Friday, August 17, 2007

Personal Volition on the Spiritual Path

So, if God's All-Powerful, why doesn't He just make all of us worship him and always act with virtue?

Well, of course, we wouldn't have our free will if He did that -- wouldn't even be able to know if we were good or bad...

The two excerpts from Reality for today help us understand why an Omnipotent God would give us our own power of volition.

"He Who is the Day Spring of Truth is, no doubt, fully capable of rescuing from such remoteness wayward souls and of causing them to draw nigh unto His court and attain His Presence. 'If God had pleased He had surely made all men one people.' His purpose, however, is to enable the pure in spirit and the detached in heart to ascend, by virtue of their own innate powers, unto the shores of the Most Great Ocean, that thereby they who seek the Beauty of the All- Glorious may be distinguished and separated from the wayward and perverse."

Bahá’u’lláh: Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Selection XXIX, p. 71

"If none be found to stray from Thy path, how, then, can the ensign of Thy mercy be unfurled, or the banner of Thy bountiful favor be hoisted? And if iniquity be not committed, what is it that can proclaim Thee to be the Concealer of men’s sins, the Ever-Forgiving, the Omniscient, the All-Wise?"

Bahá’u’lláh: Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Selection CXLII, p. 310