The Hon. Elijah Muhammad once told the Hon. Louis Farrakhan that the evil of the Devil is unfathomable. I understand the Messenger’s words to mean that we can’t imagine how low Satan will stoop. For example, Satan has corrupted the identity, mission and role of Jesus. The life of this Servant of God has now been turned into a “License to Sin Card” for those who want to swim in the sea of sin and take momentary opportunities to dry off after doing so. The line that clearly separated behaviors that were pleasing to God from those that are not has become so blurred that it appears as if it never existed. So today people see no contradiction in asking God to bless them to sell kilos of cocaine, being a stripper and praising Jesus, advocating for same sex marriages, homosexuality, lesbianism, smoking weed etc. All of this ungodly behavior is believed to be easily wiped away by just professing belief in Jesus, which is not true.
Nowhere in the scripture did Jesus ever give people a pass to commit continual sin. He told one person to sin no more. Such an incorrect understanding exists because people have twisted scriptures where Jesus speaks about not condemning or judging the world to mean that we won’t be punished for our sins. If that were so, why does the Bible speak about people being cast into the burning sea with the Devil? Why do we read of the plagues falling on the earth in response to wicked behavior? Why is Jesus going to separate people who have behavior that resembles sheep from those whose behavior resembles a goat? The world that Jesus is referring to is those who would give up the world and submit to God. Jesus hinted at this when he spoke about his true family being in the temple with him. Not everyone in the houses of God are living the life. Kinship to Jesus is based upon submission to God. The tendency to alter God’s forgiveness or beneficence is not just a Christian thing. This abuse exists in other faiths as well. For example, in the Quran there are verses where Allah tells the believer what can be done to make amends for a sin. Some Muslims use these verses as a “License to Sin Card” as well.
Satan desires to produce a cadre of religious hypocrites. He does this by strengthening the deceptive intelligence of humanity. Min. Farrakhan described deceptive intelligence as the use of intelligence to rationalize disobedience to God. At this stage we become so delusional in our sin that we now think we can outsmart the Best Knower. Min. Farrakhan addressed this mindset years ago, “Now, I am not telling you to sin, then go and get the dead and the sin would be forgiven. That is an evil motivation. Using God’s Mercy, or thinking that you are going to use God’s Mercy, in that way to allow yourself to be filthy and then go do some good deed and then expect forgiveness- that is evil. He may or He may not forgive us. Sometimes, we fall into sin because we are not careful. We are not watchful. You don’t plan or plot sin and then ask Allah’s forgiveness.”
The opposite extreme of trying to abuse God’s Forgiveness is not accepting and embracing it. Two of Allah’s often repeated attributes are Al-Rahman and Al-Raheem. Both manifest His Love, Mercy and Forgiveness. However, because we have been raised in an environment that is considered by God to be the Poor Part of the Planet and we live under a ruler who created an atmosphere that consistently feeds the Poor Part of human beings, we tend to dwell heavily on the dark side of ourselves and don’t realize that God has come to give us the opportunity to get ourselves clean. Sister Ava Muhammad wrote about Allah’s willingness to forgive and our inability to allow ourselves to be forgiven. She wrote, “…if we take this position, we really don’t know God. If we did we would have some comprehension of His willingness to forgive and the abundance of His Mercy. Instead, we impose our small, judgmental, self-righteous mind on Him. We assume He will not forgive the sin in us because we will not forgive it in others. That is just plain wrong. The door will open when you are ready to profess your belief with sincere intent.”
I will close this article with a story about a little girl. The girl’s father worked all day while the mother stayed at home and raised her. Every day the mother and the girl would go through the dark woods to get to the candy store. This was done as a treat for the girl’s good behavior. The father died and the mother was left to take care of the household, she had no choice but to go to work. When she began working she told the girl that under no circumstances was she allowed to go through the woods to the store. Every morning before the mother would leave to go to work she would repeat this warning. The first day the girl did exactly what the mother instructed her to do. Yet, as time passed she began to miss going to the candy store. She began to convince herself that if she was old enough to stay at home by herself, she was old enough to walk through the woods alone. So one morning after her mother left to go to work, she set out to go to the candy store. As she approached the woods that were shadowy, the girl began to question her decision to disobey her mother’s instructions. However, she still continued on her journey. Half way through she heard sounds of lifeless leaves being stepped on. The noise scared her but she kept walking. She heard the noise again, but this time it was louder and closer. She came to a halt when she saw a shadow on the ground of something behind her. She slowly turned around to see a wolf with razor sharp teeth. She froze and immediately the words of her mother began to play in her mind. The wolf started easing toward her; she knew she could not outrun it. So she did the only thing she knew would protect her – she prayed. As soon as she finished the prayer the wolf jumped and knocked her to the ground. She noticed a rock lying right next to her and she grabbed it and hit the wolf in the head killing it immediately. She quickly got up and ran as fast as she could back home. Unharmed she never told her mother what happened and she never went back to the woods.
The moral of the story is that we cannot purposely put ourselves in harm’s way (sin) and then expect God to protect or forgive us. Out of His mercy He sometimes provides us away out of the situation we place ourselves in, but this is not for us to abuse.
Be Blessed & Aware,
Brother Willie Muhammad,
Student Minister – Muhammad Mosque #46, New Orleans, Louisiana
http://www.noineworleans.org/mmm/
Follow on Twitter @BroWM46
