7 Reasons why God is worthy of worship
# 1 God is worthy of worship by virtue of who He is
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The best place to
start is to understand who God is. God, by definition, is the One who is
entitled to our worship; it is a necessary fact of His own existence. The Quran
repeatedly highlights this fact about God,
“Indeed, I am God. There is no deity except Me, so worship Me
and establish prayer for My remembrance.” (Quran 20:14)
Since God is the only Being whose right is our worship,
then all of our acts of worship should be directed to Him alone.
In the Islamic tradition, God is considered a maximally
perfect Being. He possesses all the perfect names and attributes to the
highest degree possible. For example, in Islamic theology, God is described as
the The-Loving, and this means that His love is the most perfect and greatest
love possible. It is because of these names and attributes that God must be
worshipped. We always praise people for their abilities, kindness, knowledge
and wisdom. However, God’s power, kindness, knowledge and wisdom are to the
highest degree possible with no deficiency or flaw. Therefore, He is worthy of
the most extensive form of praise, and praising God is a form of worship. In
this light, God is worthy of worship by virtue of who He is.
God is also the only One entitled to our supplications
and prayers. He knows best what is good for us, and He wants what is good for
us. Such a Being with these attributes must be prayed to, and be asked
assistance of. God is worthy of our worship because there is something about
God that makes Him so. He is the Being with the most perfect names and
attributes.
An important point regarding worshipping God is that it
is His right, even if we are not recipients of any type of comfort. If we were
to live a life full of suffering, God must still be worshipped. Worshipping
God is not dependent on some kind of reciprocal relationship; He gives us life,
and we worship Him in return. Do not misunderstand what I am saying here: God
showers us with many blessings (as I will discuss below); however, He is
worshipped because of who He is and not necessarily how He decides—via His
boundless wisdom—to distribute His bounty.
We praise people due to their sporting skill, eloquence,
strength or any other attribute. We do so even though they do not benefit us
in any direct way. Similarly, God deserves extensive praise by virtue of His
perfect names and attributes, and not as a result of how He decided to manifest
them in our lives. If we can praise people who have limited and flawed
attributes, what does it mean on how we must praise God whose names and
attributes have no deficiency or flaw?
# 2 God has created and also sustains everything
There is something in your life that you receive freely,
yet you do not earn it and do not own it. There is no good reason to believe
that you deserve it either. This thing is this moment, and the next moment,
and all of the moments of your existence. You do not earn these moments, so
what can you possibly do to earn another instant in your life? This is exactly
why in popular culture we call it a gift: the gift of life. If you knew that
you had 10 hours left to live and in order to live another 3 days you had to
give away all of your wealth, you would immediately do so. That’s why we all
consider it to be so precious. You do not own these moments because you do not
have the capacity to bring anything into existence; you cannot even create a
fly. You do not deserve another moment of your existence because it is not
yours; you do not have the ability to produce life, even for a second. Therefore,
nothing that you do can be deserving of something that you can never acquire by
yourself.
In light of these basic truths, you must always be in a
state of gratitude, because you always receive something that you neither earn,
nor own, nor deserve. These moments of our existence are from God alone,
therefore we must be thankful to God, and acknowledge that all gratitude
belongs to Him alone. Gratitude is a key aspect of worship.
God has created everything; He continually sustains the
entire cosmos and provides for us out of His bounty. The Quran continually
repeats this concept in various ways, which evokes a sense of gratitude and awe
in the heart of the listener or reader:
“It is He who created for you all of that which is on the
Earth.” (Quran 2:29)
“Do they indeed ascribe to Him as partners things that can
create nothing but are themselves created?” (Quran 7:191-194)
“O mankind, remember the favour of God upon you. Is there any
creator other than God who provides for you from the heaven and Earth? There is
no deity except Him, so how are you deluded?” (Quran 35:3)
Therefore, everything we use in our daily lives, and all
of the essential things that we require to survive, are due to God. It follows
then that His is all gratitude. Since God created everything that exists, He
is the owner and master of everything, including us. Hence, we must be in a
sense of awe and gratitude to Him. Since God is our Master, we must be His
servants. To deny this is not only rejecting reality, but it is the height of
ingratitude, arrogance and thanklessness.
Since God created us, our very existence is solely
dependent on Him. We are not self-sufficient, even if some of us are deluded
in thinking that we are. Whether we live a life of luxury and ease or poverty
and hardship, we are ultimately dependent on God. Nothing in this universe is
possible without Him and whatever happens is due to His will. Our success in
business and the great things that we may achieve are ultimately because of God.
He created the causes in the universe that we use to achieve success, and if He
does not will our success it will never happen. Understanding our ultimate
dependency on God should evoke an immense sense of gratitude and humility in
our hearts. Humbling ourselves before God and thanking Him is a form of
worship. One of the biggest barriers to Divine guidance and mercy is the
delusion of self-sufficiency, which is ultimately based on ego and arrogance. The
Quran makes this point clear:
“But man exceeds all bounds when he thinks he is
self-sufficient.” (Quran 96:6 7)
“There is the one who is miserly, and is self-satisfied, who
denies goodness—We shall smooth his way towards hardship and his wealth will
not help him as he falls. Our part is to provide guidance.” (Quran 92:8-12)