Religion as Light and Darkness
Bahá’u’lláh’s
severest condemnation is reserved for the barriers which, throughout history,
organized religion has erected between humanity and the Revelations of God.
Dogmas, inspired by popular superstition and perfected by misspent intelligence,
have repeatedly been imposed on a Divine process whose purpose has at all times
been spiritual and moral. Laws of social interaction, revealed for the purpose
of consolidating community life, have been made the basis for structures of
arcane doctrine and practice which have burdened the masses whose benefit they
were supposed to serve. Even the exercise of intellect, the chief tool possessed
by the human race, has been deliberately hampered, producing an eventual
breakdown in the dialogue between faith and science upon which civilized life
depends.
The consequence of this sorry record is
the worldwide disrepute into which religion has fallen. Worse, organized
religion has become itself a most virulent cause of hatred and warfare among the
peoples of the world. “Religious fanaticism
and hatred,” Bahá’u’lláh warned over a century ago, “are a world- devouring
fire, whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can, alone,
deliver mankind from this desolating affliction.”85
Those whom God will hold responsible for
this tragedy, Bahá’u’lláh says, are humanity's religious leaders, who have
presumed to speak for Him throughout history. Their attempts to make the Word of
God a private preserve, and its exposition a means for personal aggrandizement,
have been the greatest single handicap against which the advancement of
civilization has struggled. In the pursuit of their ends, many of them have not
hesitated to raise their hands against the Messengers of God themselves, at
their advent:
Leaders of
religion, in every age, have hindered their people from attaining the shores of
eternal salvation, inasmuch as they held the reins of authority in their mighty
grasp. Some for the lust of leadership, others through want of knowledge and
understanding, have been the cause of the deprivation of the people. By their
sanction and authority, every Prophet of God hath drunk from the chalice of
sacrifice...86
In an address to the clergy of all
faiths, Bahá’u’lláh warns of the responsibility which they have so carelessly
assumed in history:
Ye are even
as a spring. If it be changed, so will the streams that branch out from it be
changed. Fear God, and be numbered with the godly. In like manner, if the heart
of man be corrupted, his limbs will also be corrupted. And similarly, if the
root of a tree be corrupted, its branches, and its offshoots, and its leaves,
and its fruits, will be corrupted.
87
These same statements, revealed at a
time when religious orthodoxy was one of the major powers throughout the world,
declared that this power had effectively ended, and that the ecclesiastical
caste has no further social role in world history:
“O concourse of divines! Ye shall not henceforward behold yourselves possessed
of any power...”88
To a particularly vindictive opponent among the Muslim clergy, Bahá’u’lláh said:
“Thou art even as the last trace of sunlight upon the mountaintop. Soon will it
fade away as decreed by God, the All-Possessing, the Most High. Thy glory and
the glory of such as are like thee have been taken away...”89
It is not the organization of religious
activity which these statements address, but the misuse of such resources.
Bahá’u’lláh's writings are generous in their appreciation not only of the great
contribution which organized religion has brought to civilization, but also of
the benefits which the world has derived from the self-sacrifice and love of
humanity that have characterized clergymen and religious orders of all faiths:
Those
divines ... who are truly adorned with the ornament of knowledge and of a goodly
character are, verily, as a head to the body of the world, and as eyes to the
nations....90
Rather, the challenge to all people,
believers and unbelievers, clergy and laymen alike, is to recognize the
consequences now being visited upon the world as the result of the universal
corruption of the religious impulse. In the prevailing alienation of humanity
from God over the past century, a relationship on which the fabric of moral life
itself depends has broken down. Natural faculties of the rational soul, vital to
the development and maintenance of human values, have become universally
discounted:
The
vitality of men’s belief in God is dying out in every land; nothing short of His
wholesome medicine can ever restore it. The corrosion of ungodliness is eating
into the vitals of human society; what else but the Elixir of His potent
Revelation can cleanse and revive it?... The Word of God, alone, can claim the
distinction of being endowed with the capacity required for so great and
far-reaching a change.91
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