Who Is the Perfect Human Being, and What Specific Need Highlights the Necessity of Knowing Him in Our Lives?
In the previous articles, we discussed the necessity of having an infallible expert to achieve personal happiness. We stated that in addition to a detailed and complete plan to go through the path of spirituality, we need a roadmap to know the problems along the path and the available shortcuts, and we also need a guide to go on the journey. We introduced the infallible and expert role model and emphasized the necessity of his expertise and infallibility in light of the purpose of human creation. We stated that our spiritual role model, in addition to being infallible and expert, should be a perfect manifestation of God’s attributes. In fact, the purpose of our creation is to gain these attributes, or in other words, to actualize them in ourselves. This expert and infallible role model is the perfect human being, a human being who has reached the highest levels of spiritual growth and has been able to actualize all the attributes of his Creator.
The perfect human being is our role model in life, so we all can reach the rank of the perfect human being and become perfect on the path of being human. Because the perfect human is the only perfect example of being human, becoming like him can also be considered our ultimate goal. That is because becoming like him is the same as becoming similar to God. By knowing him and living in his peaceful presence, we will come to realize that our true value is to enjoy the blissful, peaceful, and elevated status that our Creator has intended for us.
If we do not know the perfect human being, we have no choice but to spend our precious life, which we only get once, on the theories derived from some schools of thought that do not recognize anything beyond this earthly world and its pleasures! Without the perfect human being, we are like a diamond mountain that is used to build bricks and cement! Only the perfect human being can extract our human truth from within us and make it known to us.
Therefore, each of us needs a complete and perfect role model for being human to find our true self from among the maze of false and destructive definitions that different isms have offered about the human being. We need to understand and define ourselves correctly and become more like God. We need guidance from someone who knows all aspects of our personality and has successfully undergone the test of achieving spiritual balance and acquiring divine attributes. This way, we can gain knowledge for a transcendent life, how to implement that knowledge, and acquire the skill of being a true human.
An infallible expert or a perfect human being who has divine knowledge is aware of all the worldly and spiritual dimensions of our existence. He can meet our needs in every aspect without any mistakes, guide us to our true beloved, and bring us lasting peace, happiness, and love.
But does the presence of the perfect human being only affects our individual lives? Is personal happiness possible without the elevation and bliss of the society?
A World Without the Perfect Human Being
We are social beings who have formed different societies and civilizations for our lives throughout history. Unfortunately, the role of divine leaders in managing these societies and implementing divine laws and methods in planning these affairs has been very small. A clear example of this can be seen in the fourteen centuries since the advent of Islam. In the past 1400 years, the total time that a perfect human being has managed the society is less than twenty years![1] The situation has not been better in pre-Islamic religions. Every society rejected its divine leaders or disobeyed them, and in many cases, killed them.[2] Despite accepting a divine leader, after his death, many societies would return to their ignorance, go astray, and forget the essence of divine teachings, accidentally or intentionally.[3]
It is evident that when a society is managed by fallible individuals, certain outcomes are inevitable. Some of these outcomes include the interpretation of religion based on personal views, distortion of religion, creation of religious phobia, ignorant and wrong fear of God, driving away the general public from religion, superficial views about human life, presenting worthless material, sexual, and racial definitions of the human being. The human is lowered to the level of a being that has no connection with the spiritual world and his feelings and emotions are entirely controlled by the release of chemical hormones. Additionally, many schools of thought emerged and defined the happiness of the human being and society in the period from birth to death. A human being who can contemplate the heaven, its inhabitants, and eternal life, is turned by these schools into a being that only thinks about sex, economic activities, eating, and sleeping.[4]
The Perfect Human Being Ends the Darkness
When human societies are not guided by the divinely-chosen perfect human being, oppressive countries exploit the wealth and God-given resources of defenseless people, and the world is divide into developed and underdeveloped, rich and poor, oppressing and oppressed, master and slave, arrogant and downtrodden. All divine and even non-divine religions have promised that this perfect human being will come. They have mentioned common characteristics such as the establishment of justice, brotherhood, peace, friendship, kindness, and love throughout the world. The global community under the leadership of the perfect human being will never witness racial, gender, ethnic, national, or religious prejudices and discrimination, poverty, hunger, drought, famine, war, and bloodshed. The perfect human being, by virtue of his divine knowledge, will bring about the growth, progress, and development of the whole world in all aspects of economics, science, health, welfare, and security; most importantly, he will acquaint and reconcile all human beings with their truth, which is God.
The Perfect Human Being, the Desired Guide for All
According to what has been mentioned so far, do we not feel the necessity for the presence of the perfect human being to reform and guide the global society? The answer is yes. This sense of need has gradually spread throughout the world, resulting in cries for a savior everywhere. All religions have promised the coming of the perfect human being because, as we stated, we all share an unlimited, perfectionist, and infinity-seeking fitrah. For this reason, we feel the need for the presence of the perfect human being and savior, even though we have never heard his name. A perfect human being is one who creates unity and solidarity among all humans.
On the other hand, divine guidance is not possible by force, but it must be truly desired by the general public in the world. In principle, a society that is established by coercion will be devoid of divine spiritual values; it will not last very long and will ultimately collapse when the oppressive government is overthrown. Maybe for this reason, in the Holy Quran, God repeatedly tells the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that his job is only to convey the message and that he has no obligation to make people accept his guidance.[5]
The human society in which all the divine laws, including empathy, love, loyalty, respect for human rights, truthfulness, justice, freedom, and other spiritual qualities are implemented, can only be established when the vast majority of people know these values and then seek them whole-heartedly. This is the secret to fulfilling the promise of all religions, which involves the arrival of a Savior at the end times and the establishment of a peaceful world government.
In this article, we examined the necessity of an infallible expert or a perfect human being who is completely similar to God and has achieved perfection in this similarity. We stated that in order to become like God, we must have an existential relationship with a human being who manifests God’s attributes, so that we can get help from him as a role model to step on the path of being human. We also examined that our individual growth on the path of being human is not enough on its own, and we need to live in a society that is governed by an Imam or infallible expert to achieve our perfection. We also talked a little bit about the necessity of the rule of the perfect human being over the human society. In the future, we will examine this issue in more detail in the articles on the formation of civilization.
[1]. After migrating from Mecca and settling in Medina and establishing the Islamic government, the Prophet of Islam led the society for ten years. Imam Ali was the leader of the society for about five years, and Imam Hassan Mojtaba for about seven months.
[2]. Quran, 2:61. (أَنَّهُمْ كَانُوا يَكْفُرُونَ بآيَات اللَّه وَ يَقْتُلُونَ النَّبيينَ بغَيْر الْحَق). “They [repeatedly] disbelieved in the signs of Allah and killed the prophets without right.”
[3]. A famous example of this is the idolatry of the people of Moses, which happened while he was still alive and had only left to fulfill the term of forty nights set by his Lord.
[4]. Some of the definitions provided in the opening parts of this article are examples of this wrong knowledge about the human being.
[5]. Holy Quran, 88:22, 42:48