What to Do When God Betrays You

In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

Once again I find myself musing about Satan. He is a striking, almost pathetic figure: a djinn (immaterial being) who was foremost in worship turned bitter and vengeful upon witnessing God's love for man. I wonder what his feelings towards God were. What drove his anger? Jealousy? Perhaps he wished to know what it would be like to be loved as a man by God, a wish that could never be granted without becoming himself one of the hateful humans. But is it really jealousy that drove his anger?

Here we have a complex web of emotions: anger, jealousy, spite, perhaps even self-hatred. How can it be disentangled to make sense of Satan's experiences sympathetically? By this, I do not mean to agree or condone his motivations, but to understand them as though we were in his place.

In the Holy Qur'an, the following story is reported of Iblis or Satan's fall from grace (7:11-18, tr. Abdel-Haleem):

    We created you, We gave you shape, and then We said to the angels, ‘Bow down before Adam,’ and they did. But not Iblis: he was not one of those who bowed down.
    God said, ‘What prevented you from bowing down as I commanded you?’ and he said, ‘I am better than him: You created me from fire and him from clay.’
    God said, ‘Get down from here! This is no place for your arrogance. Get out! You are contemptible!’
    but Iblis said, ‘Give me respite until the Day people are raised from the dead,’ and God replied, ‘You have respite.’
    And then Iblis said, ‘Because You have put me in the wrong, I will lie in wait for them all on Your straight path: I will come at them- from their front and their back, from their right and their left- and You will find that most of them are ungrateful.’ 

    God said, ‘Get out! You are disgraced and banished! I swear I shall fill Hell with you and all who follow you!....'

Let us indeed pursue the rather dangerous task of putting ourselves in Satan's shoes. Here we have someone who prided himself on his closeness to God. Some have even said he was God's foremost lover. Now, his Beloved puts him to a test: bow before your rival in love. 

Imagine this: you deeply love a man. You adore him and serve him day after day. You have thought it to be the case that he has accepted your love. Even if his feeling towards you is not equally servile, it is certainly not one of indifference. You fondly remember how he favoured you with a smile or a caress when you brought him tea without his asking. This brought you such joy that you seek to anticipate all of his wants, anxiously working to make sure he suffers not the slightest discomfort. You feel that his acceptance of your gestures—which he has never asked for nor requires—is the greatest gift possible.

One day, this man brings home a stranger. He introduces you to her and, holding her hand tightly, says to you, "This is a woman whom I also love deeply. Please bring her some tea and biscuits." 

Consider your feelings at that moment: would you not be filled with confusion and then, jealousy? Let us say that there was a harem of women like you, each working hard to prepare for him. When you turn to look at your fellows for support, you see that they are all quickly running to the kitchen to welcome this new woman to the house. You are stunned: are you the only sane one here? It is one thing for him to ask for tea for himself, but you have never served the other women! Your love is for him alone because his superiority to everyone else. You are not a servant to lesser, less worthy mortals! 

He has degraded your love. Your love, which was directed towards him, is now considered so lowly that he wants you to direct it at one of your rivals! And how could she even be a rival? What has she ever done for him?? The other women were never your direct competitors: you relished your triumph over them. But by asking you to make yourself subservient to this other woman, he has made rivals out of you.

You gnash your teeth and glare at her. She is ugly and unworthy of her intimacy with him. Her hair is stringy, her teeth are yellow, and she has not even perfected making his tea the way that he likes or conversing with him the way that he likes. Perhaps, a voice whispers, she does have a certain charm?—but no, it is not possible. You refuse to move a muscle. Maybe you could have tolerated a rival, but a rival like this? Such a mousy, unremarkable woman? You feel humiliated. He has humiliated you.

He is surprised. He turns to you and asks you what is wrong. And you tell him, your insides burning with jealousy and rage: she is pathetic, why did you bring her? Everyone here is better than her--she is ugly, disgusting, repulsive. 

There are two ways to imagine your saying this: the first way is out of insecurity and hoping that he will reassure you. Who hasn't lashed out of insecurity in the midst of jealousy? "Go marry her if she's so pretty then!" Normally the response to this ought to be reassurance: "No, she's not prettier than you, don't worry." 

But there is another motivation that could drive your saying this, and that is out of a sense of arrogance and disdain. Here, you are not insecure, but you are overly confident and this has blinded you. You cannot allow yourself to accept that she may have some redeeming qualities because this would harm your sense of self. So you disdain her, and because this attitude is borne out of arrogance, you also disdain him. After all, he is the one who has chosen someone so clearly inferior over you, and thus humiliated you. In one shot, he has destroyed your respect for him. All of your memories with him are tainted: all of your thoughtful gestures and self-sacrifice for his sake are contaminated with this new knowledge of how lowly he is.

It is only if we imagine Satan's attitude towards his human-rival in the second way that God's response is comprehensible as being consistent with His otherwise merciful nature: "Get down from here! This is no place for your arrogance. Get out! You are contemptible!" For if Satan were merely insecure, the proper response to him would be to comfort him or to help him see his self-worth. But Satan is not an insecure being: he has always known that he was the closest to God and better than the other angels. 

Satan's arrogance is reinforced by his own response (in bold above): "Because You have put me in the wrong, I will lie in wait for them all on Your straight path:..." Typically this is seen as an abdication of accountability: Satan is blaming God instead of taking responsibility for his actions.

While that is probably true, let's consider it from his perspective: as a thwarted lover, he is saying that God has betrayed him. God's perceived betrayal of Satan is why he places responsibility of their extinguished relationship at God's feet. He says: you are the one who destroyed the beautiful thing that we had, you have made me regret ever having served you, you have humiliated me. And so he wants revenge. He wants to undo his humiliation and to gain back the self-respect that he has lost. It is not jealousy but a sense of betrayal that drives Satan's wild quest for revenge.  

***

What does it mean to feel that God has betrayed you? 

Typically, when we think someone has betrayed us, it is because we think that we are entitled to certain things from them and because we relied on them to fulfill their end of the bargain. Usually these entitlements are of great consequence because they are linked to our self-worth or self-respect in some way. If I think that my friend has betrayed me by telling my secrets to others, it is because I had entrusted my privacy to her.

A sense of betrayal usually occurs in relationships of love: family, friends, spouses, etc. I think this is because we rely on others to affirm our worth to us. Self-respect is a fragile thing, constantly under threat by our limitations. Interdependence makes me a slave to others in just the way that love does: I am bound to them out of necessity, with or without my consent. My reliance on them can undermine my dignity if they misuse their power over me. This threat is what makes loving relationships such vulnerable situations.   

Much of sense of dignity comes from what my loved ones think of me and how they treat me despite my reliance on them. Although they know my weaknesses, will they take advantage of me? Or worse yet, will they be indifferent to me despite knowing how much I depend on them? Their vision of me is the mirror in which I see myself, and their treatment reflects how they see me. Without them affirming my worth, I am only a being in bondage.

Once he feels betrayed by God, Satan encounters his existence as one of sheer servitude. Those same actions which gave his life meaning—serving God, worshipping God, being dependent on God—have been exposed as nothing but service, and he no longer consents to being a servant. Yet there is no way out of this for Satan because he knows that he is entirely dependent on God. The existential situation is crystal-clear for him now that it lacks the adornment of mutual love. And so, as I argued here, he becomes spiteful.

We know how this tragic story will end: he will lead many of us astray and eventually end up in eternal torment. But did it have to end this way?

***

When I was struggling with Islam, my attitude towards God was one of anger. (I came to realise this later.) The anger was borne out of a sense of betrayal: I had entrusted the deepest part of myself to Him—my trust and faith—and He had (I thought) failed to uphold the bargain. Why would He not just guide me as He had promised?? And why did He send a religion that was so fraught with ambiguity and implausibility?? Moreover, why was He forcing me into a situation where I had to rely on Him, otherwise I would burn in Hell? 

This seemed the worst part of all: there was no consent in my being born. It simply happened, and now I was being placed in a situation of threat and terror. He had made me dependent on Him and there was simply nothing I could do about this power dynamic. 

I imagine that a sense of betrayal drives many people's dismay in God. I was often told that God does not "owe" me anything. Fine, I thought, but then neither do I! So why does He force me into this one-sided covenant? Or even if I did owe Him things, didn't He promise in His book that He would meet me on a fair playing field: I should be sincere and try my best, and He would guide me. That, I thought, was a pretty fair bargain, but it was not being met. 

I think back to this psychological screw-up and think: is there anything I could have done to eliminate my sense of betrayal? Is there anything Satan could have done? How do you come back from feeling betrayed? (Whether or not the sense of betrayal is actually justified is, I think, irrelevant once you are in the throes of anger. Obviously, a Muslim would say that God never betrays us.) 

It seems to me that there are different ways to respond to betrayal:

Option A: The betrayal is found to simply be a misperception. You learn that you are wrong. God has not betrayed you because you were never entitled to anything. You simply made a mistake. 

The issue with this option is that no matter how many times you parrot the phrase, "God does not owe me anything," it simply does not have the ring of truth. In a philosophical sense, certainly an impersonal God does not owe us anything because He is free of obligations. But our senses of dignity protest at the thought that the God-human relationship is not one of mutuality. If God does not owe me anything, then does He not even owe me dignity? 

When we feel entitled to our loved ones' honour and respect, it is not because we think we are "entitled" to it. Rather, we want them to give it to us because otherwise we would be nothing. We would be destroyed. The mutuality between God and humans isn't a question of His non-dependent essence. It is a question of the sorts of ways persons relate to each other: if I thought God did not owe me anything, then I would not love Him or rely on Him. Deists do not feel betrayed by God.

(I am reminded here of the famous hadith [saying of Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace]: 

God Almighty says: "I am as My servant expects of Me and I am with him as he remembers Me. If he remembers Me in himself, I will remember him in Myself. If he mentions Me in a gathering, I will mention him in a greater gathering. When he draws near Me by the span of his hand, I draw near him by the length of a cubit. When he draws near Me by the length of a cubit, I draw near him by the length of a fathom. When he comes to Me walking, I come to him running.”)

In any case, such philosophizing is useful before one feels betrayed, perhaps to prevent her from misunderstanding a test as a betrayal. But once the feeling of betrayal sets in, there is no use in pontificating about God's duties to us.

Option B: The betrayal is again found to be a misperception, but in a different way. God does indeed respond to us the way that we had hoped for. For instance, He destroys Adam (peace be upon him), thus appeasing Satan. Or—less viciously—He does indeed guide us back to Him, or gives meaning to our trauma, or removes whatever suffering we were experiencing. Our sense of betrayal can be pacified at last: we were not abandoned. God was simply taking His time. 

This is what happened to me. But the issue with this option is that usually it is not obvious that you have made a mistake, is it? How long is it before your prayers are answered (if ever)? How patient can you be? And most importantly, until this long-awaited day indeed comes, how can anyone convince you that God has not betrayed you? 

The poet Allama Iqbal says, 

کبھی اے حقیقت منتظر ، نظر آ لباسِ مجاز میں               

کہ ہزاروں سجدے تڑپ رہے ہیں مری جبینِ نیاز میں              

At long last, O long-awaited Reality, reveal Yourself in the garment of materiality
For thousands of prostrations are quivering in my submissive brow

I remember once speaking to an ex-Muslim about why he left Islam. He told me that he had prayed to God every day for ten years to assist him with his religious doubts. "Finally," he said, "I gave up." How patient must a person be before they simply accept the betrayal as a betrayal, or grow indifferent to the relationship? And how can people counsel them in this time with promises of future reconciliation? Every day of God's (perceived) distance makes it seem less and less likely that there will be a reconciliation. 

I think that this option is possible early on, and usually the right way to start off. But the longer your faith is let down, the less likely you are to continue to be able to justify being patient. At that point, the following option often occurs.

Option C: A person wears down and eventually becomes indifferent to the relationship. After Scarlett O'Hara kept running back to her childhood crush despite her husband Rhett Butler's devotion to her, Butler finally disengaged from their relationship (this led to his famous line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" when she finally realised she had made a mistake). 

For obvious reasons, becoming indifferent to God is hardly a better option than feeling betrayed by Him. We only feel betrayed in relationships that we are invested in. Indifference is to stop caring, and that seems much worse than caring in the wrong way. 

Option D: You accept that you have been betrayed and forgive the betrayal. "God has indeed abandoned me," you think, "but I forgive Him." 

How does this occur? Can you forgive someone for a genuine wrong without thinking that it was due to an understandable flaw? For instance, if a father abandons his child, doesn't reconciling oneself to her father at least require the child to see her father as a flawed human being? But how does one forgive someone Who is thought to be perfect? On what basis would this forgiveness operate unless we deny God's infallibility? 

The issue is that one's sense of betrayal by God is more immediate than one's sense of God's infallibility. Indeed, her sense of betrayal stems from thinking that God is infallible. Had she not had a high opinion of God and trusted in His superiority, she would not have felt betrayed. It is harder to shake off the sense of betrayal than it is to think that God is simply impersonal, uncaring, or non-existent. 

Option E: This option may never occur. But perhaps the following happens to many people: you are made aware that your sense of betrayal is wrong and due to your own misunderstanding or even flaw in some way. You are given a brief window of opportunity to correct it. You have to either be vulnerable and re-enter the relationship, or stubbornly remain as you are. 

If one's sense of betrayal is actually due to a flaw, like arrogance in the case of Satan, it seems to me that this can come to light in very particular moments in her life. In Satan's case, God directly questions him and puts him on the spot: Satan has a chance to realise what he has done and correct his arrogance, or to obstinately dig in his heels. He chooses the latter.

(In this way, betrayals are a way of learning about oneself, no less than tests are. Betrayals do not only make us hyper-aware of our dependence on others. They also reveal, like all anger does, what is most important to us. Satan is exposed to his own arrogance. Similarly, betrayals may expose us to what we value most deeply.)

But it need not be the case that everybody behaves as Satan did. Let us say that one's sense of betrayal is wrong (a misperception), but that it is due to the flaw of miscommunication that we feel betrayed. Perhaps there comes a brief moment in our lives, even many years later, that the vaguest of opportunities comes upon us, almost as in a dream: ask Me now and I will embrace you. If such a moment indeed comes, it must be seized, even if you eye it warily and fear that it will open old wounds. Although this is not a "miracle" moment—it will not necessarily end the harm in your life or fix all of your trust issues in a few days—it is the beginning of repairing the broken relationship in a way that maintains your sense of dignity and respect.

***

I realise that the above is hardly reassuring. I have said that people often feel betrayed by God and that this can be due to a variety of reasons, and at least sometimes it is not their fault (unlike in Satan's case, where he could be said to be culpable for his arrogance). I have said that counselling them may be useless if the harm they perceive in their lives is not removed and that mending the relationship is not always in their control. And I have said that even if God offers opportunities to regain trust, this may happen years, even decades, later, and even then only for the briefest of moments. Satan may have wasted this opportunity and fallen back into habitual arrogance, but we need all not do so.

But then again, this is life is it not? One of my concerns with Muslim apologetics is how rushed they wish to make religious journeys. While death is an ever-present possibility, it is also the case that most of us are not dying young. Our religious journeys do not end when we feel betrayed by God or angry at God. They do not end even if we cut ourselves off from God in hopes that this will destroy the indignity of being yoked to an indifferent partner. So long as man is alive, there is always the possibility of reconciliation.

I think that if one feels betrayed by God and cannot find a way out of her sense of betrayal, it is better to nurture the anger than it is to fall into indifference. Anger carries an undercurrent of expectation. Betrayals are terrible because you constantly re-live the hope that you had, and constantly find it frustrated. But the hope is still there! It is better to remain fascinated by what the relationship could have been and should have been than to disconnect from it entirely. Only if we remain angry about what could have been will we reach our hands out to God if and when He reaches out to us.

I pray that God makes anger towards Him a means of emotional and intellectual maturity for us. And God knows best.

- MM, February 18th, 2022

[image source: https://paigenh95.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/kintsugi.png]