If I had to briefly describe the prevailing emotions of people today I’d use words like, bewildered, impatient and angry. With no visible progress towards solving the problems of society, we have boiled everything down to one culprit, political partitionship and we apply the defining and dividing terms such as conservative, liberal, democrat, republican, libertarian, independent or progressive.
The average person speaks of not trusting society’s institutions ― government, church, school systems, etc., however, generally we never hear of that lack of trust on the nightly news. The questions that reporters ask are focused on politics, “What will the President propose to “fix” the health-care system,” or “Why did the city council vote to close off a street and divert traffic onto a secondary road?” If it’s not politics, its human tragedy, such as crime, fires, shootings, stabbings and car wreaks.
The underlying reason that people no longer trust institutions is that society’s institutions are no longer trustworthy. They have lost the power to positively impact people. I can say that because institutions, like people, have a natural life-span. When an institution is new there is great expectation that it will solve the dilemmas for which it was created. However, over time its influence proves to be only marginal. As it functions and fails to remedy the ills assigned to it, people both within the institution and without, begin losing faith, losing trust with it.
What is needed is a fresh start. Unfortunately, societies don’t like to change. Think of the Magna Carta, English Common Law, the U.S. Constitution, these charters defining society were progressive in their day, but are held in such high esteem today that there is little chance of meaningful change. In two hundred and thirty-one years the U.S. Constitution has had only twenty-seven tweaks, otherwise known as amendments, and there are many “strict constructionists” who whole-heartedly believe that if something isn’t explicitly written in the constitution, then one cannot infer anything based on how the founding fathers acted or spoke, or how the constitution itself addressed other subjects. The constitution does provide for future constitutional conventions, conventions that could vote for a major re-write of the document or even scrape the current constitution in favor of a brand-new 21st century document, but honestly can you see that happening?
I want to propose a different way of looking at this. I suggest that society is not only progressive in nature, but indeed is meant to be progressive. Furthermore, I support the idea that if we look critically at the foundation of society we find a divine hand at work. There is a theological point that has become so common a thought that it has become a cliché in many people’s minds. That thought is “God works in Mysterious Ways.” The theological point is that God is a mystery. Another way to say that is that God is an unknowable essence. Essence, because when we actually ponder God, we realize that “He” is not an accurate descriptor. God doesn’t have a gender. He is not a “he” or a “she”. The descriptor “it” is actually more accurate, however, “essence” sounds better than “it.”
Yet, the writings of the Bahá’í Faith, or Bahá’í Religion, if you prefer contains the following writing from Bahá’u’lláh, in which he writes in first person for God, stating,
“O SON OF MAN!
Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.”
This statement from Bahá’u’lláh’s book, The Hidden Words, supports the idea that God is unknowable when it states, “veiled in My immemorial being….” In yet another writing from that same book, He says,
“O SON OF MAN!
Magnify My cause that I may reveal unto thee the mysteries of My greatness and shine upon thee with the light of eternity.”
These two statements seem contradictory due to the line in the second, “…that I may reveal unto thee the mysteries of My greatness….” Combining the two it seems that Baha’u’llah is saying that although God is an unknowable essence and a mystery, He has provided a mechanism by which we can know Him.
That mechanism, according to Bahá’u’lláh, is the periodic appearance of the Manifestations of God who serve as God’s Messengers, His mouthpieces. These unique figures such as Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Christ and Bahá’u’lláh are created especially by God as His representative to His human creation. They appear once every 500 to 1,000 years to serve two divine purposes, to remind us of God’s previous messages and to present us with additional information, and they come as society is breaking down having exhausted the residual spiritual power left from the appearance of the last Manifestation.
If we accept this premise, the decay of society and the mounting mistrust of our once glorious institutions becomes understandable. As others protest to change one significant segment of society such as gender inequality or the degradation of the environment, thinking that this will somehow make everything “right,” Bahá’ís (those who accept the premise) know that in order for the new, spiritually powered model of society to recreate humanity, the old moribund model must completely give way.
So it was when Christ came to invigorate Jewish belief and society. In the book of Matthew, 5:17, He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” In a sense, however, it is correct to say that the fulfillment of the law, or prophecy, is in fact the destruction of the old. The old always gives way to the new. My parents who were once young, vital contributing members of society are now old and incapable of contributing anything new. My generation is also aging, I myself am now retired, and the time is coming for me to move over so that my son’s generation and my grand-daughter’s generation have their time in the sun. Like people, societies also age, some renewing themselves through the divine energy, but others aging and then dying out. Where today are the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Huns, Mayans, Aztecs, etc.?
All Faiths have a path to the mystery of God and enjoy the energy that emanates from the spiritual realm and is manifest through the person of the Manifestation of God. The aphorism “The rising tide lifts all boats,” speaks to the idea that a fresh release of spiritual power benefits everyone and every religion. Therefore, each has something to offer in the reconstruction of society, yet with the passage of time, the energy they have access to dims and is harder and harder for them to harass and focus.
The Faith of Bahá’u’lláh represents the latest, but by no means the last, message from the divine. As one analogy states the first light of the dawn of its day has now risen above the horizon, whereas each of the other Faiths have now entered their sunset or even the midnight of their day. With no malic in my heart, I ask sincerely, how can the Church of Rome represent the high morality of His Holiness, the Christ, when it has such a tainted history of the actions of its priests?
The son of Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was appointed in his Father’s Will and Testament as the head of His Faith upon His passing. Regarding the need for a perfect educator, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá illustrated his Father’s teachings, stating in a book called “Some Answered Questions” the following,
“…it is plain and evident that man needs an educator, and this educator must be unquestionably and indubitably perfect in all respects and distinguished above all men. Otherwise, if he should be like the rest of humanity, he could not be their educator, more particularly because he must be at the same time their material and human as well as their spiritual educator — that is to say, he must teach men to organize and carry out physical matters, and to form a social order in order to establish cooperation and mutual aid in living so that material affairs may be organized and regulated for any circumstances that may occur. In the same way he must establish human education — that is to say, he must educate intelligence and thought in such a way that they may attain complete development, so that knowledge and science may increase, and the reality of things, the mysteries of beings and the properties of existence may be discovered; that, day by day, instructions, inventions and institutions may be improved; and from things perceptible to the senses conclusions as to intellectual things may be deduced. He must also impart spiritual education, so that intelligence and comprehension may penetrate the metaphysical world, and may receive benefit from the sanctifying breeze of the Holy Spirit, and may enter into relationship with the Supreme Concourse. He must so educate the human reality that it may become the center of the divine appearance, to such a degree that the attributes and the names of God shall be resplendent in the mirror of the reality of man, and the holy verse “We will make man in Our image and likeness” shall be realized.”
The perfect educator discussed is the Manifestation of God, who appears at the lowest ebb of society and through His appearance jump-charges both the individual soul and the collective societies of humanity.
The Faith of Bahá’u’lláh began in 1844, in the Middle-Eastern country of Persia (now Iran) when it’s forerunner, a Manifestation in His own right, appeared in the city of Shiraz. He was known as the Báb, translated as “the Gate” in English. The corrupt clergy of Shia Islam wasn’t happy to see Him or hear His claim. On July 9, 1850, just six years into His mission, that same Shia clergy convinced the government of the Shah (the King) to execute Him as a danger to the state.
But, similar to all of God’s Manifestations, His Faith couldn’t be stopped. In those six years since He announced His Faith, there were tens of thousands of dedicated believers. In 1863, Bahá’u’lláh, the most prominent believer of the Báb, announced that He was the promised One foretold by the Báb, and the Faith of the Báb became the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Since Bahá’u’lláh’s passing in 1892, His Faith has grown to over seven million believers living in every nation on earth, with the only exception being North Korea.
The principle focus of Bahá’u’lláh was the establishment of Justice. He wrote,
“O Son of Spirit! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behoveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.”
With divine insight He saw that the multiple societies, religions, philosophes and governments across the planet were a hindrance to the establishment of planet-wide justice, without the establishment of unity, and that unity had to begin within His own Faith. Bahá’u’lláh was a prolific writer, writings more than a hundred books and thousands of letters, writings that His followers consider Holy Text, just as Christians consider the Bible is Holy Text.
In His Most Holy Book, He lays out His formula for the establishment of unity. It began with His Will and Testament appointing His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as the sole authorized interpreter of His writings, and the Prefect Exemplar (example) of how a person should live. He also provided for a grand council, called the Universal House of Justice, to one day guide His Faith, and He called for Local Houses of Justice to someday be established.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in his turn, 1892-1921, appointed his grand-son Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Faith and head of the Universal House of Justice once it was established. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá further defined the roles of the Universal House of Justice and the local Houses of Justice and established a link between them, the National House of Justice.
During Shoghi Effendi’s time as Guardian, 1921–1957, he set about systematic global plans to expand and develop the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Part of those plans was the establishment of Bahá’í communities in every country and when the time was right the establishment of a National Spiritual Assembly, the nascent House of Justice in those countries. In 1923 only three National Assemblies existed, by 2012 they had grown to 181 institutions. The membership on each of these Assemblies, local and national, as well as on the Universal House of Justice are elected positions. This means that the Bahá’í Faith is the only international organization that is organized by free elections. As a part of his systematic planning Shoghi Effendi also established two appointed groups, one whose focus is to facilitate the expansion of the Faith and the second who deal with protecting the Faith from schism.
Between Bahá’u’lláh’s writings praising unity and the organizational mechanism for protecting it, the Bahá’í Faith has managed to transit its first 176 years without any major threat to its cohesion.
The Bahá’í Administrative Order welds no power outside of the Faith, has no ambition for money, power or territory, believes strongly that the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh are divine in origin and therefore, are destined to be the guiding principles of a future global society and believes that society will be established mostly by others than members of His Faith.
As such Bahá’í institutions, from the local level to the Universal House of Justice, are independent, unbiased arbitrators. Literally, tens of thousands of non-Bahá’í individuals have requested time before Bahá’í institutions to gain their perspective on various issues. Like the perfect educator spoken of in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, people long for such an unbiased dispenser of justice in order to trust that its pronouncement is in fact just.
To make a tangential point related to this conversation allow me to say that Bahá’u’lláh teaches that every individual should consider Faith in general using their own intelligence rather than relying on the opinions of others. His son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stated it as follows,
“Among these teachings was the independent investigation of reality so that the world of humanity may be saved from the darkness of imitation and attain to the truth; may tear off and cast away this ragged and outgrown garment of 1,000 years ago and may put on the robe woven in the utmost purity and holiness in the loom of reality. As reality is one and cannot admit of multiplicity, therefore different opinions must ultimately become fused into one.”
That point is that everything about the Bahá’í Faith is geared towards building trust, unity and justice. Another tangential point to make is that Bahá’í conversations about the Faith follow these principles of trust and unity. Although Bahá’ís are always excited to talk to others about our Faith, Bahá’u’lláh forbids us from proselytizing others. To clarify, to proselytize someone means to attempt to convert them to one’s Faith in an aggressive, pressuring sort of way.
Therefore, proselytizing someone would be interfering with their right to engage in “independent investigation of reality”, or truth. Indeed, this blog site is dedicated to discussing the current state of society in regard to the Post categories of Justice, Peace, Racism, Gender inequality and One Human Family, as well as serve as a presentation platform for presenting the Bahá’í Faith in a respectful, cordial, intellectual manner.
