Fear Of Displeasing God Vs Fear Of Hell Fire To Stay Away From Sins?
One last thing. I am a ptsd patient and to treat this condition, I need to feel very safe first. I remember God for this and I feel safe in His presence that He is protecting me. I don’t feel this much safe otherwise. Does this go against the advice you are giving me? Do I have to remember Him with fear only within the context of past, present and possible future major sins?
God is always taking care of you in this life, that’s a fact. The point that you must take from my responses is that, it is not correct to say that Hell is not a focus. Reward and Punishment is essential part of religion and so is Paradise and Hell. Separating God’s pleasure and displeasure from them is a mistake by Sufi that leads to problems like people saying that they don’t need Paradise nor fear Hell and only love of God matters when Allah says that you should focus on Paradise/Hell and this in turns is a way to go away from religion, Christianity also made this mistake and removed entire Shariah while believing themselves to be immune to Hell as long as they believe in Hazrat Isa’s sacrifice so you understand why this thought process isn’t a good idea when you take away focus of Hell from religion as far as belief and intellectual structure of religion goes. So do what you need for your personal and individual case, your case is more forgivable to God. But don’t go suggesting a narrative to others that Paradise/Hell aren’t important and only displeasure/pleasure of God as a motivation will suffice since Allah’s approach to religion is pragmatic i.e we are in this test to earn Paradise and we avoid sins to avoid Hell, it’s that straight forward and we have seen even prophets slip up so normal individuals definitely are in need of concrete motivations like Paradise and Hell more to avoid slipping up in this test. Allah knows how human function best, so He kept it this way for our needs and to ensure we succeed in this test.
I have implemented the fitrah-based motivations to live a righteous life and it is working well for me. I am definitely more inclined towards not committing sins and I am not even getting as many temptations as I was before, so thanks for helping me out. But I need some clarification. If let’s say I face a calamity and then I start having negative attitude towards God for the calamity but then I instantly remember the punishment in hell, I back off so that’s good but once I back off from that negative attitude can I give myself reasonings why I shouldn’t be having that kind of thinking? I can then tell myself “God is very merciful and He is doing all of this just for the sake of trial otherwise how else is He supposed to try me?” This is so that I don’t have that kind of negative attitude again to begin with, and if it happens again for some reason, I can again remind myself of God’s justice: punishment in hell and also remind myself that this is just a test from God. Is this the correct approach? Sorry I am asking so many questions, it is essential for me as I over think a lot
You can have other reasoning as well. The proper mindset for a Muslim is that a calamity is a means to earn Paradise and a means to remove sins so you can distance yourself from Hell. In fitrah this is the main reasoning i.e I am earning a reward and and I am avoiding a punishment so I am grateful to God even in calamity because He care enough about me to test me, purify me of my sins with calamity and make me succeed in my afterlife. If you want to add more reasons to avoid bad attitude, you can as long as you keep the main ones at the top of the list.
Okay, thank you. Is this (recognizing and accepting the truth which is that this world is just a test) the purification of knowledge that Ghamidi sir talked about in one of his videos? He said we need to purify our actions and knowledge to be successful