Baha’i Perspectives

nadim January 15th, 2010

It has been an icy cold start to the new decade in England. Arctic winds have been blowing in from Scandinavia, bringing with them snow, sleet and sub-zero temperatures – and it has gone on for an unusually long stretch of time according to the locals. In spite of this, life carries on as normal for the majority of people. Barring the occasional transport delay, the slip and fall on ice (slippery wheels if you are driving), or the minor inconvenience of having to shop around for an extra heater, everything proceeds as expected.

Thousands of miles to the east and to the west, the cold of tribulation is a stark reality. To the east, the sham trial behind closed doors of the seven members of the Baha’i Administrative Committee of Iran, arrested and imprisoned by the Islamic government in 2008, merely for their religious beliefs. To the west, the heart-wrenching devastation caused by the Haiti disaster and the scramble to save as many lives as possible before it becomes too late.

Although outwardly cataclysms are hard to understand and to endure, yet there lies a great wisdom behind them which appears later. All the visible material events are inter-related with invisible spiritual forces. The infinite phenomena of creation are as interdependent as the links of a chain.

When certain links become rusty, they are broken by unseen forces, to be replaced by newer and better ones. There are certain colossal events which transpire in the world of humanity which are required by the nature of the times. For example, the requirements of winter are cold, snow, hail and rain – but the birds and animals who live for six months, enjoying a short span of life, not realizing the wisdom of winter, chide and make lament and are discontent, saying, “Why this awful frost? Why this hail and storm? Why not the balmy weather? Why not the eternal springtime? Why this injustice on the part of the creator? Why this suffering? What have we done to be meted out with this catastrophe?”

However, those souls who have lived many years and have acquired much experience and have weathered many severe winters realize that in order to enjoy the coming spring they must pass through the cold of winter.

(Abdu’l-Baha : Divine Philosophy)

Tags: Iran, natural disasters

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iman May 24th, 2008

The recent cyclone in Myanmar and earthquake in China raise questions about whether, apart from the widely-known scientific and environmental causes of such occurrences, natural disasters are Divinely influenced.

Does God have an influence on the occurrence of natural disasters — a punishment, a test, maybe even a reward? One might suggest that the very nature of Creation, with the perpetual movement and state-shifting of matter, would inevitably cause such events to occur. Yet, one of the most common questions we hear during these situations is “why?”; “why must such things happen to all those innocent people?”

The Divine reasoning, because it operates on countless plains of existence beyond our own, is impossible to understand. Our finite thinking would lead us to speculate baselessly given such a meagre understanding of Creation past, present or future. God is “the unknowable Essence” whose far-reaching influence is unfathomable by the human mind:

To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the unknowable Essence, the divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress. Far be it from His glory that human tongue should adequately recount His praise, or that human heart comprehend His fathomless mystery. He is and hath ever been veiled in the ancient eternity of His Essence, and will remain in His Reality everlastingly hidden from the sight of men…No tie of direct intercourse can possibly bind Him to His creatures. He standeth exalted beyond and above all separation and union, all proximity and remoteness. No sign can indicate His presence or His absence; inasmuch as by a word of His command all that are in heaven and on earth have come to exist, and by His wish, which is the Primal Will itself, all have stepped out of utter nothingness into the realm of being, the world of the visible.

(Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 97)

What we can do, however, is to focus on serving those affected by natural calamities, to encourage and contribute towards scientific progress that helps to dampen the impact of natural disasters and, most importantly, to turn to God during such trying times. Baha’u'llah states in The Most Holy Book, “on the appearance of fearful natural events call ye to mind the might and majesty of your Lord, He Who heareth and seeth all, and say “Dominion is God’s, the Lord of the seen and the unseen, the Lord of creation.”"

Tags: natural disasters

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