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Litmus Tests For Knowing If You Are Rebellious Or Arrogant Towards God
I need such tests based on the Quran to remove my self-doubts about disobeying God.
The situation is such that when I try to implement a verse and I am not able to fully implement it into my life and leave the rest on God to guide me and help me gradually improve, I get self-doubts that I might be being rebellious and arrogant for some reason for not fully implementing the verse and that even if God’s guidance comes to help me, I’ll make the same excuse again and asking God for help while I am actually dismissing His help.
The test I am using is that a rebellious and arrogant person termed as sinful by God can never ask God for help.
Please help me further with more tests that you know of and also add to the one I am using
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9 Replies
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Litmus Tests For Knowing If You Are Rebellious Or Arrogant Towards God
updated 3 months ago
3 Members
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9
Replies
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We are obliged to obey God according to our capacity. No one can claim that one has completely folowed an order. We obey the best, and leave the rest to our Merciful God. You may need to learn how Merciful is God.
Rebellion and arrogance is something else. When one is rebellious one knows it.
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Although I know chances of me being arrogant and rebellious in a major sense are slim at places where I have such doubts on myself, I am giving myself hope that even if it turns out to be like that I am asking God for help to improve myself and as long as I am doing this, I should be fine, and if I still get punished in the hereafter (turning out my doubts were true, which is slim), I hope that hell is not eternal and shall cease to exist when God wills as He hasn’t promised its eternity. This is just so that I can stop this overthinking and self-doubting. Is thinking like this, especially keeping such hope that God hasn’t promised hell’s eternity, aligns with Quranic teachings? Should I be using hell not being promised to be eternal for increasing hope?
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@FortunateServant Need your opinion also. Thank you
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Even if the sentence is temporary Hell, it is still something one should avoid rather than using that as a hope. This is because if one becomes rebellious, temporary Hell becomes an excuse for rebelliousness. The proper mindset is that one should fear the worst and stay in his place, that’s only way to keep rebelliousness chained.
As far as litmus tests go, the Prophet (PBUH) already gave one.
“The
Messenger
of Allah (ﷺ) said: ‘The covenant that distinguishes
between us and
them is prayer; so whoever leaves it, he has committed
Kufr.’”
https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:1079“…….Indeed the first deed by which a servant will be called to account on
the Day of Resurrection is his Salat. If it is complete, he is
successful and saved, but if it is defective, he has failed and lost. So
if something is deficient in his obligatory (prayers) then the Lord,
Mighty and Sublime says: ‘Look! Are there any voluntary (prayers) for my
worshipper?’ So with them, what was deficient in his obligatory
(prayers) will be completed. Then the rest of his deeds will be treated
like that.”
https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:413And do not mistake Salah for a Salah of khuusho and focus. That is not required. Qur’an requires that a proper Salah is one that is on time and follows the obligatory parts of it like posture, words recited etc.
Salah is important because it is the ultimate benchmark of one’s humility towards God:
1:32 – 5:05
https://youtu.be/pELnrc_Qniw?t=93
sunnah.com
Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (saws) in English and Arabic
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Thank you. Regarding the prayer, humans are always gonna make mistakes, at least minor ones, if those minor mistakes were also not forgiven then wouldn’t that sort of make the voluntary prayers obligatory in a sense? If someone missed concentration while reciting the entire chapter Fatiha, then yes, it makes sense to me to make offering voluntary prayer a must.
Is there a complete video from Al Mawrid, or from sir Ghamidi that could help me perfect my prayer? I only offer obligatory prayers for the sake of ease, but I can add some voluntary prayers from now on.
Btw, I do feel some reactions (that could turn out to be very arrogant and rebellious if I acted upon them) coming up against God when I feel like I am being burdened like when I read your reply about offering more prayers. That’s what is causing me the self-doubts. I have such thoughts or reactions coming up but I don’t act upon them, this causes things to be in grey-area for me. I do have OCD so that could be the reason. Need your opinion, is this a common thing and not to be worried about as long as I am not acting upon it? It does feel like a part of my character though that I am only just not acting upon it out of fear of God and because I know it is wrong, otherwise I might have.
I appreciate the help. Thank you
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Concentration is not a requirement of prayer. You did not read what I wrote carefully.
The requirement of prayer is only two: On time and obligatory parts are performed. If there is an error, then you perform two sajda after prayer as act of forgiveness for that.
Also it seems you did not pay attention the video I showed. This is not about numbers, or increasing amount of prayers, this is about what prayer actually is. When you pray, you are admitting you are humble before God everytime. So the more you pray, the more humble you get. Refusal of obligatory prayer is the litmus test for arrogance. And if one is anxious about their humility towards God then simply pray more while remembering the point of the prayer.
And yes, if there is no fear of God and you did not know it was wrong, you would have acted upon it. Time to accept that. Majority of mankind would fail even more if Allah had not bestowed upon us His favor of prayer, worship, good news of Paradise and warning of Hell.
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Okay, thank you. So, I am not sinful if I am not acting upon the bad temptations even if they were a part of my character and I am trying to change and resist that. That is getting better though with time as I learn more and try to become more humble before God.
I did watch the video and it has helped me with the part where we think we are praising God but actually we are supposed to show our humbleness before Him that we are His servants. If the whole point of that video is being humble before God I do feel like I am already doing that or striving to do that. Being humble before God came up naturally though when I started realizing I am standing before Him and kept in mind His attributes and other things taught by the Quran. It also naturally makes me humble when I am willfully making the postures in the prayer.
So, I guess if one follows exactly what the Quran says, the prayers will become perfect naturally, as God wants them to be, right?
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Yes. Bad temptations are part of the test, one should not turn their face away from their fitrah and reality. Just try not to act upon them until you enter Paradise.
You may already be doing all that but that is not main takeaway, the point is you asked for a litmus test. Prayer is that test, as long as a Muslim pray 5 times a day, he can be humble and avoid arrogance. Prayer may not be perfect or perhaps never be, but it is more about struggle, towards what a person is struggling, if he is striving towards humility and humbling himself in prayer then he is passing the test. If he is striving away from prayer then he is heading towards arrogance. This is the litmus test.
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Okay, thanks a lot for the help.
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