The Height of Self-Deception: Taking Sin Lightly

📆 Date: 1403/03/03 – 14 Dhu al-Qaʿdah 1445
📌 Meshkat-e Noor session
👤 Lecture by Master Ali Saei

🗒 Some of the points discussed in the session:
📌 Please note that the hadith cited here are paraphrased. For the full wording, please refer to the lecture.

🌼 Making light of sin is a sign of advanced self-conceit.
🌼 When conceit goes unnoticed, it has reached an advanced stage.
🌼 It makes sin seem so small in a person’s eyes that they fail to see the traps laid for them. People tell themselves the greatest lies; like a spider, they begin to weave a web and then get caught in it themselves.
🌼 Treating sin as permissible is a way of fooling ourselves into plunging to the depths of sin.
🌼 To treat conceit, we should add recommended acts of worship to our devotions, rather than entangling ourselves in disapproved acts in an attempt to escape the humiliation of conceit.
🌼 Never smile at any sin. Our casual smiles will be met with sin’s mocking grin, and bring us to disgrace.
🌼 The greater world within us can be destroyed by sparks of sin. Sins we dismiss as minor can themselves destroy that greater world within us.
🌼 (Hadith) Beware of minor sins, for they are not forgiven. Imam al-Sadiq, peace be upon him, was asked, “What are minor sins?” He replied, “A person commits a sin and then says to himself, ‘How fortunate I am that I have no sin other than this one.’”
🌼 Never say “how nice” about sin.
🌼 A speck of filth can contaminate a whole pot of syrup.
🌼 If even a tiny bit of filth gets into a person’s beehive, it will no longer be a beehive!
🌼 Beware of tiny viruses.
🌼 The false self-confidence that tells a person, “I can repent later,” is foolish self-conceit.
🌼 (Hadith) One day, while in a barren, waterless place, the Prophet asked his companions to gather firewood. They replied that it was difficult to find firewood in such a place.
The companions gathered bits of wood from here and there until they had amassed a pile. The Prophet said, “Sins, too, accumulate in this way.”
🌼 Never trust my own self, or I will be ruined. Put your trust in God and rely on Him.
🌼 Never trust ourselves; self-confidence is one of Satan’s traps. These very traps bring the greater world within us to destruction.
🌼 Do not sin in the hope of repenting later; that is sheer audacity.
🌼 (Hadith) Do not consider insignificant what will benefit you on the Day of Resurrection, nor what will harm you on that Day.
🌼 A straw of sin may one day become a mountain of sin.
🌼 (Hadith) The greatest sin is the one its perpetrator considers insignificant.
🌼 (Hadith) Looking down on a sin makes the sinner themselves contemptible.
🌼 Do not turn a worm of sin into a dragon.
🌼 (Hadith) Never dismiss a good deed as insignificant. If you do that small good deed, one day you will see that it has brought you happiness. And do not commit a wrong and think little of it, for the day will come when that very wrong will grieve you.
🌼 Among the sins that are not forgiven is the sin whose perpetrator says, “I hope I am held accountable for nothing other than this sin.”
🌼 A sin may well be forgiven on its own, but making light of it can prevent its forgiveness.
🌼 (Hadith) The Lord has concealed three things within three others: His pleasure among acts of obedience; His wrath among acts of disobedience; and His chosen servant—His beloved—among people. So do not consider any act of obedience to God insignificant, for you do not know which act contains His pleasure. And do not consider any sin insignificant, for you do not know which act of disobedience contains God’s wrath. Nor should any of you despise or demean anyone among God’s creation, for that person may be one of God’s chosen servants.
🌼 Do not focus on how small the sin is; focus on whose command you have disobeyed.
🌼 Do not let the hope of our intercession embolden you to sin. God has appointed these noble ones as intercessors so that we may be granted honour—not permission to sin!
🌼 A lover of the Ahl al-Bayt is pure like them and does not defile themselves.
🌼 (Hadith) If a sin crosses your mind, do not commit it. Minor transgressions are among Iblis’s snares: Satan makes them seem insignificant to you, then they pile up until they overwhelm you.