Sunday, June 3, 2007

Mastery and Service

I in no way intend to refer to Abdu'l Baha in this passage either subtly or explicitly. It may need some rewriting to make that clear though.

If God secures his dominion in creation through the mediation of human beings, then the proper place of the human is not one of pure submission. Rather, the human is at once both master and submitter. Service to God is the manifestation of His mastery. In this way, the servant of God occupies the space of the Master by the very act of service, no matter how humble or self-effacing he or she behaves. One sense of this is the meaning of Jesus’ saying, anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be slave to all. For the Son of man himself came not to be served but serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.[1] The more one manifests service, the more one manifests God’s mastery in creation. To think oneself as a participant in this arrangement presents a difficult spiritual challenge. For one, to occupy the space of God’s representative is for the most part to position oneself as God. In this case it is a quick leap to unreflectively demand from others their submission to oneself. Certainly, this arrangement only posits that the servant is only a manifestation and not the figure Himself of dominion. Thus, the servant is only that, a servant. Thus, it would be a violation of contract to act as the final word. But it must be said that the instability and fragility of this arrangement introduces the ever present possibility that people will occupy the position of the master so as to actively struggle against the Master as His will becomes present in history.

[1] Mark 10.43-45


This is how I introduce the discussion of passages 1-4. This sets up a discussion in which I show that Baha'u'llah introduces what I'm calling the "arrival of the unconditioned will of God" as a solution to this problem.

And if you really want to see just how screwed up the problem is then go to my post "the Will to Salvation" way back in the first week of this blog. I'm currently at a loss for how to grapple with the problems it introduces.

3 comments:

Jalal said...

Why are you trying not to refer to the Master Servant? It seems so natural. What better posture to assume during the most intimate of prayers than that of the Exemplar, and who better to think when connecting to the beloved of than the Center of that Cord which binds us to Him?

In fact such an arrangement would aid with concerns over, “to occupy the space of God’s representative is for the most part to position oneself as God."

Mr. Cat said...

Well put.

The reason I thought it might be a good idea to distance this passage from the Master is because I wrote it so as to introduce a problem: that to posit as oneself as a servant but also as the representative of God can easily lead one to usurp the position of higher authorities. When I read it back to myself the first time I thought it might be read as a subtle, cleverly worded critique of Abdu'l Baha.

But yes, I think it could be helpful to bring Abdu'l Baha more consciously into this passage.

Jalal said...

That would more directly avoid looking like you are criticizing the Abdu'l-Baha, and would open a vital disucssion on His role as Centre of the Covenant