When You Make a Mistake The Sunday Guardian | March 20, 2011 | Page 15
One of the Quranic teachings is tauba, which means repentance. When you make a mistake and do tauba, the blessing of God will return to you. In the chapter entitled Al-Tahrim (Prohibition), the Quran says: "O believers turn to God in sincere repentance, in the hope that your Lord will forgive you your bad deeds and admit you into gardens watered by running streams." (66:8)
In this verse the Quran declares that after engaging in genuine tauba, one who has erred will be unburdened of the effect of his bad deeds. What is most important about this is that the wrong-doer will be granted forgiveness by God and will consequently be rewarded with paradise in the hereafter. This divine blessing is not confined to the next world; in the extended sense, it also includes the present world. Family life and social life will also be blessed with the fruits of tauba. If you make a mistake that arouses anger in another, but then you repent and say, "Please forgive me, I was wrong," this will certainly cause the aggrieved person to have a change of heart. Such an apology will, on the one hand, inculcate positivity in your soul and, on the other it will promote the culture of love among the people you are living with. In family life as well as social life, untoward events are unavoidable. Such happenings sour relations and create a distance between people. The best solution is tauba. Don't wait for others to take the lead. It is for you to come forward and say without hesitation, "I am sorry, I was wrong."
This is the only way of maintaining normalcy among relatives, friends, acquaintances and even strangers. Problems in social life invariably arise from some kind of wrong behaviour. And there is no social ill that cannot be set right by this formula.