Light and Fire: Mercy and Vengeance, Part Two

Baha'u'llah teaches that, not only does life have both an inward and outward reality, a material and a spiritual reality, but this is also true of what we often call tests in our lives. Baha'u'llah writes, speaking for God:

"O Son of Man! My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. Hasten thereunto that thou mayest become an eternal light and an immortal spirit. This is My command unto thee, do thou observe it."

When I was on Pilgrimage, on the bus approaching the Holy Shrine of Baha'u'llah [called Bahji, the place where He lived the last years of His life and where His remains were interred], I felt as if all my faults were magnified as if by a giant magnifying glass. Approaching the Shrine on foot, crunching on gravel made from roof tiles, my greatest wish was to have all my faults incinerated. This was my prayer. As Baha'u'llah also says, to die to this world that I may live in God, live in the world of the spirit. I had the feeling: God is everything, and I am nothing.

In this materialistic day, the day of Self Esteem and Doing Your Own Thing, this is not always a popular sentiment. In "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Terry Gilliam's animated "God" says, "Oh, stop grovelling! If there's anything I hate, it's people grovelling!" I appreciate the humor, and it is no doubt freeing. On the other hand, God is bigger than us, and there is no getting around that fact. To approach God, if we choose to do so, takes humility.

This dying to the self is what Christians call being born again, that is, born to the world of the spirit. In my rebellious persona, I always wanted to say, "What? Didn't it take the first time?" This spirit of humility is Submission to the Will of God. "Islam" means surrender to the Will of God. Baha'u'llah teaches that Christ and Muhammad, the Bab and Baha'u'llah are all one Spirit, each a reflection of One Essence. That subject is for another day, however.

Anyway, I didn't know what I was asking in that prayer, to allow all my faults to be incinerated. It has meant the deconstruction of many of the components of the life I was building. I often wonder where all this craziness is leading. I guess inquiring minds will just have to wonder!