Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | | The Sunday Guardian | 21 Mar 2021
“God is great and none other is great”. This is an acknowledgement of an external reality. The words, “I am small,” show one’s preparedness to mould oneself to it. Satan knew that God was great, but he did not accept that he himself was small, and thus became a mine of evil and corruption for all time. Hitler too was aware of God’s greatness, but of his own smallness he had no inkling. It was thus that he finally ranked among the most contumacious and wicked human beings of all times.
There are many people who make the same mistake and imagine that by simply taking the name of God, they themselves turn into gods. Not appreciating that there is nothing lowlier than themselves, they mindlessly enter into conflict with others, whereas their acknowledgement of God’s greatness should have taken away the urge in them to fight. They hurl invective at others, whereas consciousness of the divinity of God should so fill their hearts that they should find it impossible to indulge in such abuse.
Every truth is but a shadow of itself until man discovers his own position in relation to it. To say that God is great is only half of the truth. The other half is man’s acceptance in all humility, of his own lowliness.