create this violent and pernicious creature when you could create angels?" As the angels clearly say, "Well, we, well we, the angels celebrate your praises and glorify you." They're asking one of the most fundamental questions in the entire history of religion: Why create you man, this utterly fallible creature, this creature who could rebel against God, who could do such tremendous wrongdoing, who could wreak havoc like no other creature on Earth? And you can make them angels. And look where the question is being asked; it's being asked in Heaven. It's almost like saying, "Look, why don't you just make him angels and be up here in Heaven with us?" You know, why does this makeup angels pop them into Heaven? He's fine. Why would you put them on Earth? Or he could feel distant from you, or he can work out his worst criminal tendencies, act them out, feeling somehow independent and apart from you and free to do whatever he wants. But put him in a Heaven, make them perfectly submissive to your will.
I looked at that question and said, "That's my question." I'm not—I'm not even a single verse into the story of mankind, and there before me I see my question. That whole question, everything that I ever thought, everything that I ever experienced, everything that I ever knew was in that question. Was it—if the author took my life and wanted to pick out exactly the right question to humiliate me, to provoke me, to anger me—"Why create man, this most destructive and violent creature, when you can make them angels?" And then look at the answer, and He said, God said, "Truly, I know what you do not know." You know, in modern parlance, we would say, "I know exactly what I'm doing." I read that and said, "What? You know what you do not know? You know exactly what you're doing? Well, please inform me, tell me what you're doing, because you know I'm—I'm 28 years old, and I haven't figured it out yet, and I have a lot of issues that I'm still dealing with that's connected to this question." You can't just get off that easy. You can't just tell me you know exactly what you're doing, not after what I've been through, not after you made me this way. And then I realized, of course, I was arguing with a God I didn't even believe in, and that would happen several times as I read through the Quran. And sometimes I would just get into such—so that's—so agitated by what I read, I start arguing with this voice that's—that's—that I'm reading before me that's calling to me.
So we turn to the next verse. It turns out that the Quran just doesn't dismiss the question and starts to answer it a little bit. And then the next verse it says, "And He taught Adam—God taught Adam the names of all things—and then He placed them before the angels and said, 'Tell me their names if you are right.'" So this verse is clearly referring to the previous one, but notice what it says now. I—from my own background, I remember Adam naming things, but it wasn't connected to any answer to any philosophical question. But here, notice what it says: "And He taught Adam the names of all things." And I realized already just from the first verse, you got to read these verses very carefully because it's packed with a lot of symbolism and meaning. "And He taught Adam the names of all things." So here we see Adam is not only just a creature who knows how to name things, who's acquiring the gift of language, but he's also a learning creature. God is teaching him. Then right here, right in this verse, and it'll come even clearer in the subsequent verses, that the very first thing that the—that the Quran is going to emphasize here is man's intellect. He is a learning creature; he is taught. And what is he taught? What is the—what is one of the great intellectual gifts he's given in response to the angel's question? The gift of language. Because through language mankind can not only learn, but he could learn things not only through his own experience, but he could learn things that other people have experienced of times and places that are hundreds, thousands of years and miles separated from him. And so that all our knowledge becomes cumulative, every generation learning from the generation before. And I'm learning today from authors I read from other sides of the world that may have existed 2,000 years ago. And so we all contribute to our collective learning and knowledge. And so well, I'll see you later in the Quran when the Quran will emphasize this again and again and again. Like in one verse it says, "Read in the name of your Lord who created—created a man out of a tiny creature that clings." Read it. It commands the reader, "For your Lord is most bountiful." Why is he most bountiful? What great gift did He give you? "For He taught man the use of the pen, and through it taught him what he otherwise could not know." And time and time and time again the Quran will call upon man to use his intellectual faculties and swear by his intellectual faculties and to—and to use them correctly as a—as because they play a fundamental role in guiding him to truth. I never came upon a scripture that put so much emphasis on the correct use of our intellectual faculties, on the harnessing of reason in helping us attain to faith.
"And He taught Adam the names of all things, and then He placed them before the angels and said, 'Tell me their names if you are right.'" Okay, you have this objection to—you have this natural question about this creation of mankind. Here, this mankind is—this human being, this human creature is a learning creature. It has many intellectual gifts. Here, I'm going to place these things before you. Tell me their names if you were right about man. And what did the angels say in the next verse? They say, "Glory to you; we have no knowledge except what you have taught us. In truth, it is you who are knowing, the wise." They say this would be—this task, this intellectual test that's put before them is beyond their grasp. Loan is what they emphasize: "We have no knowledge. This would take knowledge; this would take an intellect that they don't possess. In truth, it is you who are knowing, the wise." You got it; it's easy for you. You have—you're the knowing, the wise. You have knowledge; you have wisdom. But this would take knowledge and wisdom that is beyond us. And so in the next verse we read, "And He said, 'Oh Adam, tell them—tell them their names.'" And when he had told them their names, notice how it's just like it's nothing for him, for mankind. He asked this phenomenal ability. And when he had told them their names, as if it's just the triviality for man, he names them. "Oh Adam, tell them their names." And when he had told them their names, God said, "Did I not tell you that I know what is unseen in the heavens and the earth, and I know what you reveal and conceal?" Anyways, clearly going back to the angel's question, yes, you have these natural concerns about the creation of mankind. Yes, you could do these evil things, but look at this tremendous intellect he has. Something you have overlooked, that you haven't considered. And that's clearly the point of these verses, even though I under—I felt that the author didn't quite uh, you know, it was as if I realized that he didn't just—didn't misunderstand the story. He was taking one of the great stories in the history of humankind, one of the fundamental greatest stories in the history of mankind, and molding it and using it as a vehicle for an entirely original message. And God said, "Did I not tell you that I know what is unseen in the heavens and the earth, and I know what you reveal and conceal?" In other words, "Didn't I tell you I know exactly what I'm doing?" And then in the next—and didn't I not tell you what I—that I know what you reveal and conceal? I looked at that. What question did their—I mean, what did they reveal, and what did they conceal? What did their question reveal and conceal? I thought about it for a minute. Oh, it's obvious. What did the question reveal? You just go back and look at the quest. It revealed the sinful and sinister propensities of man. I mean, it's obvious, right? Why are you all looking at me like that? It's starting to scare me. They're all looking very serious. Am I losing you? Wow. Okay, so they revealed the sinister and evil propensities of man. But what did the question conceal? And all you have to do is think about it for a minute. Human beings, yes, they could do evil, yes, they could do wrong, yes, they could create misery, but they could also do exactly the opposite. They could choose to do evil; they could juice to do tremendous good. They could choose to do tremendous violence; they could choose to show tremendous compassion; choose to be—to you know—to live by falsehood; they could choose to live by the greatest truths. They could be terribly ugly; they could be terribly beautiful. And I, up until that point in my life, like the angels, that only saw one half of one side of the coin. For the first time when I read that, believe it or not, it was an eye-opener for me. I had always been obsessed with the evil potentials of human beings. When I read that verse, I realized that—and I had a great example right in front of me with my own mom—I realized that I had been blinded by only one side of human nature. So we go on to the next verse, and behold, we said to the angels, "Bow down to Adam." Before leaving, make sure to subscribe, share your comments, and turn on notifications for the latest updates.