The way people treat you has pretty much everything to do with them and not with you. Anais Nin said it best, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Abdul-Baha lived a perfect example of this truth. No matter how he was treated, by friend or foe, he always responded with love and compassion, as shown in this recounting from Baha’i author Earl Redman:
As for His enemies, Abdu’l-Baha never let them feel anything but love. In the early 1900s, a fanatical Protestant missionary from Scotland named Mrs. Ramsey was “consumed with the fire of religious prejudice and hatred ….” Since the Protestant Mission had a dispensary and rented an apartment in the building in which Abdu’l-Baha lived … she was forced to pass Him several times a day. Whenever she encountered Him, “she would writhe in agony, grimace and lower her head while quickening her pace to a run.” One day as she passed by, the Master called her over and asked, “Mrs. Ramsey, do you know how much I love you?”
“How much?” she asked suspiciously.
“Look in your heart and see how much you hate me. To that extent I love you,” He responded.
Abdu’l-Baha encouraged the Baha’is – in fact, he encouraged every human being – to adopt the same attitude and actions. In a talk he gave in the United States in 1912, he said: “Inasmuch as God is clement and loving to His children, lenient and merciful toward our shortcomings, why should we be unkind and unforgiving toward each other?”
