Am I humble?
Am I arrogant?

Am I pious?
Am I blasphemous?

Am I cruel?
Am I kind?

Who is the judge?
Search me.
Who can tell?

There is only one who can tell.

Any attempt to test, judge, discover, search, or discern is human folly. You can’t tell. You can’t even discover yourself. It’s a lost cause. Your best effort is to study (darash) God’s scroll, and in doing so, discover that it is God who studies you. Then there is a chance that you will be found wandering in your darkness (qoder), a chance that you will be found out, and then you will find hope.

You will find God’s power in your fate (qadr) and reprieve from your mourning (qoder).

If you have no control over your own fate, Habibi, why does it matter what others do? You yourself are not the judge. St. Paul will not even judge himself.

There is only one judge. It’s not that you do not understand his words when they are fed to you; you just don’t like their taste in your ears.

Why do you care what other people do?

It’s because you want control. You want to own God. You want to keep him as your pet—at least, for starters. Your true aim is to become God.

You want the throne.

You want control.

But you’re not the Shepherd, let alone the Divine “Emir” (أ-م-ر), his Father, who commanded his prophets “to speak” (א-מ-ר) the words that you can’t stomach:

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

This week I discuss Luke 6:27-28.

My thanks to Matthew Cooper, the OCABS scholar who unlocked the inter-functionality of the Arabic word “emir” with the Hebrew verb “amar.”

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