The Universal House of Justice
Department
of the Secretariat
3 January 1982
[To an individual]
Dear Bahá’í Friend,
The Universal House of Justice has received your letter and has
asked us to assure you that you should feel no diffidence in raising the sort
of questions that you have expressed. It seems clear from your letter that you
have been greatly attracted to the Message of Bahá’u’lláh and have accepted His
Faith before, as you say, becoming “fully committed,” and are, therefore, now
having to face and resolve problems that many believers overcome before they
declare their faith. The House of Justice urges you not to let it worry you.
All through life Bahá’ís are faced with tests of many kinds, and problems and
doubts, but it is through facing and overcoming them that we grow spiritually.
On the particular issues that you raise, the House of Justice has
instructed us to send you the following comments.
It is true that Bahá’u’lláh lays on every Bahá’í the duty to teach
His Faith. At the same time, however, we are forbidden to proselytize, so it is
important for all believers to understand the difference between teaching and
proselytizing. It is a significant difference and, in some countries where
teaching a religion is permitted, but proselytizing is forbidden, the
distinction is made in the law of the land. Proselytizing implies bringing
undue pressure to bear upon someone to change his Faith. It is also usually
understood to imply the making of threats or the offering of material benefits
as an inducement to conversion. In some countries mission schools or hospitals,
for all the good they do, are regarded with suspicion and even aversion by the
local authorities because they are considered to be material inducements to
conversion and hence instruments of proselytization.
Bahá’u’lláh, in The Hidden
Words, says, “O Son of Dust! The wise are they that speak not unless they
obtain a hearing, even as the cup-bearer, who proffereth not his cup till he
findeth a seeker, and the lover who crieth not out from the depths of his heart
until he gazeth upon the beauty of his beloved.…” , and on page 55 of The Advent of Divine Justice, a letter
which is primarily directed towards exhorting the friends to fulfill their
responsibilities in teaching the Faith, Shoghi Effendi writes: “Care, however,
should, at all times, be exercised, lest in their eagerness to further the
international interests of the Faith they frustrate their purpose, and turn
away, through any act that might be misconstrued as an attempt to proselytize
and bring undue pressure upon them, those whom they wish to win over to their
Cause.” Some Bahá’ís sometimes overstep the proper bounds, but this does not
alter the clear principle.
The responsibility of the Bahá’ís to teach the Faith is very great.
The contraction of the world and the onward rush of events require us to seize
every chance open to us to touch the hearts and minds of our fellowmen. The
Message of Bahá’u’lláh is God’s guidance for mankind to overcome the
difficulties of this age of transition and move forward into the next stage of
its evolution, and human beings have the right to hear it. Those who accept it
incur the duty of passing it on to their fellowman. The slowness of the
response of the world has caused and is causing great suffering; hence the
historical pressure upon Bahá’ís to exert every effort to teach the Faith for
the sake of their fellowmen. They should teach with enthusiasm, conviction,
wisdom and courtesy, but without pressing their hearer, bearing in mind the
words of Bahá’u’lláh: “Beware lest ye contend with any one, nay, strive to make
him aware of the truth with kindly manner and most convincing exhortation. If
your hearer respond, he will have responded to his own behoof, and if not, turn
ye away from him, and set your faces towards God’s sacred Court, the seat of
resplendent holiness.” (Gleanings
CXXVIII)
The application and development of the social aspects of the
Teachings is dependent on the stage of growth of the Bahá’í community in each
area, and on worldwide priorities. We are living in an age of transition, and
as ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá explained, we must, in order to succeed in our aims, sacrifice
the important for the most important. The House of Justice, for example, had to
turn down the request of certain believers to establish Bahá’í schools in a
Western country which already had a functioning state educational system; those
Bahá’í funds which are available for educational projects must be spent on the
establishment and running of schools in areas where there are large Bahá’í
communities of poor people, with no adequate system of education available to
them. In its answer, the House of Justice pointed out that if these friends, on
their own initiative, wished to establish their own school, run on Bahá’í
lines, and financially self-supporting, they were entirely free to do so. This
highlights an aspect of the matter which is often overlooked. The social
services of Bahá’ís are not restricted to what they do as a community. Every
Bahá’í has a duty to work and earn his living, and in choosing a career a
Bahá’í should consider not only its earning capacity but also the benefit of
the work to his fellowmen. All over the world Bahá’ís are rendering outstanding
services in this way.
When a Bahá’í community is very small, there is little that it can
do to implement the social teachings of the Faith (beyond their impact on the
behavior of individual believers), because such a community with the resources
in funds and manpower at its disposal is but a drop in the ocean in comparison
with the many large agencies, governmental and private, which are engaged in
social improvement. When the Bahá’í community grows sufficiently large,
however, its activities can and must proliferate and diversify. This
development is already taking place in many parts of the world. In India, for
example, the New Era School in Panchgani, which has been developing remarkably
for a number of years, is closely associated with a rural development project
in the villages close by that is having dramatically favorable results in the
life of the villagers. In the province of Madhya Pradesh, where there are
hundreds of thousands of Bahá’ís, the Rabbani School in Gwalior is educating
children from the villages of the area in the Teachings of the Faith, in
academic subjects and in agriculture, so that when they return to their home
villages, these pupils not only promote the Faith but will influence their
growth and development in every way. In Ecuador, as you no doubt know, the size
of the Bahá’í community, scattered over inaccessible terrain in the high Andes,
made it both necessary and possible some years ago to establish a Bahá’í radio
station. “Radio Bahá’í,” as it is known, broadcasts not only about the Faith,
but has programs concerning health, agriculture, literacy and so on. It has now
become so well established and highly regarded that it has been able to apply
for and receive a Canadian Government grant through C.I.D.A to finance the
development of certain social service activities. Thus it can be seen that once
the Bahá’í community attains a certain stature it is able to work in fruitful
collaboration with non-Bahá’í agencies in its social activities.
A further aspect of this kind of work is the collaboration between
the Bahá’í International Community and the United Nations. Having consultative
status with both ECOSOC and UNICEF, and long association with the Department of
Public Information, the Bahá’í International Community is able to take part in
conferences and consultations on many aspects of human development, both from
the point of view of the Bahá’í Teachings and with the background of its
extensive experience in meeting the problems of developing countries, such as
illiteracy, the status of women, tribalism, racial prejudice, and so on.
As you can see, all these developments relate directly to the
teaching work inasmuch as the Bahá’í communities must reach a certain size
before they can begin to implement many of them. How, for example, can a Bahá’í
community demonstrate effectively the abolition of prejudices which divide the
inhabitants of a country until it has a cross-section of those inhabitants
within its ranks? A seed is the vital origin of a tree and of a tremendous
importance for that reason, but it cannot produce fruit until it has grown into
a tree and flowered and fruited. So a Bahá’í community of nine believers is a
vital step, since it can bring into being for that locality the divine
institution of the Local Spiritual Assembly, but it is still only a seed, and
needs to grow in size and in the diversity of its members before it can produce
really convincing fruit for its fellow citizens.
One could say, however, that the Bahá’í communities could assist in
social development from a very early stage in their development by supporting
the activities of other groups who are, at this point, more numerous and
powerful. To some extent this is true, provided that such involvement does not
divert the efforts of the friends from the more fundamentally important
teaching work or involve them in the disputes of non-Bahá’í rival groups.
The teaching work is of primary importance for this reason: the most
urgent need of human beings is to recognize the Manifestation of God and
thereby to learn how to collaborate constructively. All over the world
tremendous efforts are being made to improve the lot of mankind—or of parts of
mankind, but most of these efforts are frustrated by the conflicts of aims, by
corruption of the morals of those involved, by mistrust, or by fear. There is
no lack of material resources in the world if they are properly used. The
problem is the education of human beings in the ultimate and most important
purpose of life and in how to weld the differences of opinion and outlook into
a united constructive effort. Bahá’ís believe that God has revealed the purpose
of life, has shown us how to attain it, has provided the ways in which we can
work together and, beyond that, has given mankind the assurance both of
continuing divine guidance and of divine assistance. As people learn and follow
these teachings their efforts will produce durable results. In the absence of
these teachings, a lifetime of effort only too often ends in disillusionment
and the collapse of all that has been built.
It is not easy for people to learn the Bahá’í way, to overcome their
inherited prejudices or to resist their personal temptations. This way takes
time, is subject to checks and backsliding, but one can see, looking at the
past 138 years, that there is an overall advance that is astonishing in the
light of the obstacles to be overcome, and is accelerating with every passing
decade.
One of the great obstacles to progress is the tendency of Bahá’ís to
be sucked into the general attitudes and disputes that surround them, to be
influenced, for example, as you yourself pointed out, by the prevailing
attitude to marriage so that the divorce rate becomes a problem within the Bahá’í
community itself which should be an example to the rest of society in such
matters. Involvement in politics and controversial questions is another aspect
of the same phenomenon. In one of His Tablets Bahá’u’lláh warns the Bahá’ís:
“Dispute not with any one concerning the things of this world and its affairs,
for God hath abandoned them to such as have set their affection upon them. Out
of the whole world He hath chosen for Himself the hearts of men—hearts which
the hosts of revelation and of utterance can subdue.” (Gleanings CXXVIII) As you realize, this cannot mean that Bahá’ís
must not be controversial since, in many societies, being a Bahá’í is itself a
controversial matter. The central importance of this principle of avoidance of
politics and controversial matters is that Bahá’ís should not allow themselves
to be drawn into the disputes of the many conflicting elements of the society
around them. The aim of the Bahá’ís is to reconcile, to heal divisions, to
bring about tolerance and mutual respect among men, and this aim is undermined
if we allow ourselves to be swept along by the ephemeral passions of others.
This does not mean that Bahá’ís cannot collaborate with any non-Bahá’í
movement; it does mean that good judgment is required to distinguish those
activities and associations which are beneficial and constructive from those
which are divisive.
The House of Justice hopes that these explanations will help you to
understand some of the aspects of the Faith that have been troubling you. The
crux of the matter, as you realize, is the acceptance of spiritual authority
and what this implies. You express the fear that the authority conferred upon
‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, the Guardian and the Universal House of Justice could lead to a
progressive reduction in the “available scope for personal interpretation,” and
that “the actual writings of the Manifestation will have less and less import,”
and you instance what has happened in previous Dispensations. The House of
Justice suggests that, in thinking about this, you contemplate the way the
Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh has actually worked, and you will be able to see how
very different its processes are from those of, say, the development of the law
in Rabbinical Judaism or the functioning of the Papacy in Christianity. The practice
in the past in these two religions, and also to a great extent in Islam, has
been to assume that the Revelation given by the Founder was the final, perfect
revelation of God’s Will to mankind, and all subsequent elucidation and
legislation has been interpretative in the sense that it aimed at applying this
basic Revelation to the new problems and situations that have arisen. The
Bahá’í premises are quite different. Although the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh is
accepted as the Word of God and His Law as the Law of God, it is understood
from the outset that Revelation is progressive, and that the Law, although the
Will of God for this Age, will undoubtedly be changed by the next Manifestation
of God. Secondly, only the written text of the Revelation is regarded as
authoritative. There is no Oral Law as in Judaism, no Tradition of the Church
as in Christianity, no Hadíth as in Islam. Thirdly, a clear distinction
is drawn between interpretation and legislation. Authoritative interpretation
is the exclusive prerogative of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá and the Guardian, while infallible
legislation is the function of the Universal House of Justice.
If you study the Writings of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá and of the Guardian, you
will see how tremendously they differ from the interpretations of the Rabbis
and the Church. They are not a progressive fossilization of the Revelation,
they are for the most part expositions which throw a clear light upon passages
which may have been considered obscure, they point up the intimate
interrelationship between various teachings, they expound the implications of
scriptural allusions, and they educate the Bahá’ís in the tremendous
significances of the Words of Bahá’u’lláh. Rather than in any way supplanting
the Words of the Manifestation, they lead us back to them time and again.
There is also an important distinction made in the Faith between
authoritative interpretation, as described above, and the interpretation which
every believer is fully entitled to voice. Believers are free, indeed are
encouraged, to study the Writings for themselves and to express their
understanding of them. Such personal interpretations can be most illuminating,
but all Bahá’ís, including the one expressing the view, however learned he may
be, should realize that it is only a personal view and can never be upheld as a
standard for others to accept, nor should disputes ever be permitted to arise
over differences in such opinions.
The legislation enacted by the Universal House of Justice is
different from interpretation. Authoritative interpretation, as uttered by
‘Abdu’l‑Bahá and the Guardian, is a divinely guided statement of what the Word
of God means. The divinely inspired legislation of the Universal House of
Justice does not attempt to say what the revealed Word means—it states what
must be done in cases where the revealed Text or its authoritative
interpretation is not explicit. It is, therefore, on quite a different level
from the Sacred Text, and the Universal House of Justice is empowered to
abrogate or amend its own legislation whenever it judges the conditions make
this desirable. Moreover, the attitude to legislation is different in the
Bahá’í Faith. The human tendency in past Dispensations has been to want every
question answered and to arrive at a binding decision affecting every small
detail of belief or practice. The tendency in the Bahá’í Dispensation, from the
time of Bahá’u’lláh Himself, has been to clarify the governing principles, to
make binding pronouncements on details which are considered essential, but to
leave a wide area to the conscience of the individual. The same tendency
appears also in administrative matters. The Guardian used to state that the
working of National Spiritual Assemblies should be uniform in essentials but
that diversity in secondary matters was not only permissible but desirable. For
this reason a number of points are not expressed in the National Bahá’í
Constitution (the Declaration of Trust and By-Laws of National Assemblies);
these are left to each National Spiritual Assembly to decide for itself.
The Covenant is the “axis of the oneness of the world of humanity”
because it preserves the unity and integrity of the Faith itself and protects
it from being disrupted by individuals who are convinced that only their
understanding of the Teachings is the right one—a fate that has overcome all
past Revelations. The Covenant is, moreover, embedded in the Writings of
Bahá’u’lláh Himself. Thus, as you clearly see, to accept Bahá’u’lláh is to
accept His Covenant; to reject His Covenant is to reject Him.
The House of Justice asks us to assure you of its loving prayers at
the Sacred Threshold for your guidance in your efforts to arrive at a greater
understanding of this wonderful Revelation.
With loving
Bahá’í greetings,
Department of
the Secretariat
This document has been downloaded from the Bahá’í
Reference Library. You are
free to use its content subject to the terms of use found at www.bahai.org/legal