Surely, the believers, no matter how qualified they may be,
whether as teachers or administrators, and however high their intellectual and
spiritual merits, should never be looked upon as the standard whereby to
evaluate and measure the divine authority and mission of the Faith. It is to
the Teachings themselves, and to the lives of the Founders of the Cause that
the believers should look for their guidance and inspiration, and only by
keeping strictly to such a true attitude can they hope to establish their
loyalty to Bahá'u'lláh upon an enduring and unassailable basis.
(From a letter
dated 23 August 1939 written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual
believer; included in a compilation on ‘Issues Concerning Community Functioning’,
prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice’,
February 1993; also in Compilation of Compilations, vol. 3)
