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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Bahá'u'lláh forbids:
Bahá'u'lláh
