An atom's weight of pride
One day the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) said to his companions: “No one will enter Paradise who has an atom's weight of pride in his heart.”
A man was worried. He liked to look good. “Messenger of God, a man loves his clothes to be fine and his sandals to be fine.” Was that pride?
The Prophet answered: “God is beautiful and loves beauty. Pride is rejecting the truth and looking down on people” (Muslim 91).
The answer reassured the man, and it drew a clear line. Liking good things is not arrogance. Arrogance is two things: refusing to accept what is true because it comes from someone you think is beneath you, and treating other people as smaller than yourself.
In another saying, God says that grandeur and greatness belong to Him alone, like garments that no one else may wear (Muslim 2620). Muslim teachers put the two sayings side by side. Greatness belongs to God. So when a human being puts it on, it does not fit. The cure, they taught, is to remember the size of the pale blue dot, and the One who is greater than all of it.
What each faith says
Judaism
“For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.”
Isaiah 57:15 · JPS 1917
Judaism holds two truths together: God's greatness is beyond comparison, and human arrogance pushes God away. Isaiah asks, “To whom then will ye liken God?” (40:18).
The Talmud says that of an arrogant person, God says: “He and I cannot live together in the world” (Sotah 5a). Moses, the greatest of the prophets, is praised in the Torah as the humblest of men (Numbers 12:3). And the God who is high and lofty chooses to dwell with the humble.
The Talmud puts the two side by side. Rabbi Yoḥanan taught that wherever scripture speaks of God's greatness, it speaks of His humility right beside it (Megillah 31a). And the mourner's Kaddish is said in synagogues from Orthodox to Liberal. It opens with Yitgadal ve-yitkadash shmeh rabba, ‘Magnified and sanctified be His great Name’: in grief, the first words are about God's greatness.
Christianity
“who, existing in the form of God, didn't consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”
Philippians 2:6-7 · WEB
Christians praise God's majesty, and also believe that in Christ God showed greatness by humbling Himself. Paul's letter to the Philippians contains an early hymn about Christ who “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”.
Mary, in the song Christians call the Magnificat, praises God who “has put down princes from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly” (Luke 1:52). Here human pride is the thing that cannot stand before God.
The Magnificat is sung or said every evening at Anglican Evensong and Catholic Vespers. And C. S. Lewis, an Anglican, gave pride a chapter of its own in Mere Christianity, calling it ‘the great sin’.
Islam
“And unto Him (alone) belongeth Majesty in the heavens and the earth, and He is the Mighty, the Wise.”
Qur'an 45:37 · Pickthall (1930)
Al-Mutakabbir appears once as a Name, in Qur'an 59:23, at the end of a run of Names of majesty. Classical scholars explained it carefully. In creatures, takabbur, pride, is a vice: the claim to a greatness one does not possess. In God it is simply the truth, because greatness is really His.
Muslims say Allāhu akbar, “God is greater”, many times a day: at the start of every prayer and at each change of posture. The phrase does not say God is great in the way a whale or a tower is; it says He is greater than anything we could compare Him with. The Qur'an warns that the arrogant “who behave proudly on earth without right” turn away from God's signs (7:146).
Same and different
All three faiths say God's greatness is beyond comparison, and all three treat human arrogance as one of the most dangerous faults. Judaism pictures the High and Lofty One dwelling with the humble. Christianity believes God showed greatness through humility in Christ. Islam calls God al-Mutakabbir and says greatness is His garment alone, so pride in people is a theft. There is no exact Jewish or Christian parallel to this Name; the nearest is the shared teaching that majesty belongs to God and humility to us.
A moment to reflect
- When you look at the pale blue dot, what do you feel: small, safe, or something else?
- What is the difference between being confident and being proud?
- Is there a truth you have resisted because of who said it?
Watch
Carl Sagan presents the Pale Blue Dot image: the story this page opens with.
Sagan's own reflection on the pale blue dot.
A calm size comparison from planets to the largest stars: every ‘great’ is great only next to something.
Do it together
Print a photo of the tallest building in your town, then of the Burj Khalifa, then of Earth from the Moon, then the pale blue dot. Line them up and talk about how greatness changes depending on how far back you stand.
Invite a local mosque volunteer to explain what Muslims mean by Allāhu akbar and why it is said in prayer, with time for questions. Pair it with Isaiah 40:18 and Philippians 2.
Read Rabbi Yoḥanan's saying from the Talmud: wherever you find God's greatness, you find His humility (Megillah 31a). Then each name someone you know who is both great at something and humble about it. What do they do that shows it?
Go to Evensong at a cathedral, or Vespers at a Catholic church, and listen for the Magnificat, Mary's song about the proud scattered and the lowly lifted up (Luke 1:46-55). Talk afterwards about who the ‘lowly’ might be in your town.
Go deeper
- NASA: Voyager 1's Pale Blue Dot · article
- NOAA Fisheries: blue whale · article
- Isaiah 40 on Sefaria · scripture
- Qur'an 59:23 on Quran.com · scripture
- Talmud, Megillah 31a on Sefaria: greatness and humility · text
- Philippians 2 (WEB): ‘he emptied himself’ · scripture
- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), chapter ‘The Great Sin’ · book
Sources (7)
- Pale Blue Dot taken 14 February 1990 from about 6 billion km; Earth 0.12 pixel: NASA Science
- Burj Khalifa is 828 m, tallest building: Burj Khalifa official site
- Blue whale up to about 30 m; largest animal known: NOAA Fisheries
- Observable universe about 93 billion light-years across: NASA WMAP, Universe 101
- About two trillion galaxies in the observable universe: Conselice and others, Astrophysical Journal 830:83, 2016
- Pride is rejecting the truth and looking down on people: Sahih Muslim 91
- Talmud: God and the arrogant cannot dwell together: Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 5a