Whoops.
In the last article I thought paragraph 160 was the end of a section. It certainly felt like one. After everything Baha'u'llah had said to Muhammad-Taqi, after repeatedly asking him to reconsider his actions, judge fairly and choose another path, He gave him a prayer. It felt like a natural place to stop.
And maybe it was, at least for the article. But after reading the next few paragraphs, I think 161 through 166 are really a sort of coda to what came before. They take some of those ideas and show us what they look like when put into practice. That's one of the things I enjoy about reading this book this way. I don't know where it's going. I make a guess, keep reading, and sometimes discover I was wrong. That's ok. Sometimes the mistake leads somewhere interesting.
Paragraph 161 begins with another accusation. This time it concerns one of Baha'u'llah's friends, who has been accused of taking some money. Baha'u'llah says the accusation is false, and then tells us what happened. But what struck me wasn't so much the accusation itself as His reaction to it.
We've just spent a lot of time looking at justice, especially at the repeated call for Muhammad-Taqi to judge fairly. Now we get a very practical example. Here is someone being falsely accused. What do you do?
Baha'u'llah doesn't lash out. He doesn't respond with another accusation. In the next paragraph He says that what is hidden in the hearts of people will eventually be disclosed, and ends with the observation that people don't discern between the trustworthy and the treacherous. Then He expresses the hope that the Shah will investigate the matter for himself rather than merely believing those making the accusations.
That last part feels familiar by now. Check it out, He seems to say.
Don't just believe what people are telling you. Investigate. Look at the evidence. Find out what actually happened. We've seen Baha'u'llah repeatedly ask Muhammad-Taqi to do exactly this with His own claims, and now He asks the Shah to do the same thing with an accusation against one of His friends.
And while all this is going on, Baha'u'llah describes Himself as calm and silent, detached from all save God.
This doesn't mean the injustice doesn't matter. He still wants the truth to be known. He still wants the Shah to investigate. The trustworthy and the treacherous still need to be distinguished from each other. Forgiveness doesn't somehow make justice unnecessary.
That was something we were talking about in the last article. Refusing to condemn a person doesn't mean ignoring what they have done. If a crime has been committed, justice still needs to prevail. If someone has been falsely accused, the truth still needs to be discovered. But the injustice done to us doesn't have to determine how we respond to it.
And then Baha'u'llah gives us an example of a very different response.
He tells the story of Haji Shaykh Muhammad-Ali, a believer who had been so deeply affected by the calumnies and trials surrounding Baha'u'llah that he reached a terrible point. Baha'u'llah had forbidden His followers from engaging in sedition, conflict and contention. For this man, disobedience to that command simply wasn't an option. But neither, apparently, could he continue to endure what was happening.
So he killed himself.
I don't think Baha'u'llah is holding up his suicide as an example to follow. Quite the opposite. After all, He prays for the man's forgiveness. The act itself was wrong.
But look at the contrast.
Baha'u'llah has shown us His own response to calumny. He remains calm. He trusts in God. He asks that the matter be investigated and the truth discovered. Then He shows us someone else pushed so far by these same sorts of attacks that he can no longer see a way forward. He will not retaliate. He will not disobey. And tragically, he seems to believe that the only remaining direction for the violence is towards himself.
That is a very different response from Baha'u'llah's.
And yet Baha'u'llah asks Muhammad-Taqi to ponder the influence of the Word of God.
I think that's the key to why this story is here. The suicide isn't the evidence. The degree to which this man had been transformed by the Word is. Even when pushed beyond what he could bear, turning against the people tormenting him was not an option he was willing to consider.
There is something else here, too. Baha'u'llah can recognize the man's devotion while still recognizing that what he did was wrong. He doesn't have to turn Haji Shaykh Muhammad-Ali into either a hero whose every action must therefore be praised, or a sinner whose terrible choice somehow wipes away everything else about him.
Funny. We were just talking about that.
In the last article I wandered off into thinking about our own divided society and the ease with which we reduce people to the worst thing we believe about them. Someone does something unjust, and before long the action becomes the person. We stop saying, "You did something unjust," and begin saying, "You are an unjust person."
Here is a man who made a terrible choice. Baha'u'llah doesn't pretend otherwise. But He still prays for him.
Maybe that's part of the coda, too.
The more I look at these six paragraphs, though, the more I think the larger question may be about what opposition produces in us.
The calumniators reveal something about themselves through their actions. They lie. They make accusations. They fail to distinguish between the trustworthy and the treacherous. Baha'u'llah reveals something through His response. He remains calm, asks that the truth be investigated, and leaves the matter in the hands of God. Haji Shaykh Muhammad-Ali reveals something else. The Word of God has affected him so profoundly that retaliation and disobedience are no longer choices he is willing to make, although tragically he still makes another choice that Baha'u'llah does not approve.
What does opposition produce in us?
That's not such an easy question.
It's easy enough to talk about our principles when nobody is challenging them. It's easy to talk about justice when we're not the ones being falsely accused. It's easy to talk about kindness and forbearance when the person standing opposite us isn't doing something we find truly horrible.
But what happens when they are?
Do their lies make us liars? Does their hatred make us hateful? Does their injustice make us unjust? Or can we insist upon the truth, insist upon justice, and still refuse to allow their actions to determine our own?
Perhaps that's another way of looking at the fruit of the Word of God.
We've seen that image again and again throughout this book. What does belief produce? What does knowledge produce? What does hatred produce? What does the Word of God produce in the life of someone who actually allows it to change them?
And perhaps these six paragraphs really do belong with the section we just finished. We simply stopped a little too soon.
That's ok.
We kept reading. We changed our minds. And somehow that seems rather appropriate after the last article.
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