Love the Created for the Creator's Sake

Sufism holds a whole way of living in a single line. Yunus Emre, the great poet of Anatolia, said it seven hundred years ago:

We love the created for the sake of the Creator.

The words are remembered everywhere in the Turkish-speaking world and are attributed to Yunus Emre. They sound simple. They are one of the deepest things the tradition says about how to treat other people, and every living thing.

Love That Begins in God

Notice the order. We do not love the creation first and reach God later. We love God, and then we love everything because it is His.

A letter is dear to you because of the one who wrote it. A child’s drawing is precious because of the child. In the same way, every creature is worth loving because it comes from God and carries a trace of Him. The love does not stop at the creature. It passes through the creature to its Maker.

This is why the love is wide. It does not ask first whether a person is useful to you, or agrees with you, or belongs to your group. It begins from a different place: this one too is God’s. See Ishq, the love at the center of the path.

Not Worship of the Creation

This must be said plainly, because it is easy to misread. To love the creation for God’s sake is not to worship the creation. The creature is not God. The trace is not the One who left it. See Tawhid.

Sufism keeps the line firm. God is the Creator. Everything else is created. We love what He made the way you love a gift because of the giver, never mistaking the gift for the giver. The love of creatures is real, but it leans on the love of God. Take God out of it, and it loses its root.

Mercy, Not Approval

“We love the created” does not mean we call everything good. Mercy is not the same as agreement.

You can love a person and still be pained by what they do. The Prophet, peace be upon him, was sent as a mercy to all the worlds (Quran 21:107). His mercy did not erase the truth. It carried the truth gently. To love for God’s sake is to wish others well, to be slow to harm, and to forgive easily. It is not to pretend that every road is the same. Yunus also warned how grave it is to wound a single human heart; see If You Have Broken a Heart.

The Door Is Wide

This is the embracing heart of Anatolian Sufism, from Yunus Emre to Hacı Bektaş Velî. Carry no hatred. Wound no one, even when you are wounded. See in every face a creature of God.

The Prophet said, “The merciful are shown mercy by the Most Merciful. Be merciful to those on the earth, and the One above the heavens will be merciful to you” (Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud). And, “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself” (Bukhari, Muslim).

This is not weakness, and it is not a blurring of right and wrong. It is strength turned toward mercy. Only a strong heart can afford to be gentle.

Why It Reaches Everyone

A teaching like this belongs to no single century and no single people. Every human being knows the difference between a hard heart and a soft one. Everyone has been shown some mercy they did not earn. That memory is the door.

Sufism only adds the root. The mercy you feel is a small echo of a greater Mercy. When you love a creature for the sake of its Creator, you are not inventing love. You are returning it to its source.

Yunus said it once, and the words never grew old. We love the created, for the sake of the One who made it.

Sources

• The Quran, 21:107.
• al-Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud (the merciful are shown mercy by the Most Merciful).
• al-Bukhari and Muslim (none truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself).
• The line is attributed to Yunus Emre (d. c. 1320), the foundational poet of Anatolian Sufism.