To hold the Imams in the highest esteem is a duty enjoined on us by God. He has associated the devotion to them with the devotion to Himself and the devotion to the Prophet. He has laid emphasis on our devotion to them and has further ordered us to refer our disputes to them.
In view of the fact that our devotion to the Prophet is just the same as our devotion to God, it is incumbent on us all to revere the Imam of our time to the same extent to which our Prophet was revered by the followers of his days.
It behoves every one of us then that we should hold them in reverence and bow down to them with humility. It is our bounden duty to have a greater respect for them than we have for the worldly kings and to stand in much greater awe of them than we do in the case of the dignitaries of the world. Let our respect for the Imams and our fear of them be prompted by no other motive than our desire to please God who has elevated them to the highest position. Worldly men respect the kings because of their wealth and they fear them because of their pomp and power. But the followers of the Imams should revere their spiritual heads because of the dignity of the Imamat which they carry themselves and they should stand in awe of them because of the dazzling light of divine wisdom which radiates from their foreheads.
Let us look upon them as kings in the realm of religion and let us respect them because God respects them. If we fail to do so we shall be incurring the wrath of God and the consequences will be serious. Let us look at them with our senses intact. Let us look at them with eager eyes and an anxiety to look at them again and again. There is a tradition to the effect that "To look at the Imam is devotion and to look at the Quran is devotion." The word looking in this tradition does not mean an absent-minded-glance. It means thoughtful looking. For, to a mere looker-on without any thinking, there is no advantage from his looking at the Quran. God says, "Do they not ponder on the Quran? Are their minds locked up?" There is also a tradition to the effect that "Reading of one verse thoughtfully is better than reading the Quran thoughtlessly for the whole night." There is another tradition which says, "The Kharjees read the Quran but it does not go down in their hearts." It means that they merely mutter the Quran by their tongues and they do not apply their minds to it. Hence it does not reach their hearts and it does them no good.
Let us then pay full attention to the words of the Imams when we listen to them. Let us be all ears when they talk and let us ponder over the matter when they finish their talk. We must bear in mind that their words are practically the words of the Prophet himself. For, devotion to them and devotion to God and the Prophet are linked together by God. Let us obey their commands and prohibitions. Let us do what they want us to do and let us keep aloof from what they do not want us to do.
In what we hear from them not directly but through the agency of news let us use our discretion. For, every word of them is full of wisdom and every expression of theirs means to us a world of good. It is a gift of God to understand these things. God confers this gift on those whom He likes and withholds it from those whom He dislikes.
If any one of us finds the words of the Imam highly complicated and beyond his depth, if he does not understand the meaning or dislikes some part of it or finds it useless or meaningless then let him realise that the fault lies with him. He should admit his inefficiency and refer the matter to some one else who is better informed in this than himself to enlighten him. If he cannot find any one to solve his difficulty, even then he should retain his regard for these traditions and his faith in them. He should adopt the next best course to know them and trust the Imam for the rest.
source : http://www.amaana.org
