The literal meaning of Islam is submission, that is, submission to God’s will. Submission, in fact, is the name of that natural response from a person to God, the response that is expressed by human beings after their realization of God. It is with this submission that that life has developed which is called a religious life: a life in which the love of God is abundantly present.
There are certain people who say that loving God means being obedient to God. They explain it by saying that God is an invisible being, and, in the case of an invisible being, an emotional attachment cannot be established. Only obedience to Him is possible. This obedience will be in accordance with commands which we have learnt from the Quran and the Hadith.
This is incorrect. Because what is said about the love of God relates also to faith in God. If faith in God is possible while God is invisible, then the love of God is also quite possible when God is invisible.
The truth is that, whether it is a matter of faith or a matter of love, both are desired in relation to God, rather than in the general sense. Faith means belief (aqida). The word faith or belief is applicable to a visible entity. At that time, belief will be used as defined in the dictionary. But when the word belief is applied to God, because of the change in its relation it will be taken in the sense of elevated belief. In the same way, when the word love is used in relation to God, it will relate to elevated love.
The study of human psychology tells us that emotional attachment to or with any person is not in reality established by seeing but is rather established at a conceptual level, through thinking. Whether it is something seen or unseen, man’s relationship is established with it only at a conceptual level.
In respect to human psychology, belief is conceptual in nature. It is at the conceptual level that the individual attains to the realization of God; it is at the conceptual level rather than at the level of observation that the human being loves God in the real sense.
Source: The Purpose of Creation
