Complementary Plans of God

For let none suppose that the civilization towards which the divine teachings impel humankind will follow merely from adjustments to the present order.  Far from it.

(The Universal House of Justice. Riḍván 2012)

Last post discussed the point that the difference between the Bahá’i Community’s efforts to change society and those of other progressive movements is that the Bahá’i Community’s origins and purposes are not within the old human order, but outside the human order altogether in Bahá’u’lláh’s divine Revelation.  He did not come to advance the human order, but to put a divine Order in its stead.    The Bahá’i community is separate in nature and purpose from everything, positive or negative, in that dying order, and plays no part in the disputes, contentions and jockeying for influence that characterize the efforts of other groups, no matter how progressive they may be:

The divine Order, then, is built upon a different mentality and progresses by different means.  I mean that those erecting the new organic social reality are not depending, as does the rest of humanity, solely upon the trial and error of social experiment, but, rather, are building upon the actual unfolding nucleus and pattern of a new civilization.  This does not mean that any stage of advance of the new Order is strictly determined beforehand in all its particulars. Experiment within a common framework is necessary.  The Community is guided in its efforts at every step and stage by a divine Plan as given through authoritative institutions.  Though one effect of this building is to cause disruption in the existing order, this is the disruption of construction, not destruction.  I’ll come back to this point.

Nonetheless, as perceived by those from within the consciousness of the old order, the building of the Bahá’í Order seems but another social religious movement competing for status and influence.  Doubtless, the Bahá’í community’s efforts to erect a divine order look similar in some respects to those trying to advance the human order.  But the reconfiguration of relations necessary to express new, universal values is not an evolution of our current paradigm of understanding of how society comes into being and is built, nor even a radical addition to that understanding, but a revolution in understanding itself. 

The primary reason, then, why humanity cannot, unaided from Above, reason, plan, or envision its way to a new order is that the new pattern is wholly divine, and God, through His Manifestation, is in charge of erecting it.  He does so, according to the Bahá’i perspective, through the release, diffusion, and operation of spiritual forces that operate with disintegrative and integrative effects. These compose two parts of one process, for they are both products of the breaking and building generated by the twin Revelations.  They form, that is, two complementary Plans of God, which are, from another and equally true perspective, twin aspects of one divine Plan that Shoghi Effendi named the Major and Minor Plans of God.  

The Universal House of Justice explains:  “We are told by Shoghi Effendi that two great processes are at work in the world: the great Plan of God, tumultuous in its progress, working through mankind as a whole, tearing down barriers to world unity and forging humankind into a unified body in the fires of suffering and experience. This process will produce in God's due time, the Lesser Peace, the political unification of the world. Mankind at that time can be likened to a body that is unified but without life. The second process, the task of breathing life into this unified body—of creating true unity and spirituality culminating in the Most Great Peace—is that of the Bahá'ís, who are labouring consciously, with detailed instructions and continuing divine guidance, to erect the fabric of the Kingdom of God on earth….” (Universal House of Justice, Messages 1963 to 1986: 333-334)  

As the twin processes of disintegration and integration progressed, each in their own way, the House further elaborated: “Our fellow human beings everywhere are insensibly subjected at one and the same time to the conflicting emotions incited by the continuous operation of simultaneous processes of "rise and of fall, of integration and of disintegration, of order and chaos". These Shoghi Effendi identified as aspects of the Major Plan and Minor Plan of God, the two known ways in which His purpose for humankind is going forward. The Major Plan is associated with turbulence and calamity and proceeds with an apparent, random disorderliness, but is, in fact, inexorably driving humanity towards unity and maturity. Its agency for the most part is the people who are ignorant of its course and even antagonistic towards its aim. As Shoghi Effendi has pointed out, God's Major Plan uses "both the mighty and the lowly as pawns in His world-shaping game, for the fulfilment of His immediate purpose and the eventual establishment of His Kingdom on earth." The acceleration of the processes it generates is lending impetus to developments which, with all the initial pain and heartache attributable to them, we Bahá'ís see as signs of the emergence of the Lesser Peace.

Unlike His Major Plan, which works mysteriously, God's Minor Plan is clearly delineated, operates according to orderly and well-known processes, and has been given to us to execute.  Its ultimate goal is the Most Great Peace.” (The Universal House of Justice, Riḍván 155, 1998)

The genius of Shoghi Effendi also perceived that these complementary plans act reciprocally: “A twofold process, however, can be distinguished, each tending, in its own way and with an accelerated momentum, to bring to a climax the forces that are transforming the face of our planet. The first is essentially an integrating process, while the second is fundamentally disruptive. The former, as it steadily evolves, unfolds a System which may well serve as a pattern for that world polity towards which a strangely-disordered world is continually advancing; while the latter, as its disintegrating influence deepens, tends to tear down, with increasing violence, the antiquated barriers that seek to block humanity's progress towards its destined goal. The constructive process stands associated with the nascent Faith of Bahá'u'lláh, and is the harbinger of the New World Order that Faith must erelong establish. The destructive forces that characterize the other should be identified with a civilization that has refused to answer to the expectation of a new age, and is consequently falling into chaos and decline.” (The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 169)

Also, as remarked upon earlier, while the organic growth of the Bahá’í Administrative Order adds to the derangement of the world’s equilibrium, this is of a different kind than that provoked by contending movements originating within the old order.  The disorder which the Bahá’í Community creates stems from setting human life, thought and society upon a new, divine foundation.  Bahá’u’lláh wrote in this regard: “The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 136)  The word, “revolutionize” does not mean to engage in such “revolutionary” activities as the toppling of governments by force and insurrection, but to revolve back to the root, the origin and source of human society itself.  This is accomplished through the agency of His unique and wondrous, divine social Order. That is, through the shaking of foundations He is revolving humanity back, through levels of disequilibrium, to the spiritual origins of its social life to set it firmly upon divine principles and revealed laws.  This will be the setting of a new foundation, the manifesting in organic social life of the eternal divine pattern called the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.