A Soul's Burden

Well I think it’s a good time to answer another question I have received in ask.fm specially that I’ve been writing Arabic posts regarding similar matters. The question is: “If Allah does not burden a soul more than it can bare why do people commit suicide?” since I somehow answered this question before in my blog but it’s not a bad idea to answer it in another way.

First of all, who said it’s Allah is the only one who burdens the soul (May God forgive me if the words are not appropriate), why you removed the option that it could also be you who burden the soul? Why it has to be Allah alone? I am saying this because Allah never really burdens a soul more than it can bare. Allah made this very clear in the Quran in several verses, Allah asked us to have faith in him, to believe that there is no God but Allah, he asked us to pray from him, believe in his angels, believe in his messengers, believe in his words, believe in the hereafter, are they things that burden the soul? You can’t say yes, because there are millions of people out there who freely believe in such things, in fact many of them believe in such things out of love and this belief, instead of burdening their soul, it gives their soul a great peace, I am myself an example who finds peace in believing.

But then you may ask if some of you find peace in Allah’s instructions why people commit suicide? Have you ever asked yourself why? It’s because anyone who is committing suicide is underestimating himself. He ran away, he escaped because he wasn’t even ready to bear a burden that can be handled by human beings like himself, not angels, not demons but normal human beings. Some people kill themselves over a game, some others kill themselves because their lover deserted them, while others may kill themselves because they got bullied. As you can see many among us can bear what I described without killing themselves. An example of that my own brother, when he gets bullied he bully back! I know another who thanked God because their lover broke up with them. It’s those who underestimated themselves, thought they can’t bear such matters and then killed themselves.

It’s all about choices, you either decide to be patient, to survive, to overcome the hardships you may face in your life, or simply give up and kill yourself. Whatever happens in this life comes with a choice, I mean every time, every second, every event, we are given two choices except things beyond our control like death, sleep, some of the diseases, when and where we were born, etc… For things beyond our control, Allah doesn’t punish or reward us, he doesn’t judge us. Meaning, if in your sleep you said something wrong, God wouldn’t punish you, God doesn’t punish you based on things you didn’t intent.

Imagine you’ve been captured by a terrorist group and they shot you down with their guns, here you didn’t have choice not to die, however in the case of suicide, before the suicide act you had two options, to suicide or not. No matter how much burdened your soul was, no matter how great are the hardships you are facing, you still had two choices. To kill yourself, or to continue living regardless of the hardships. If you had the option of two choices, it means it’s not a burden you cannot bear.

The other thing we should keep in our minds, is that usually life-events are connected in a way beyond our imaginations. I want to give you the example of a lover who died out of love, usually lovers say we don’t have choice not to love the one we love, it’s beyond our control, we cannot control our hearts. I say to such people, you are absolutely right. However, what you are living, what is beyond your burden (The Love) is nothing more than a result of your previous choices. You are currently experiencing the result of your previous choices. This man kept looking at the woman, he kept meeting her, talking without any barriers, for days, for months, for years, he always had the choice to ignore her the first time he saw her, he always had the choice to stop dating her, he always had the choice to follow the guidance of God when it comes to relationship, but he didn’t. What happened? He loved her and his love became so great that he couldn’t continue living and died out of his thoughts (Which actually happened in history several times) this event became something beyond his control, but would God judge him? He didn’t commit suicide like the previous? What do you think? Will he not? I personally think God will judge him, because he ignored all the options, all the choices he had and always selected a choice which was against the instructions of God. Imagine someone who keeps eating and eating, every day he eats 6 heavy meals, he kept getting fat until he died. As you know, in many religions gluttony is considered one of the deadly sins, becoming fat and dying because of it wasn’t his choice, but the result of his previous choices, thus this man cannot argue with God. However, if someone ate something and the next day he died, I think God wouldn’t judge him, because he didn’t eat out of gluttony, he just ate normally, but then he died. Similarly, someone saw a woman and did fall in a love from first sight, then he never met her in life and this love kept growing causing him great burden and he died, will God judge this man? I think not.

So to answer the original question I say, no my friend, God doesn’t burden your soul beyond what it can bear, however we human select choices which result in a burden to our own soul. Because we are ignorant, we usually act based on our emotions, we usually don’t think of the future, we don’t think beforehand what our acts may results, we keep ignoring the instructions of Allah and his messengers, even though their instructions unlike what many of human beings think, they are in fact exists to lift the burden from our souls, our souls which we burn ourselves by our wrong choices. May God’s guidance lighten our souls so we can see what’s right and what’s wrong.