Segment of the lecture by The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan titled "The Making of Devil," delivered in Harlem, New York on August 1, 1982.
Lost•Found Films -- Rebuilding the Nation of Islam Film Series 003
© Copyright 2020 Jehron Muhammad
Transcript:
Most of us (as I’m talking check out your mind), when we think we know something, someone comes along and shows they have greater knowledge, what feeling do you have on the inside? You try to mask it sometimes with a smile. Sometimes you try to mask it with kind words about the individual, but deep down inside you feel some pain. What is that? What is that?
Somebody told you were beautiful, and you're strutting. Somebody said you had a fine body, and you said, "I know." So, you put on everything to accentuate what you got. And then when you go to this place where you think you’re going to knock the eyes off of somebody, [and] here come another women in the same place, a little better off than you in that department.
What do you feel? What feelings do you feel, if everybody in there started turning their attention to that women, and you start losing the attention, what feelings come up in your breast that are secret to only God and yourself? What do you feel inside?
You say, "Oh, she does look nice, but look at those big feet that she has."
Wait a minute, I’m not talking about nobody's big feet. I’m talking about a devil growing inside of you. That when somebody is looked at as having something more than what you thought you had, instead of your recognizing that ALL gifts are from God. And if my Brother got more than me, he got more of God. And when I see more than what’s in myself I honor it, I praise it, I glorify it, because it is God in that Brother, God in that Sister.
Because you don’t see God, you see [the] individuals. Then you give the individual the credit for the gift the individual has, and you ignore the giver of the gift.
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So you get all of these terrible funny feelings on the inside. And that’s the beginning of envy. Envy, is a horrible disease. It takes on many kinds of faces. It smiles sometimes, but it don’t mean it. It praises you with the mouth, but it don’t mean it. It says all kinds of lies, but it don’t mean it, because envy is a terrible disease, and it come into proud men and proud women who think that they are more than what they really are. And they cannot stand to see somebody better at what they’re doing.
Everyone of us have had these kind of feelings. I thank all might God Allah, that from the time I was a little boy God has made me to see Himself in people. So when I saw men who could outrun me, I sat and I watched them run. And when they whopped me running, I said there’s a better man that runs (and) I'd go back to my violin.
And then I played my instrument and I found men that played better then me. And I found men that sang better than me. And I found men that did a whole lot of things better than I, but I tried to do it to the best that God giveth to me. And when I’d done it the best that I can, then I’d exhausted His gift in me. And I see His gift manifest in you, and I know that’s God in you as this is God in me...
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