Between Love and Fear

In response to some questions

I think we have on this list tried to define what it means to love God.

As for fear of Shirk as you defined it here:

>>>the Unforgivable Sin of Shirk, or associating partners with Allah (S.W.T.). I assume that associating partners with Allah includes loving them with the same intensity that one should love Allah.<<
And you ask the question:

>>>Where does Love end and Worship begin, and vice versa? And since Allah is the only One worthy of our worship, how do we protect ourselves from "worshipping" something or someone else, thus commiting Shirk, while all along we are assuming that we are merely "loving" or "admiring"?????...snip...Hence my fear that "Hell's gates might open up and suck me in" in relation to "loving" my new car.<<<
There is a lot of fear being expressed so it comes to : Wanting to do what is right by 'God's definition of right ' to avoid Hell.

There is nothing wrong with this: Avoiding hell is instinctive if we equate hell with eternal damnation and destruction misery and pain everlasting.

Going back to your questions , let us try to define some words mentioned;

Worship:On a literal level and in a simplistic way it means the formal acts of worship such as formal praying , bowing to statues ,ceremonies to show allegience and obedience to the object of worship. On a deeper level it means to obey and to love the object of worship to be loyal to. So here we can see love as part of the worship .

Shirk: To take other objects/people other than the REAL to worship which means to pray to , to show allegience to , to love and to obey.

In a simplistic way we point our finger at polytheists those who have many Gods, such as what we understand about Hindu and Greek beliefs . But if we knew it in a deeper way , the ones who really understood knew that these many Gods were attributes of God just as in the 99 names and the qualities of God that we learn in Islam

We learn from our holy books that there are those who take their lusts as their gods and money as their god , sacrifice their convictions for the sake of material gain or the love of a woman .So these are the finer points of shirk that we could become aware of.

How then does one avoid shirk especially the finer points of it, like when we deeply love something so much so it takes us away from our focus of worshipping God, or takes over from our worshipping God?

We hear in Hadith that a sahabah gave away his garden because he enjoyed it too much and was afraid it would distract him from God. I somehow doubt I would give away a beautiful garden because for me , it would make me closer to God for the beauty would be a manifestation of God but that does not mean the sahabah was wrong because he did what was right for him at the stage that he was in.

Many of us were brought up on big helpings of fear and guilt over doing what is 'right' and avoiding what is 'wrong'.Perhaps it was needed to keep us from spoiling the focus of our spiritual journey with the false gods of hedonism and sexual promiscuity and the simple game rules helped us to have some order in our lives so that we had the space to reflect and grow .When the fear and guilt become barriers and obstacles to our spiritual growth is when we have to take a stock of where our convictions and beliefs are taking us , or not taking us .

Can we believe instead in a kind and merciful God who will come running to us when we take our faltering baby steps towards Hu. Who will open to us the secrets of Love and Truth when we stand before Hu with longing and hope and trembling in fear of not getting close to Hu?