From God to Us, ESW 1-2

The first paragraph of the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf begins about as simply as it possibly could: “Praise be to God...” And then Baha'u'llah spends the entire paragraph doing exactly that. He praises God. After the invocation, with its reference to the One, the Incomparable, the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing and the All-Wise, He continues by describing God and His sovereignty over creation.

And it’s interesting, isn’t it? Baha'u'llah is writing to a Muslim cleric who has been an enemy of His Faith. There is going to be plenty in this Epistle that Muhammad-Taqi will find challenging, perhaps even offensive. But Baha'u'llah doesn't begin there. He begins with God.

And He doesn't merely begin with a statement that God exists. He begins with praise. Praise is not an argument. It isn't an attempt to prove something to the other person. It is an orientation. Before Muhammad-Taqi is asked to consider Baha'u'llah, before he is asked to reconsider his own actions, before he is asked to examine the claims of this new Faith, both writer and reader are placed before God. Given what we saw in the invocation, this seems a natural continuation. Muhammad-Taqi may be a powerful and learned religious leader, but the conversation does not begin with either his power or his learning. It begins by turning his attention towards God.

From there, the second paragraph seems to move quite naturally from God to His Messenger. Baha'u'llah has begun with God, but now the question becomes how God's guidance reaches us. “He it is Who hath revealed His Cause for the guidance of His creatures, and sent down His verses to demonstrate His Proof and His Testimony...” From God, then, we move towards Revelation.

And this is where the second paragraph becomes particularly interesting to me. At this point Baha'u'llah has not yet asked Muhammad-Taqi to accept anything particularly difficult. He is a Muslim cleric. He already believes in God. He already believes that God sends Messengers. He already believes that those Messengers bring guidance to humanity. So far, there is very little to argue about.

Perhaps that is part of the method. If I begin a conversation with someone at the point where we disagree, then the disagreement immediately becomes the subject of the conversation. Each of us takes up our position and begins defending it. But if I begin with something we genuinely share, we can stand together for a moment and look in the same direction. Baha'u'llah begins with God, and then moves to the Messenger of God.

There may be something else happening here, too. The Messenger described in this opening isn't merely someone who appears, delivers a message and leaves. His coming has consequences for creation. Before Muhammad-Taqi is asked to judge the particular claims before him, Baha'u'llah is establishing something about the relationship between God, His Messenger and the world. He is describing what a Messenger actually does, and doing so in terms Muhammad-Taqi can presumably accept. Instead of beginning with something like, “You are wrong about Me”, He begins much further back. Who is God? What is a Messenger? What happens when a Messenger appears? These are questions Muhammad-Taqi presumably thinks he already knows the answers to. Perhaps that is precisely why they are such useful questions with which to begin.

We already know that this book will be a great challenge to its recipient. Given that, those first words begin to feel considerably less like a formality. Before Baha'u'llah begins the difficult work of challenging this man, He establishes where the conversation begins: “Praise be to God...”