Many people make a special effort at this time of year to share love and joy with our family and friends.
Some also do a mental and spiritual self-review and resolve to become better people in the year ahead. This check-up takes a measure of courage, honesty and discipline, and taking the next step — changing our behavior — requires an even greater measure of each of these qualities.
We must walk on faith, based on the belief that we can change, and through personal transformation make the world a better place.
But for many reasons, among the generality of American citizens, we lack faith and the wellspring of hope it brings. People live in fear for their health, their livelihood and their way of life. Tribes, ethnic groups and nations threaten war and inflict it on the weakest and most defenseless. Madmen carry out brutal, inhuman acts designed only to terrorize, kill, maim and tear down all this good. In one sense, it makes sense to lack hope for the future.
A mindful and attentive person who sees all this, and concludes the world is falling apart, is absolutely right. We all have front-row seats for Humpty Dumpty’s great fall, and few have any reasonable explanation for why this is happening, what it means, where we are headed and how our collapsing world can be put back together, if it is even possible. In large part, synagogues, churches and mosques offer scant hope that things in this life can be made right.
This might be the main reason so many choose to respond to this existential dilemma by ignoring the disturbing evidence and numbing the pain with substances and 200 channels of distractions. Enormous wealth flows to those who provide superficial entertainment. Grown men play games so people can watch and bet on them and we pay them $50 million a year. And to waste more time some form fantasy leagues, because the day-long fantasy on television isn’t fantastic enough. Fortunes flow to suppliers of mind-altering substances, alcohol foremost among them. Our demigods include entertainers who keep the circus interesting. Demand grows for anything offering distraction and respite from the mounting evidence that something in our world is really rotten.
Millions of people, from every part of the globe, from all countries, ethnicities, social strata and religious backgrounds, have come to believe these ancient promises are being fulfilled. They share a belief in the teachings of Baha’u’llah (The Glory of God), prophet-founder of the Baha’i´ Faith.
He lived in the 19th century (1817-1892), and called on the kings and religious leaders (the shah, Queen Victoria, Napoleon III, the Ottoman sultan, the pope) to come together and establish what he called “the Most Great Peace.” They rejected his message and soon humanity suffered the “convulsions and chaos” of two world wars and remains afflicted by other conflicts today.
His prescriptive remedy: “For the healing of the world is union of all its peoples in one universal cause, one common faith.” And the several million Baha’is (his followers) around the world find faith, hope, direction and a “sense of purpose in his teachings. Among them: 1) a call for every person to set aside superstitious beliefs, tradition and blind imitation of ancestral forms in religion and investigate reality for himself; 2) a command to recognize the oneness of humanity: “Ye are all the leaves of one tree,” and “There are no differences or distinctions of race among you in the sight of God,” 3) that religion must be in conformance with science and reason; 4) that religion must be the source of unity and fellowship in the world; and 5) and a call for the abandonment of “all forms of prejudice (race, tribe, class, ethnicity, nationality, etc.) and that until existing prejudices are entirely removed, the world of humanity will not and cannot attain peace, prosperity and composure.”
Americans who profess belief in a Heavenly Father must ask ourselves, “How is He guiding us today?” And, “Is the current state of world affairs what He most desires for us?” Might we at least consider an open-minded examination of the teachings referenced above, and the historical facts about their author? Beyond that, could we not strive to apply them in our never-ending search for meaning, truth and personal transformation? And might we not then begin to see, among individuals and families across our city and nation, a substantive new hope based on faith and a shift in thinking and world outlook? Our goal is not converts, but the building of new relationships and communities based on justice, freedom from prejudice, and a love for all people, teachings that form an essential part of “the changeless faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future.”
Robert Ramirez is a member of the Baha’i Community of McAllen.
