Sufficing Faith in One God

Sufficing Faith in One God

By John Taylor; 1 February, 2006

Friends, I am planning someday soon to extend this Badi' blog into a
"vlog," that is, a video web log, a sort of televised diary. That will
mean that when I have completed the latest revision of my research
database I will start to read aloud (and illustrate) a daily essay
instead of just writing it down. I have not decided whether to narrate
the latest essay or perhaps stagger them with one from the previous
year, or perhaps longer before. Or, I may go through the Badi' months,
the principles, or both, and build up a series of programs that would
be useful for feasts or in teaching Baha'i principles.

I plan to make the videos available on a spanking new service
instituted by Google, called, I think, "Google Store." This enables a
videographer to set her own price for a production and sell it to a
world wide audience, who can play them on their video ipods or other
players, or even, for that matter, televisions and computers. I figure
a price of a dollar or two per program might initiate a revenue
stream. Who knows, if my vlogs become popular I may soon be able to
start calling this the Badi' Research Institute! With this object in
mind, I have been going over past essays about the Baha'i principles.
I found to my shock and horror that I seem to have neglected to write
a single essay on the Oneness of God, the mother of all principles! By
a strange coincidence, my reading for this morning, from the Bab's
Seven Proofs, is a perfect launching point into this principle.

You will recall that the Seven Proofs has been dealing with proof in
religion, how presumptuous we are to demand the strange demonstrations
of religiosity that we do and call it support of God. The Bab says,
"The object of thy belief in God is but to secure His good-pleasure.
How then dost thou seek as a proof of thy faith a thing which hath
been and is contrary to His good-pleasure?" (Bab, Selections 122) The
Bab then proceeds with a wonderful demonstration of what faith is, in
the middle of which he offers a prayer for faith.

This prayer is my all time favorite. It is number one on my hit
parade. In my blackest hours, when suicide, despair or worse stuck
their ugly faces in my face and would not go away, this is what got me
through. In my dark night I would say it over and over until my voice
cracked, until it was dawn and my heart was assuaged. To it I owe life
and sanity. In fact in meetings I say it so often that members of our
community refer to it as, "You know, that prayer that John always is
saying..." Anyway, we will get to that soon enough. The Bab introduces
the prayer like this: "Rid thou thyself of all attachments to aught
except God, enrich thyself in God by dispensing with all else besides
Him, and recite this prayer." To paraphrase a song: "What is faith? I
do not know what faith is. Can you tell me what faith is?" Well, the
Bab is telling us. Faith is sitting back and detaching yourself from
all the garbage before you, the failure, the disappointments and
saying: This is not garbage, it has enriched me. It made me want to
chuck everything but God. Thank God for this! This excrement has done
what the greatest jewels in creation could never do, it made me want
God, it gave me the gut feeling that only He will be enough for me.
Nothing else suffices. So thank you Providence for shoving this misery
in my face, I love it, I love you, I thank God! The Bab then reveals
the prayer in question.

"Say: God sufficeth all things above all things, and nothing in the
heavens or in the earth or in whatever lieth between them but God, thy
Lord, sufficeth. Verily, He is in Himself the Knower, the Sustainer,
the Omnipotent."

As you see, this is slightly longer than the version printed in prayer
books. As far as the House and its research minions have found out,
this is the only authentic one. Apparently some translator in early
days truncated it. The truncated prayer, in my experience, works very
well too. It works so well that I really wish we had a name for it.
The other short famous prayer of the Bab we call the "remover of
difficulties." Why not call this the "faith prayer," or, better, "the
sufficiency prayer"? Until someone suggests a better name, that is
what I will call it. At any rate, here is how the Bab expands upon how
the sufficiency prayer works faith into the wound of ephemeral
existence.

"Regard not the all-sufficing power of God as an idle fancy. It is
that genuine faith which thou cherishest for the Manifestation of God
in every Dispensation. It is such faith which sufficeth above all the
things that exist on the earth, whereas no created thing on earth
besides faith would suffice thee. If thou art not a believer, the Tree
of divine Truth would condemn thee to extinction. If thou art a
believer, thy faith shall be sufficient for thee above all things that
exist on earth, even though thou possess nothing. (Bab, Selections,
123)

This reminds one of what Harry Emerson Fosdick said, "God is not a
cosmic bell-boy for whom we can press a button to get things." God is
master, we are servants and this faith is enough, if we are sincere.
This, I think, is what Paul was getting at when he said, "If I have
the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if
I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I
am nothing." (I Cor. 13:2, WEB) Even if we have infinite faith, God is
still not going to be our bell-boy! Get used to it. Faith is still a
function of love, and love is acceptance of what the Beloved is. And
this Beloved is above us, He is in charge. Though Paul never offered
quotes, I think it is pretty clear that he had in mind here a lesson
Jesus taught that is too easily misunderstood. It happened when His
apostles had failed to cast out a demon in a little boy. They had to
leave it up to the Master to do the dirty work.

"Jesus rebuked him, the demon went out of him, and the boy was cured
from that hour. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately, and said,
`Why could we not cast it out?' He said to them, `Because of your
unbelief. For most assuredly I tell you, if you have faith as a grain
of mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, 'Move from here to
there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. But
this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.'" (Matt
17:18-21, WEB)

Could it be that the sufficiency prayer is one such prayer referred to
here by Jesus? Is it a supplication that with fasting prepares for a
faith that moves mountains, that chases out the demons that nothing
else does? I certainly would say yes. Jesus is not just offering
advice here, I believe, he is prophesying that one day this wonderful
sufficiency prayer would be made available to dwellers of this world.

In sum, although Jesus' chief message was love, it took a Paul to
understand what this anecdote of Jesus chasing out demons means. It
does not mean that God will be a bell boy who will move mountains for
us if we summon up enough faith. It means only that God will be
sufficient for us, and that will be sufficient for the world… There is
a play about the Apostle Paul currently being staged in London and its
author (an atheist) is quoted as saying of Paul that, "Paul invented
and defined the concept of love. He was a moral genius." I think this
is demonstrably correct. It takes a moral genius to see that faith is
a function of love, not the other way around, and that mountains are
only moved by those who love enough, who pray and fast enough to be
pure. Such purity calls forth the power of the One True God to move
the mountains of hearts. Mountains of dirt and rock may be here or
moved over there and you or I or God will not much care, but the
heaviest lump in the world is a heart attached to the ephemeral, for
whom God is not enough. That kind of mountain moving Paul saw Jesus
doing, and he did it too. Later the Bab showed us exactly how to do
it, too. To repeat what the Bab says above,

"It is such faith which sufficeth above all the things that exist on
the earth, whereas no created thing on earth besides faith would
suffice thee."

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com