WORSHIPPING ONE’S CHILDREN
Losing Your Hereafter
The person who loses the most is one who loses the Hereafter
for the sake of acquiring for others’ a share of the present world.
—Prophet of Islam, Hadith recorded by ibn Majah
IN today’s age, this Hadith applies most particularly to those people who have children. Today, their children have become the supreme concern for them. Each and every person is busy trying to earn as much worldly wealth as possible for their children and thus have no time at all for doing any real work for their own future in the Hereafter.
Today, people have forgotten the fact that children are simply a test for them. As the Quran (8: 28) says: “Know that your wealth and children are a trial and that there is an immense reward with God.” God has not bestowed children to people to keep them constantly busy with them and to spend all their energies for their worldly success.
Each and every person is busy in trying to earn as much worldly wealth as possible for their children and have no time at all for doing any real work for their own future in the Hereafter.
In this age of ours, there are many people who appear religious. They look very pious and are also very particular about performing various ritual obligations. But in practice, they spend all their time and abilities in earning worldly wealth—only so that when they die, they can leave behind the maximum possible worldly wealth for their children. But such people are only deceiving themselves. All they will have to offer God are some external rituals that they had performed while in this world. And as far as their real life is concerned, they had devoted it entirely to their children.
This is not worship of God. Rather, it is akin to worshipping one’s children. And it is a fact that worship of children cannot earn one the credit of worshipping God.
Worship of God is no mere appendix of life. True worship of God encompasses the entire life of a person.