Explaining The Apparent Contradiction In 4:78-79
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Wherever you may be, death will find you, even if you are in fortified towers. If any good befalls them, they Say ?This is from The God,? and if any bad befalls them, they Say ?This is from you!? Say ?All is from The God;? what is wrong with these people, they barely understand anything said!
Any good that befalls you is from The God, and any bad that befalls you is from yourself. We have sent you as a messenger to the people and The God is enough as a witness. (478-79)for awhile these signs (ayat) have been seen as contradicting, here is the contradiction the signs say all is from The God, then say all good is from The God yet all bad is from ourselves
for this not to contradict I've seen two things must be possible, either we are The God or "bad" is not part of "all", the first part is a huge contradiction with the basic message of the reading (quran) and tons of signs in it, so we can easily throw that out, but what about the second? first we must understand that something negative can never be part of "all" which is substantive, so with this I'd like to present to you this article i found on submission.org and which can be found on other websites throughout the web in slightly remodeled formhttp//www.submission.org/teachers/professor.html
it makes a clear case that "bad" is merely a "lack of good", a lack of something can never be part of "all" which is substantive, therefore when you read this sign think of it like this
Wherever you may be, death will find you, even if you are in fortified towers. If any good befalls them, they Say ?This is from The God,? and if any lack of good befalls them, they Say ?This is from you!? Say ?All is from The God;? what is wrong with these people, they barely understand anything said!
Any good that befalls you is from The God, and any lack of good that befalls you is from yourself. We have sent you as a messenger to the people and The God is enough as a witness. (478-79)with this we can see there is no contradiction
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I don't see any contradiction in those ayats. First one makes clear that All good and bad things that happen to us are from Allah. Second one is like saying "whatever goes around comes around". If you can't control your nafs and sin and something bad happens then it is from Allah too, as a punishment for your evil act. At least that's what I understand.
Peace.
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Salaam,
My understanding on this is the laws governing outcomes be it good or evil is designed by GOD, hence be it a positive or negative outcome its still from GOD. Its essentially the same argument as when you go out to work and earn a crust it comes from GOD. As He designed the reality that made this happen.
On the other hand we have the freedom of choice, and when only GOD wills a bad deed results in disaster. We can control our actions but we can't control the outcomes.
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Asalaamu alaikum,
Thank you for posting this message. This can definitely benefit those who read it. I was just reading and studying that particular ayat the other day. It baffled me for a moment because, at face value, it does seem contradictory. I also considered that the clue was, perhaps, in the Arabic. At any rate, from the english translation, I came to the conclusion that. since the ayat isn't flawed, our definition and concept of good and bad must be. Allah is above any and every concept of reality we can think of including good and bad. So my train of thought was All is God. All is Good. There is no "Bad". Bad is a human cognitive construction that man has created to explain that on this Earth that we disagree with or don't fully understand. Also, because of free will, Bad is something that is uniquely human and can, also, be present in our behavior. So is "ALL" everything outside of our free-will and behavior? This is the question I have now.
The "lack of good" translation is interesting. Gotta ponder it. Again, thanks for sharing your knowledge wink