God’s Hands Aren’t Tied
In response to an
article that I wrote entitled "You've Got to Want a Guardian," an
Orthodox Bahá’í friend wrote: "It doesn't matter
whether WE want a Guardian. The question is, does GOD
want a Guardian. The mistake most Bahá'ís made in the past is to
assume that they had the power or authority to go against the Will and
Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá."
That view of my friend
brought to mind some quotations from the Qur’án that I had
recently come across and which I am sharing here. The first is from Surih ix,
111, where the question is asked, "Who is more faithful to his Covenant
than God?" A second appears in S. x. 4: "The promise of God is
true and sure."
A third is S. vi. 134: "All that hath been promised unto you will
come to pass: Nor can ye frustrate it in the least bit.
"
A fourth (S .ii. 27)
reads: “Those who break God's Covenant after it is ratified, and who
sunder what God has ordered to be joined, and do mischief on earth: these cause
loss only to themselves. "
A fifth one (S. vii.
146) says: "Those who behave arrogantly on the earth in defiance of
right--them will I turn away from My Signs: Even if they see all the
Signs, they will not believe in them."
And the quotation that
provides the subject of this article relates to the statement attributed to the
Jews who said: "God's hand is tied up." Surih v 67 responds to that
view with the following: "Be their hands tied up and be they accursed
for the blasphemy they utter. Nay, both His hands are widely outstretched: He
giveth and spendeth of His bounty as He pleaseth. But the revelation that
cometh to thee from God increaseth in most of them their obstinate rebellion
and blasphemy."
From the Old Testament,
of course, we should have learned that it is not a mark of wisdom to believe
that God is inconstant or indecisive, that He is prone to change His mind about
things. We should have learned to take to heart Isaiah 55: 11, which says: "So
shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me
void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the
thing whereto I sent it. "
Thus, when
Bahá'u'lláh made it incumbent upon all to turn to
'Abdu'l-Bahá, saying that by doing so was turning towards God, and when
in His Will and Testament 'Abdu'l-Bahá made that same kind of statement
with regard to Shoghi Effendi, the believers, who were then attuned to the
Covenant, did indeed turn to the first Guardian of the Faith. But between the
beginning and end of the first Guardian's ministry, the great majority of
believers lost touch with the Covenant, and despite the fact that the Will of'
'Abdu'l-Bahá made it incumbent upon Shoghi Effendi to appoint, in his
own lifetime, his successor, that differences not appear after his passing,
following Shoghi Effendi's death in 1957 the wayward believers quickly accepted
the fallacious position espoused by the Hands of the Cause, who maintained that
the Will of 'Abdu'l-Bahá limited Shoghi Effendi to the choice of an Aghsán
for his appointment. The believers thus accepted the concept that God had
changed His mind about the Guardianship.
What is so hard for
Orthodox Bahá’ís to understand is the heterodox Baha'i view
that 'Abdu'l-Baha, in His Will and Testament, the Charter of the New World
Order (a charter that is to last for at least 1000 years), would have placed
such a severe limitation onto the Guardians of the Faith that they would be
forced to find someone from the blood-line of Bahá'u'lláh to be
their successors. That idea is particularly hard to accept when one realizes
that 'Abdu'l-Bahá
Himself was fully aware of the rampant Covenant-breaking within
His family. Why, then, would He, who spoke on behalf of God, reduce the options
available to the first Guardian of the Faith to none?
The fact of the matter
is this: 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Will provides for
another branch to be appointed if there is no eligible individual within the
Guardian's lineage. All Bahá’ís should know the emphasis
that 'Abdu'l-Bahá placed on the spiritual qualifications of the individual
over any blood-line relationship. One very clear example of the Master's view
in this regard is found in His last Tablet to
"Consider this
text of the New Testament: the brothers of His Holiness Christ,
came to Him and they said: 'These are your brothers.' He answered that His
brothers were those who believed in God, and refused to associate with His own
brothers.
"Likewise
Qurratu'l-'Ayn, who is celebrated in all the world, when she believed in God
and was attracted to the Divine Breaths, she forsook her two eldest sons,
although they were her two oldest children, because they did not become
believers, and thereafter did not meet them. She said: 'All the friends of God
are my children, but these two are not. I will have nothing to do with them.'
"Consider! The
Divine Gardener cuts off the dry or weak branch from the good tree and grafts
to it, a branch from another tree. He both separates and unites."
Now why can't members
of the sans-Guardian organization understand what is related here? I think the
answer is as given in the Qur’án: "Those who behave
arrogantly on the earth in defiance of right--them will I turn away from
My Signs: Even if they see all the Signs, they will not believe in them." --Frank
Schlatter