Deuteronomy 4:15 Meaning Be Very Careful

Tanzīh: Holding God clear of every likeness Tanzīh keeps God free of shape, size, and comparison. A person who finds nothing to picture feels that blank as a loss and reaches for some image that would make God easier to hold. Anything they come up with gets assembled from things already familiar, so it turns out smaller than the God it was meant to stand for.

You will never see Me: seeing is not what is given In the Quran, Moses asks to see God, and the answer is no. The wanting is treated as honest and still turned down, because a person cannot take in that much at once. Anyone left standing where the seeing did not happen learns that the missing sight is ordinary, and not a sign of being passed over.

God's veil is light: the covering is brightness itself A saying of the Prophet holds that God's veil is light, and al-Ghazali built much of the Niche of Lights on it. God stays hidden by being too much to take in, the way nobody can look straight at the sun. Someone who saw nothing can stop reading that blank as absence or as being held at a distance.

Al-ilāh al-makhlūq fī al-iʿtiqād: the God made inside your own belief Ibn Arabi's name for the picture of God a person carries around in their own head. Everyone has one, put together from what they were taught and what they hope for, and it passes easily for God. Trouble starts when someone defends that picture, because then they are guarding their own handiwork and calling it loyalty.

Iḥsān: worshiping as though you could see Him The Prophet described iḥsān as serving God as though you see Him, and knowing He sees you when you cannot. Attention moves off the search for something to look at and onto being looked at, which changes how a person acts when nobody else is around. Having nothing to see stops being the problem once someone feels watched over with care.