The Small Stuff

My brothers and sisters, there's a common expression that we hear, when people tell us, 'Don't sweat the small stuff.' Meaning, don't worry about the little things in life. And even though this expression may run true when it comes to certain portions or certain parts of our life, when it comes to our 'Taqwa' - when it comes to our consciousness of Allah Azzawajal, then we as Muslims, we pay attention to the details. We pay attention to the small things. When it comes to being aware of our sins and our good deeds, we are very careful and we pay attention to the small things. This is why, like Abu Bakr (radiAllahu Ta'ala anhu) he said, 'It is one of the most dangerous things, or one of the worst sins we can commit is to take our sins and to belittle it.'

And if you look at the sin itself, lot of times, it's not just the sin, but the effects that sin has upon us, when we begin to belittle that sin. Firstly, when we begin to belittle a sin of ours, what we will see happen is that, it will become easier and easier for us to commit that sin. So if every time we commit a sin, we say, 'You know what? It's not a big deal! Why worry about it?' And if we keep doing this, we will see that, firstly, it'll become easier and easier for us to indulge or be involved in this sin. 

Secondly, the other problem of belittling our sins is that eventually, belittling our sins leads to a heart that becomes sealed, a heart that becomes hard. As Allah Azzawajal told us:- that 'the stain has sealed their heart by that which they used to do.' Meaning if we keep belittling our sins, and we never make Tawbah (repent) from our sins, we never seek repentance, that eventually a time will come when our heart will become sealed. As the Prophet [ﷺ] told us that, 'When a person commits a sin, a dot is placed upon their heart and if they don't repent to Allah, then this dot remains. And if they commit another sin, another dot is placed upon their heart, until a time comes where their whole heart becomes covered and their heart becomes sealed.' And the danger of a sealed heart...is that a person with a sealed heart will not be effected by reminders. So a person may come, listen to the Jumu'ah Khutba, they may listen to a lecture, they may listen to their friends or their family or someone, remind them of Allah, remind them that these sins that they are doing are dangerous, but they'll say, 'You know what? It's not a big deal.' Or they'll sit and listen to reminder after reminder after reminder, and it will make no difference to them. May Allah Azzawajal protect us from having a sealed heart.

The other effects of belittling our sins is the disappearance of modesty. So the more we indulge in sins and the more we belittle these sins, without making Tawbah (repentance), the less modest, the less shy we are going to become about committing these sins. And as the prophet (peace be upon him) told us: ‘if you don’t have modesty, or if you don’t feel shy, then do as you like.’ Meaning if you are not ashamed to commit a sin, then what is going to stop you. Meaning you are going to keep indulging in this sin. And this is why this is a very very dangerous position to be in.  when we are committing sins and we don’t care, and we begin to commit sins openly, and we commit sin after sin after sin and we don’t care what happens. And this is the disappearance of modesty, when we stop  feeling shy or we stop feeling bad  about our sins. 

Lastly the effect of belittling  our sins is that, the more we belittle our sins, the more we forget the greatness of Allah (Azza wa a’jal) and this is why the scholars of the past they would say, don’t look how small your sin is, rather look at how big or how great the one is, who you are disobeying. Meaning Allah (Azza wa a’jal) alright? If Allah is important to us, right, if Allah is important in our eyes, we will feel bad about sinning. And this is why if you look at the example of a child, somebody who is maybe three or four years old, and their parents tells them not to do something, so let us say a father tells a young child, that, Don’t write on the wall with your crayons or your markers or whatever. This child, may not understand why that is such a bad thing. To the child it is very nice thing to do, right? Creating nice pictures on the wall, that sounds like a very fun thing to do. What is wrong with that? But their father tells them not to do this. And this child will refrain from doing that not because they understand what is wrong about this, but because, in their, in child’s eyes, their father is very important. And they know that, if they were to write on the wall, that they would be disobeying their parents. That they would let their parent down, right? That they would disappoint their parent and this is why that child will refrain from doing that action. Likewise, that Allah has the highest example, if for us, we really care about Allah (Azza wa a’jal). We are not gonna look at the sin itself and say, ‘you know what? It’s a small sin, who cares?’ we are gonna think about the fact that it is Allah (azza wa a’jal) our creator, our Lord and our sustainer, the one who has given us every single blessing we have in this life. It is that creator of ours who has told us to refrain from this, from such and such matter. And so for us, at this time, now this sin becomes very great and this is why we as Muslims, we pay attention to the small matters when it comes to our Imaan and our Taqwa. 

Youtube Video Link : The Small Stuff