8. Al-Aziz, The All-Mighty

Perhaps not the ideal metaphor, but I intended the grey text here be reminiscent of steel. 

When skeptics and atheists talk to people who believe in a God who is active in the universe, one of the questions that comes up a great deal of the time is, "Do you believe that God is all-powerful? If you do, do you believe he can make a stone so strong that he can't move it?" The more sophisticated version of this question is, "If God is all-powerful and all-loving, then why does he let bad things happen?"

Without any attempt to give a sophisticated answer to this question (there is a whole branch of theology called theodicy which does nothing but study aspects of this), I was delighted to learn that in the Qur'an many of the references to God as Al-Aziz are coupled with the idea that God is all-wise and all-knowing. He has the ability to do all things (except logical impossibilities), but he does not choose to do foolish things, and we in our limitations, frequently don't have a full understanding of what that entails.

I am reminded of a snatch of a song a friend of mine, Joel Davis, once sang, giving words speaking as if from God, to a young woman who was going through the normal difficulties of adolescence. This is the half remembered form of the song that has stuck with me through the years:

I could make you all big and grown-up
With all the wisdom that a grown-up ought to have
And I could make you never feel any pain--
I could make the rivers turn to sand
And I could make the flowers never bloom again.
I could easily do all these things,
But I would not deprive you.

Listen to this fragment of a song.

Other aspects of this name of God include the idea that God cannot be conquered; God is the one who conquers all, and God is also the one who is the most worthy of honor.

As I pondered this name, this is the song that came:

Al-Aziz

Al-Aziz, Al-Aziz

All Mighty, All Powerful

All Mighty All Powerful

There is nothing You can't do

No one wins when they fight against you

All Mighty, All Powerful

All Mighty, All Powerful

I bow before You,

Al-Aziz

Listen to the Song