وَاللَّهُ يَرْزُقُ مَنْ يَشَاءُ بِغَيْرِ حِسَابٍ (البقرة: ٢١٢)

Translation: [And God provides for whomever He wills without measure.] (Al-Baqarah: 212)

With the virus continuing to take over our outdoor life, I’m getting the chance to catch up on some Netflix shows, after long weeks of not having the time or energy to even ‘think’ about wanting to watch any of them. And so today, I got to an episode on “The Good Place” series, which has stayed with me for the day, and made me want to further reflect.

(I’m not sure if this would be considered a spoiler, but if you plan to watch it later and don’t want any details beforehand, please stop reading. 😅)

The Good Place is basically very close to the idea of ‘heaven.’ On one of the episodes, we get to see some sort of a behind-the-scenes accounting department that’s responsible for allocating points. Every deed has a predetermined weight that adds points to, or deducts them from, the life of the doer. Every action that enters the system gets evaluated and saved for future reference, and every evaluator is responsible for certain types. The total points then decide whether a person makes it to the good or the bad place, in the event of their death.

This all first got me thinking about how subjective it sounds, and how a system like this totally deals with humans as isolated beings; not taking into consideration other factors about their lives, their relationships, their biological natures, and their daily interactions that all largely impact their actions. And how a person doing good their entire life, could possibly still end up in the bad place because of one major ‘bad’ deed they’ve done that disqualifies them for eternity.

It sounded crazy, up until the department head was asked about the number of people who made it to the good place in the last year. It sounded a hundred times crazier then. Because ‘zero’ people actually turned out to have made it there. In fact, the last time a human made it in was around 521 years earlier. Which only makes sense with a system like that in place.

It really got me thinking about God’s grace when it comes to deciding who makes it to heaven and who doesn’t. And how comforting it is to know we’re dealing with God, Himself, on judgment day, and not some random ‘system’ that sets unrealistic expectations and has so many blind spots. Our life is never really meant to be ‘graded.’ We‘re never sure where we stand with God, because it’s not an addition/subtraction equation.

Because He knows when we’re grieving. He knows when we’re anxious or stressed. He knows every feeling inside that might push us to do things we normally wouldn’t think of. He doesn’t carry a calculator around to make similar decisions. He gives to whomever He wishes, without any measure at all.

Because even if heaven is meant to be our ‘reward’, we don’t really get there based on what we do or what we don’t. We only get there if and when He wants us there. Because He’s forgiving. He’s merciful. He’s loving. He’s all-knowing. And He’s extremely fair. Alhamdulillah.