God uses the things of this world to test man.  

 

266. God uses the things of this world to test man: The world is a test for mankind. God uses the things of this world as an enticement to draw, the ones who are inclined to attachment to the glitter of this life, away from the spiritual things of life, allowing people to become dazzled by the distractions of what pleasures this world has to offer; thereby separating out the ones with the spiritual seeing eyes from those who are content to just wallow in whatever lusts this world seems to offer them. In other words, this world is a testing ground to separate out the worldly souls from the heavenly souls. Islam: 32. “What is the life of this world but play and amusement and glitter,” “It was the life of this world that deceived them.” (The Qur’an (Yusuf Ali tr), Surahs 6 and 33)  Judaism: Ecclesiastes 6:1 “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men:” 6:2 “A man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it: this is vanity, and it is an evil disease.” 6:3 “If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.” 6:4 “For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness.” Ecclesiastes 3:9 “What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in His time: also He hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. I know that there is no good in them.” Proverbs 18:11 “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit.” Psalms 49:6 “They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches;” Psalms 49:7 “None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:” Psalms 49:8 “(For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:)” Proverbs 13:6 “Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way: but wickedness overthroweth the sinner.” Proverbs 13:7 “There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.” Psalms 73:12 “Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches. Surely Thou didst set them in slippery places: Thou castedst them down into destruction.  How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when Thou awakest, Thou shalt despise their image.” 4 Ezra 16:73 “Then shall they be known, who are my chosen; and they shall be tried as the gold in the fire.” (Deuterocanonical Apocrypha) Sirach 2:5 “For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.” (Deuterocanonical Apocrypha)  Christianity: Luke 21:34 “And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting (glutinous excess), and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.” Luke 21:35 “For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.” 1 Timothy 6:9 “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.” 1 Corinthians 1:26 “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are:” 1 John 2:15 “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away.” Revelation 3:17 “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”

BAHA’I FAITH: “O SON OF BEING! Busy not thyself with this world, for with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants.”

(Bahá’í Faith, Baha’u’llah, The Arabic Hidden Words)

 BABI RELIGION: “Vain indeed is your dominion, for God hath set aside earthly possessions for such as have denied Him;”

(The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 43)

 CHRISTIANITY: 1 Peter 1:7 “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory.”

BAHA’I FAITH: “But if the health and welfare of man be spent in sensual desires, in a life on the animal plane, and in devilish pursuits — then disease is better than such health; nay, death itself is preferable to such a life.”

(Bahá’í Faith, Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i World Faith – Abdu’l-Baha Section, p. 376)

 BABI RELIGION: “Indeed shouldst Thou desire to confer blessing upon a servant Thou wouldst blot out from the realm of his heart every mention or disposition except Thine Own mention; and shouldst Thou ordain evil for a servant by reason of that which his hands have unjustly wrought before Thy face, Thou wouldst test him with the benefits of this world and of the next that he might become preoccupied therewith and forget Thy remembrance.”

(The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 191)

 ISLAM: 55. “Let not their wealth nor their (following in) sons dazzle thee: in reality Allah’s (God‘s) plan is to punish them with these things in this life and that their souls may perish in their (very) denial of Allah.”

(The Qur’an (Yusuf Ali tr), Surah   9)

Islam: 45. “Set forth to them the similitude of the life of this world: it is like the rain which We send down from the skies: the earth’s vegetation absorbs it, but soon it becomes dry stubble, which the winds do scatter: it is (only) Allah Who prevails over all things.” 46. “Wealth and sons are allurements of the life of this world: but the things that endure, Good Deeds, are best in the sight of thy Lord, as rewards, and best as (the foundation for) hopes.”

(The Qur’an (Yusuf Ali tr), Surah  18)

Islam: 18. “They will say: ‘Glory to Thee! not meet was it for us that we should take for protectors others besides Thee: but Thou didst bestow, on them and their fathers, good things (in life), until they forgot the Message: for they were a people (worthless and) lost.”’

(The Qur’an (Yusuf Ali tr), Surah  25)

Islam: “The rich are in fact the poor (little rewarded) on the Day of Resurrection except him whom Allah gives wealth which he gives (in charity) to his right, left, front and back, and does good deeds with it.”

(Hadith, Bukhari Vol 8, Book 76, Number 450)

Islam: 49. “Now, when trouble touches man, he cries to Us; but when We bestow a favor upon him as from Ourselves, he says, ‘This has been given to me because of a certain knowledge (I have)!’ Nay, but this is but a trial, but most of them understand not!”

(The Qur’an (Yusuf Ali tr), Surah  39)

 ZOROASTRIANISM: 32. “Against the body of the harlot, (The world) with her magic minds over throwing with (intoxicating) pleasures, to the lusts her person offering, whose mind as vapor wavers as it flies before the wind, for the righteous saint that perishes,” 41. “Men with lustful deeds address the body;:”

(The Zend-Avesta, Avesta – Yasna 9 and Avesta Fragments)

 Zoroastrianism: “Detachment is the highest good. So long as the mind hankers for worldly goods, love of God does not find a place there.” “One who desires worldly objects cannot love Mazda (God) with his whole heart. (ZOROASTER, Hymns of Atharvan pp. 666 and 776)

 HINDUISM: “A man may spend the whole life in running after pleasure, but he will find that his thirst is yet unslaked, and he will be ever in bondage.” “One should not neglect the world, at the same time he should have no hankering for wealth, he should get rid of covetousness. Lust and greed are the two enemies of God realization.” (ZOROASTER, Hymns of Atharvan p. 214 and 221) 17. “Let him avoid all (means of acquiring) wealth which impede the study of the Veda; (let him maintain himself) anyhow, but study, because that (devotion to the Veda-study secures) the realization of his aims.”

(Hindu, Laws of Manu chapter 4)

 Hinduism: 2. “Children follow after outward pleasures, and fall into the snare of wide-spread death.” (attachment to the vanities of this world) “Dispel the darkness and fill full our vision: deliver us as men whom snares entangle!” Free us from the snares of this world.

(Hindu, Upanishads vol. 2, Katha-Upanishad and Vedas, Sama Veda)

 BUDDHISM: “The world, however, is given to pleasure, delighted with pleasure, enchanted with pleasure. Verily, such beings will hardly understand the law of conditionality, the Dependent Origination of everything; incomprehensible to them will also be the end of all formations, the forsaking of every substratum of rebirth, the fading away of craving; detachment, extinction, Nirvana.” 24. “People beset by desire run here and there, like a snared rabbit, and those trapped in the bonds of attachments keep Returning for a long time to suffering.” “People beset by desire run here and there, like a snared rabbit, so one should get rid of one’s craving if it is freedom from desire that one wants.”

((The Eightfold Path), Buddha Dhammapada – Sayings of the Buddha))

 Buddhism: 24. “When a man out of the forest of desire is drawn back into the forest, then free from the forest as he is, he runs back into it. Look at him – free, he is running back to chains.” 24. “The wise say that it is not an iron, wooden or fiber fetter which is a strong one, but the besotted hankering after trinkets, children and wives, that, say the wise, is the strong fetter. It drags one down, and loose as it feels, it is hard to break. Breaking this fetter, people renounce the world, free from longing and abandoning sensuality.”

(Buddhist, Dhammapada – Sayings of the Buddha 1 (tr. J. Richards))

 SABEANISM: “Be no son of the House, the world,” “Adam, look upon the world which is a completely unreal thing. It is a unreal thing, in which you can put no trust.”

(Sabeanism, Instruction of Adam)

 BABI RELIGION: “Fear thou God and pride not thyself on thine earthly possessions, inasmuch as what God doth possess is better for them that tread the path of righteousness.”

(The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 19)

BAHA’I FAITH: “Know ye that by “the world” is meant your unawareness of Him Who is your Maker, and your absorption in aught else but Him. The “life to come,” on the other hand, signifieth the things that give you a safe approach to God, the All-Glorious, the Incomparable. Whatsoever deterreth you, in this Day, from loving God is nothing but the world. Flee it, that ye may be numbered with the blest.”

(Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 276)