A Note to the Lost Boys, Part I :: Baha'i Perspectives

A Note to the Lost Boys, Part I

nava July 13th, 2008

As little children we are fed the notion that growing up is bad. That childhood marks the best years of our lives: we are carefree, we are blamelessly irresponsible, we are pure-hearted, we are truly happy. Movies like Peter Pan featuring the Lost Boys, commercial ads for companies such as Toys’r'Us, with the logo, “I don’t wanna grow up…”, and a slew of other media, teach us that being a child is the peak and culmination of the human experience.

How terribly sad it would be if this notion were actually true. That by 10 or 11 the best years of our lives have faded. Our innocence can exist no longer. And even worse is the thought that the best years of our lives are those marked by immaturity.

Think of the loss when a young man full of potential and intelligence wastes his day away sitting on a couch playing video games. A young man who was created to serve humanity, who was endowed with gifts and talents to do just this — to work for the edification of himself and his compatriots — and who instead never develops these talents — perhaps unaware himself that he is even in possession of them! What could he achieve if he weren’t too busy behaving like a child?

And what about the young woman who wastes her day away gossiping and keeping track of who’s wearing-what and how-tightly-it-fits and who’s-dating-who, and when will that-who-date-me? A young woman who was created noble, who was endowed with treasures and gems that through vigorous education can be unearthed to contribute to the well-being of us all. A young woman who will one day be the primary educator of her children — what will she teach them when her days have been occupied with mindless babble and mundane concerns?

It sounds terribly stereotypical and yet these scenarios, while pedestrian, are all-too-often real. A world full of people who may exist but hardly live.

Baha’is believe that the coming of Baha’u'llah, the most recent in a line of Messengers of God sent to draw people of all nations and races closer to God and reveal the laws and teachings appropriate for the age, marked a new stage in our collective maturity and capacity. So what happens when an entire society behaves like a child? When a people who’ve reached the age of their collective maturity and are enabled with new gifts and capabilities refuse to behave accordingly?

Shoghi Effendi explains that:

The recrudescence of religious intolerance, of racial animosity, and of patriotic arrogance; the increasing evidences of selfishness, of suspicion, of fear and of fraud; the spread of terrorism, of lawlessness, of drunkenness and of crime; the unquenchable thirst for, and the feverish pursuit after, earthly vanities, riches and pleasures; the weakening of family solidarity; the laxity in parental control; the lapse into luxurious indulgence; the irresponsible attitude towards marriage and the consequent rising tide of divorce; the degeneracy of art and music, the infection of literature, and the corruption of the press; the extension of the influence and activities of those “prophets of decadence” who advocate companionate marriage, who preach the philosophy of nudism, who call modesty an intellectual fiction, who refuse to regard the procreation of children as the sacred and primary purpose of marriage, who denounce religion as an opiate of the people, who would, if given free rein, lead back the human race to barbarism, chaos, and ultimate extinction — these appear as the outstanding characteristics of a decadent society, a society that must either be reborn or perish.

The Lost Boys of Peter Pan did eventually make their way out of Never Never Land, even settling down with jobs and family. Baha’is believe that through the teachings of Baha’u'llah, the lost boys and girls of our world can make their way out of the spiritual never-never land they sink deeper into each day; that through the spiritual reawakening of the entire world our society can be reborn before it perishes. But we must act, and we must act swiftly.

(Part II will address some of the ways Baha’is the world over are working toward this reawakening.)