Yet another aspect of the Faith that can be grasped more
fully as the close of the first century of the Formative Age approaches is the
nature and pattern of the organic growth and development of the Bahá’í
community. Shoghi Effendi refers to the community’s organic development and to
its organic life, which reflects the characteristics it shares with the
unfoldment of a living organism and with the coherent, integrated, and
harmonious nature of its component parts. He speaks of the “the internal functions
of the organic Bahá’í community” (Shoghi Effendi, ‘God Passes By'), explaining that
its “embryonic state, shall evolve within the shell of His law, and shall forge
ahead, undivided and unimpaired, till it embraces the whole of mankind” (Shoghi
Effendi, “The World Order of Baha’u’llah’). The progress of national
communities is propelled by “prosecuting specific Plans designed to foster
their organic development” (Shoghi Effendi, ‘Messages to Canada’). “Such close
interaction, such complete cohesion, such continual harmony and fellowship
between the various agencies that contribute to the organic life, and
constitute the basic framework, of every properly functioning Bahá’í
community,” he states, “is a phenomenon which offers a striking contrast to the
disruptive tendencies which the discordant elements of present-day society so
tragically manifest” (Shoghi Effendi, ‘The Advent of Divine Justice’). And in
one of its earliest messages, the Universal House of Justice writes,
"In the human body, every cell, every organ, every nerve has
its part to play. When all do so the body is healthy, vigorous, radiant, ready for
every call made upon it. No cell, however humble, lives apart from the body,
whether in serving it or receiving from it. This is true of the body of mankind
in which God “hast endowed each and all with talents and faculties,” and is
supremely true of the body of the Bahá’í World Community, for this body is
already an organism, united in its aspirations, unified in its methods, seeking
assistance and confirmation from the same Source, and illumined with the
conscious knowledge of its unity. . . . The Bahá’í World Community, growing
like a healthy new body, develops new cells, new organs, new functions and powers
as it presses on to its maturity, when every soul, living for the Cause of God,
will receive from that Cause, health, assurance and the overflowing bounties of
Bahá’u’lláh which are diffused through His divinely ordained order." (The Universal
House of Justice, from a message dated September 1964)