Some people accept the Faith, not as a response to the
divine Summons to God's service, but as a way to find love and happiness and
companionship and understanding for themselves. At the beginning this is only
natural, for people are sorely in need of such spiritual strengths, but if such
people do not soon progress to the point where they are more concerned about
what they can do for God and His Cause than what it can do for them, they will
surely become disillusioned and drift away. Arousing in the hearts of the
friends the enthusiasm and spirit of selfless service that will carry them over
this transition is one of the most fundamental aspects of deepening and
consolidation. Deepening is far more a matter of developing a spiritual
attitude, devotion and selflessness than it is of acquiring information,
although this, of course, is also important.
- The Universal House of Justice (From a letter dated 22 July 1981
written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer;
compilation: ‘Removal of Administrative Rights’, prepared by the Research
Department of the Universal House of Justice, 1993)
