“We grant Home in the Hereafter to those who do not seek superiority on earth or spread corruption: the happy ending is awarded to those who are mindful of God.” (Quran, 28:83)
You don’t need to be Vladimir Putin–level conceited to “seek superiority on earth or spread corruption.” It could be something as small as being bossy to your little sibling, or cutting a line at Disneyland, or spreading gossip about your least favorite celebrity by sharing dubious news articles.
Why are we tempted to place ourselves above others? I think most of it comes down to pride—conceit and self-centeredness, to be sure, but it’s more than that. President Ezra Taft Benson’s masterpiece talk “Beware of Pride” gives an excellent summation:
“The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. …
“Pride is essentially competitive in nature. … In the words of C. S. Lewis: ‘Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.’”
The temptation to spread corruption goes hand in hand with this idea of pride as “competition”—the false idea that our success and happiness must come at the expense of someone else’s. Thus, our tendency to find pleasure in others’ shortcomings replaces the lasting satisfaction of “Look how far I’ve come!” with the fleeting amusement of “Look how low that person is!”
Obviously these are bad traits to nurture, traits I believe all of us have in one form or another. What is the cure? The Quran spells it out for us: Be “mindful of God.” God doesn’t view us as a bunch of data points on a bell curve. He doesn’t pat us on the back for being further along the path to perfection than Hitler, just as he doesn’t dismiss us for being far behind Jesus along that same course.
He sees us as individuals whose success is completely independent from the actions of others. And so should we.
The Commonplace Notebook 