To understand the nature of the interacting processes that,
in their totality, engender the expansion and consolidation of the Faith is
vital to the successful execution of the Plan. In your efforts to further such
understanding, you and your auxiliaries are encouraged to bear in mind a concept
that lies at the foundation of the current global enterprise and, indeed, at
the very heart of every stage of the Divine Plan, namely, that progress is
achieved through the development of three participants—the individual, the
institutions, and the community. Throughout human history, interactions among
these three have been fraught with difficulties at every turn, with the individual
clamouring for freedom, the institution demanding submission, and the community
claiming precedence. Every society has defined, in one way or another, the
relationships that bind the three, giving rise to periods of stability,
interwoven with turmoil. Today, in this age of transition, as humanity
struggles to attain its collective maturity, such relationships—nay, the very
conception of the individual, of social institutions, and of the
community—continue to be assailed by crises too numerous to count. The
worldwide crisis of authority provides proof enough. So grievous have been its
abuses, and so deep the suspicion and resentment it now arouses, that the world
is becoming increasingly ungovernable—a situation made all the more perilous by
the weakening of community ties.
- The Universal House of Justice (From a
message dated 28 December 2010 addressed to the Conference of the Continental
Boards of Counsellors)
