Matthew 23:6 Meaning And Love the Place of Honor

Ḥubb al-jāh: love of standing in people's eyes al-Ghazali counts this as a hunger in its own right, as strong as the hunger for money. Someone can give up comfort and still need to be thought highly of, and that need quietly decides how they spend a day. A person in its grip keeps a running tally of who noticed them and who did not.

Riyāʾ: doing good so that people will see it The Prophet called showing off the smaller idol worship, since a watching crowd takes the place God should have. An act done for an audience keeps working as a display and stops working as worship, and the person feels the difference afterward as a faint emptiness. From outside nothing looks wrong; inside, the reward has already been collected in impressed looks.

Ikhlāṣ: sincerity, doing it for God alone al-Ghazali describes sincerity as having one reason for an act rather than several mixed together. Sorting them out goes slowly, because the wish to be admired hides under good deeds and gives your own inspection all the right answers. The plain test is whether you would still do the thing if nobody ever heard about it.

Bury yourself in the ground of being unknown: what grows unburied bears nothing Ibn Ata Allah's line uses a farmer's picture, since seed left on top of the soil comes to nothing. A person who insists on being seen keeps checking whether the seed has sprouted, and pulls it up in the checking. Stretches of being unnoticed are when someone quietly becomes what they have been claiming to be.

Tawāḍuʿ: humility, taking the lower place A saying of the Prophet promises that whoever lowers themselves for God is raised by God. Humility here means not needing the higher place, which is different from putting on a show of refusing it. Someone who stops competing for regard finds the scoreboard switched off, and being around other people turns restful again.