On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said that the Prophet (ﷺ) said:

Allah the Almighty said: I am as My servant thinks I am (1). I am with him when he makes mention of Me. If he makes mention of Me to himself, I make mention of him to Myself; and if he makes mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of him in an assembly better than it. And if he draws near to Me an arm’s length, I draw near to him a cubit, and if he draws near to Me a cubit, I draw near to him a fathom. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed. (1) Another possible rendering of the Arabic is: “I am as My servant expects Me to be”. The meaning is that forgiveness and acceptance of repentance by the Almighty is subject to His servant truly believing that He is forgiving and merciful. However, not to accompany such belief with right action would be to mock the Almighty.

In todays society we are so busy correcting each other on the things we do wrong and how “haraam” they can be. We meet people everyday who tell us that if u don’t wear certain clothes, don’t act in a certain way, Allah will be angry with you and you are definitely going to end up in hell. But who are those people , special messengers sent by Allah to deliver his judgement? And who are we? Chosen angels to deliver Allah’s judgement to people? Sometimes we end up correcting people and blaming them and scaring them about the punishments of religion so much that they eventually drift away from it. 

We have forgotten that we are not allowed to judge people and only Allah alone can do it, because only he alone understands the entire situation and the secrets of the hearts. I believe in our society instead of correcting people and telling people the rules of religion we should introduce people to Allah, because the truth is we don’t know him yet. For us Allah is someone we should be scared of, someone who will punish us for the slightest mistakes.  But we never take him as a friend, a protector, a guardian, a kind lord. We are so busy talking about all the punishments that we forget that he is the one who forgives, guides and protects.

The Hadith above tells us that Allah is the way you think he is, If you believe that he is forgiving, you friend, protector, helper, then he will be it. Allah isn’t someone to be scared of, he loves you and will be there for you when no one else is there, when you call him once he will reply back 70 times. And what better friend could you have than the one who controls the whole universe , what better protector would there be than the one who controls your enemies and what better love would there be than the one between a creation and the one who created love.