The Test of the Benefits

I was saying some prayers earlier today, kind lost in the joy of just flipping through the prayer book and reading whatever my eyes fell upon, when I found myself reading a prayer from the Bab. Nothing too unusal about that, but the last line in the prayer sort of stuck with me.

It ended with, "...and shouldst Thou ordain evil for a servant by reason of that which his hands have unjustly wrought before Thy face, Thou wouldst test him with the benefits of this world and of the next that he might become preoccupied therewith and forget Thy remembrance."

Now, to be fair, and to put this in context, the first part of the line is, "Indeed shouldst Thou desire to confer blessing upon a servant Thou wouldst blot out from the realm of his heart every mention or disposition except Thine Own mention..." But it was that last part that caught my attention.

 "...and shouldst Thou ordain evil for a servant by reason of that which his hands have unjustly wrought before Thy face, Thou wouldst test him with the benefits of this world and of the next that he might become preoccupied therewith and forget Thy remembrance."

To start, I have to wonder what "the benefits of this world and the next" are. For this world, I presume that they are wealth, health, friends, and that sort of stuff. (Friends? Stuff? I must be fasting.) (Hey. what do you know? I am.) (That excuses me here, but doesn't work for all those bozoid things I write during the rest of the year.)

But the benefits of the next world? Well, that's where I stumble a bit (and not just because I'm fasting.) I presume that would be heaven, or the other various terms people use for the next world. (How many virgins was it again?) (Sorry. I digress.) (Well, there's a surprise.)

Anyways, it reminded me greatly of that line from 'Abdu'l-Baha, "In the highest prayer, men pray only for the love of God, not because they fear Him or Hell, or hope for bounty or heaven..." And also that Hidden Word, "Busy not thyself with this world, for with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants."



But what does this look like? How are these things tests, and why would they be considered evil? Well, I guess they're not, really. I mean, I think we need to read this a bit more closely.

Oh, disclaimer time: This is all my own opinion, and nothing official. If you want something official, go to bahai.org, or some other official web-site.

To begin, the individual upon whom this evil is ordained has already done something to warrant it. It is not just random, or malicious evil that is thrust upon them. It is "by reason of that which his hands have unjustly wrought before Thy face". So they are already guilty of something.

To me, this just reads like helping someone dig their own grave. Or to use another metaphor (is that actually a metaphor?), He's giving them enough rope to hang themselves with.

How often have we seen someone who is cruel or vain pride themselves on the "fact" that they are going to heaven? I can only cringe at those poor souls who hurt others through their fanatical belief that they are somehow "right" and everyone else is wrong, all the while committing such horrid deeds as to make the Founder of their faith lament. Whether we think of some Christians who torment those who believe differently than they do, or those Muslims who somehow believe that it is good to murder the "infidel", or pick any other faith group that somehow attacks the "other", the principle is still the same. They are committing evil acts after being tempted by some reward in the next world, never realizing that their very acts condemn them to missing out on that very reward. Sad, really.

And what about the benefits of this world? Well, that's easier to see, I think. Money, for example, is a great tool in this material world of ours. It can be used to either great good or great evil. In many ways, it's like a knife or fire. Both have such great potential for making a nice meal to share with others (did I mention I'm fasting?), or can be used to such destructive purposes.

We can use our wealth to either help others and make the world a better place, or we can act out of greed and immorality, looking only after our own concerns. In the end, it is the way in which we use these tools that determines our ultimate fate.

In both cases, we would be more fixated on the "benefits" than on the effects of our actions. We would be more concerned with our own well-being than with the well-being of others. We would, in the one instance, be more concerned about getting to heaven that we would forget about helping create a heaven on earth. Through this lack of proper focus, we would undoubtedly forget to "mention" God, all the while giving lip-service to His Name. "Mention", after all, is done through actions, not words.

And if we want to see what the opposite looks like, if we want to know how these benefits can be truly beneficial, then we only need to look at the other half (which I'm glad I quoted earlier), in which we discover that the true benefits accrue when when God will "blot out from the realm of his heart every mention or disposition except Thine Own mention".