The Office He Would Not Take

*A retelling based on **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi, the authoritative history of the Faith's first century, which records the offer of office made to the young Bahá'u'lláh and His refusal of it. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that history.*

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Every life reaches certain crossings where a single choice reveals the whole soul. For the young Bahá'u'lláh, one such crossing came with the death of His father. The Holy Day of His Birth remembers the Child of 1817; this is the story of the young Man that Child became when, for the first time, the world laid before Him the great prize it had to offer — and He turned away from it.

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His father was Mírzá Buzurg, a minister of state. The family belonged to one of the most distinguished houses of Persia, a line that had given the country ministers and officials across generations, and that stood close to the court of the Sháh. In such a family, high office was not an accident but an inheritance, passed from father to son as naturally as land or a name.

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When Mírzá Buzurg died, the responsibility for his estates and for the welfare of the younger members of the household passed to his eldest son, and that son shouldered it. But something else passed toward Him as well: the expectation that He would take up His father's place in the service of the state.

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The government wished it. A young Nobleman of such gifts — and His gifts were already widely remarked — was exactly the kind of man the court hoped to bind to itself. Shoghi Effendi records that the ministerial post once held by His father was offered to Him. It was a great honour, and an obvious one.

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To accept would have been the most ordinary thing in the world: to step into the office His house had long occupied, to take up the influence and the dignity that came with it, to begin the long, comfortable ascent that lay open before a man of His birth and ability. No one would have thought twice. Everyone would have approved.

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He declined.

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It was a decision that, in the eyes of His society, made no sense. Office was the very thing men of His class lived for; to be offered it and to refuse it was nearly unheard of. There was no quarrel, no disgrace, no obstacle forcing His hand — only a quiet, settled unwillingness to spend His life in the pursuit such a post represented. He did not want it. The honour that other men schemed and flattered to obtain held no attraction for Him whatever.

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The man who governed Persia at that time was the Prime Minister, and the refusal came to his notice. His reaction is one of the small, telling moments that Shoghi Effendi has preserved, because it shows how even a worldly statesman, looking at the young Bahá'u'lláh, sensed that he was in the presence of something he could not quite measure. The minister did not take offence.

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He did not press, or scheme to change the young Nobleman's mind, or resent the slight to the court. Instead he is reported to have said, simply, "Leave Him to Himself. Such a position is unworthy of Him. He has some higher aim in view."

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It is worth pausing on those words, because they came not from a follower but from a powerful man of affairs whose whole world was built on the value of exactly the office Bahá'u'lláh had refused. And yet, looking at this young Nobleman, he could feel the disproportion.

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A post that would have crowned another life seemed, in this case, too small for the One to whom it was offered — "unworthy of Him." The minister could not have said what the higher aim was; he had no way of knowing.

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He only knew, with the instinct of a man used to reading other men, that this one was not made for the ladder of the court, that some larger purpose lay behind His indifference, and that the wisest thing was to leave Him to it.

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The refusal was of a piece with everything else known of those years. This was the same young Bahá'u'lláh whom the people had begun to call the Father of the Poor — who emptied His wealth upon the destitute and stood fearlessly between the oppressed and their oppressors. A soul so free of the love of possessions, so unafraid of the powerful, was hardly likely to be captured by the offer of power itself.

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The detachment that gave away a fortune was the same detachment that waved off a ministry. He had no use for the rewards of the world, Shoghi Effendi's history makes plain, and He was contemptuous of its pomp and vanities. He could not be bought by office any more than He could be bound by gold.

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What the Prime Minister sensed but could not see was that the higher aim was real, and was nearer than anyone imagined.

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Within a few years the Báb would declare His mission in Shíráz, and the young Nobleman who had refused a seat in the government of Persia would arise as a fearless champion of a despised and persecuted Cause — trading the safety of high station for the dangers of a new faith, and beginning the long road of exile and imprisonment that would carry Him from the comfort of His father's house to the prison-city of ʿAkká.

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The office He would not take was the first of many things He set aside. He was keeping Himself, though the world did not know it, for a work no ministry could contain.

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So the believers, remembering His Birth, remember also this early and revealing choice. The Child born into a house of ministers grew into a young Man who, offered the honour His house had always held, looked at it and let it go — because, as even the Prime Minister of Persia could feel, He had some higher aim in view.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi.*

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