How numerous those who expend all their wealth in the path of God, and whom We find, at the hour of His Revelation, to be of the rebellious and the froward! How many those who keep the fast in the daytime, only to protest against the One by Whose very command the ordinance of the fast was first established! Such men are, in truth, of the ignorant. And how many those who subsist on the coarsest bread, who take for their only seat the grass of the field, and who undergo every manner of hardship, merely to maintain their superiority in the eyes of men! Thus do We expose their deeds, that this may serve as a warning unto others. These are the ones who subject themselves to all manner of austerities before the gaze of others in the hope of perpetuating their names, whilst in reality no mention shall remain of them save in the curses and imprecations of the dwellers of earth and heaven.
Judgement
God judges each soul on its own merits. The Guardian cannot tell you what the attitude of God would be towards a person who lives a good life in most ways, but not in this way. All he can tell you is that it is forbidden by Bahá’u’lláh, and that one so afflicted should struggle and struggle again to overcome it. We must be hopeful of God's Mercy but not impose upon it.
Say, O people, we ask a word from you by the Most Great Truth -- and we will take God as a witness between us, verily He is the Beloved, the Beneficent; -- present yourselves before the Throne of God, then let your speech be unprejudiced and be ye of those who are just. Was God the powerful over His matter, or were ye of those who are powerful? Was He the unconstrained in Himself, as ye say, "verily He doeth that which He pleaseth, nor is asked concerning that which He wisheth," or, are ye yourselves the unconstrained, and say this word merely be tradition, in the same manner as was said by your fathers, in the times of the messengers?
