Conclusion

The person who gave up atheistic Naturalism and came to believe said: “All praise be to God, I no longer have any doubts, but there are still a few questions about which I am curious.”

FIRST QUESTION

“We hear many lazy people and those who neglect the five daily prayers ask:

‘What need has God Almighty of our worship that in the Qur’an He severely and insistently reproves those who give up worship and threatens them with so a fearsome a punishment as  Hell? How is it in keeping with the style of the Qur’an, which is moderate, mild and fair, to demonstrate the ultimate severity towards an insignificant, minor fault?”

T h e  A n s w e r : God Almighty has no need of your worship, nor indeed of

anything else. It is you who needs to worship, for in truth you are sick. As we have proved  in  many parts  of the  Risale-i Nur,  worship  is a  sort of remedy for  your spiritual  wounds.  You  can  understand  how  absurd  it  would  be  if  an  ill  person responds to a kindly doctor who insists on his taking medicines that are beneficial for his condition by saying: “What need do you have of it that you are insisting in this way?”

As for the severe threats and fearsome punishments in the Qur’an concerning the giving  up  of worship, they may be likened to a king who in order to protect his subjects’ rights, inflicts a severe punishment on an ordinary man in accordance with the degree that his crime infringes those rights.

In the same way, the man who gives up worship and ritual prayer is violating in a significant manner the rights of beings, who are like the subjects of the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, and is in fact acting unjustly towards them. For the perfections of beings are manifested through the glorification and worship performed by that aspect of them which is directed towards their Maker. The one who abandons worship does  not  and cannot see this worship. Indeed, he denies it.  Furthermore, beings occupy an  exalted  position by reason of their worship and glorification, and each is a missive of the Eternally Besought One, and a mirror to its Sustainer’s names. Since  he  reduces  them  from   their  high  positions  and  considers  them  to  be unimportant, lifeless, aimless, and without duties, he is insulting them, and denying and transgressing their perfections.