I can’t recall just how often I’ve found myself in this situation. Doing this effectively, no doubt, requires the individual to be familiar with the general customs, habits and practices of the “target audience”.

More and more, I find that I am speaking to a secular audience– an audience that visibly locks up when the word “religion” is mentioned, yet opens up and listens when using the word “cause” instead. This got me thinking: what do these words conjure in the mind of the average individual? Here are some ideas, based on personal interactions and observations, so please take them at face value:

Religion: taboo, intolerant, close-minded, divisive, personal, unnecessary.
Cause: courage, purpose, direction, praiseworthy, necessary.

Would you agree with this list? It is interesting how the positive aspects of religion have been sidelined, yet with the division caused by multiple, seemingly-conflicting belief systems, can people really be blamed for thinking in this way? On the other hand, Baha’u'llah gives us a stark warning of the consequences of ignoring the pursuit of religion:

Should the lamp of religion be obscured, chaos and confusion will ensue, and the lights of fairness and justice, of tranquillity and peace cease to shine. Unto this will bear witness every man of true understanding.

(Baha’u'llah, Tablets of Baha’u'llah, p. 125)

It is clear that, throughout history and across societies, religion has been the primary force regulating moral conduct and fostering a spirit of brotherhood between people. So, as unpopular as the concept of religion may be nowadays, it is evident that the “chaos and confusion” in the world is a direct consequence of the absence of true religion.

What about describing this Faith as a Cause? Out of curiosity, I performed an electronic search through an important Baha’i work, and found that the frequency of appearance of the word “Cause” outnumbers “Religion” by a 2:1 ratio. This is food for thought! Yet, it is understandable when one ponders the magnitude of the mission revealed by Baha’u'llah, and the amount of dedicated sacrifice required to achieve it. How can one explain, in 30 seconds, that Baha’is are busy building the pattern of a future world society; laying the foundations of a structure that will, in time, lead to the political, social and economic unification of the planet? Try as I might, my explanations tend to be wholly inadequate.

Unification of the whole of mankind is the hall-mark of the stage which human society is now approaching. Unity of family, of tribe, of city-state, and nation have been successively attempted and fully established. World unity is the goal towards which a harassed humanity is striving. Nation-building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in state sovereignty is moving towards a climax. A world, growing to maturity, must abandon this fetish, recognize the oneness and wholeness of human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery that can best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life.

(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u'llah, p. 202)

I believe it is the latter.  Yes, there is work to be done, and a lot of it.  But it can be done.  It will be done, and we will be reborn.  We will flourish.  We will arise.  So when do we start, and how do we start?

We start…today.  That much should be abundantly clear.  There is no time to waste, not a moment to lose. As our environmental woes amass, moral decadence prevails, depression and suicide rates are on the rise, and materialism infects the cells of society like a terminal cancer, how can we hesitate for even a moment to stand up and make a change?  How can we doubt for even one instant that things are not okay and will never be okay until we get out there and do something? But we can’t do it alone.  It would be foolish to think ourselves capable of transforming this mess we currently live into the promised Kingdom of God on earth on our own.

Fortunately, we have Baha’u'llah.  We have the Revelation of Baha’u'llah.  The teachings that are apropriate for the ills of today.  You see, God sends us Divine Teachers (what many refer to as Prophets, what Bahá’ís term Manifestations or Messengers of God) to guide humanity and draw us nearer to Him. These Manifestations of God do this by bringing us laws and teachings according to our collective capacity as a human race. These laws are both new and the same. They are appropriate for the day in which we live — as every new age has its own ill, and every new ill requires a different medicine, the social teachings change and address the specific “disease” of the time — and the spiritual laws which are eternal and unchanging are renewed rather than rewritten.

This accounts for the varying religions.  There are so many, not because one is right and all the rest are false, but because each authentic religion was right in its own historical context, was necessary for the age in which it was revealed, and is renewed, not lost, when the next Manifestation comes. So essentially, there is only one religion — “eternal in the past, eternal in the future” — though at different times it had different names and different laws. Even different teachers. Much like the child going through the same school, but at each new grade learning newer and more complex ideas, humanity is educated by God in the same progressive and gradual way.

Therefore, we believe that Baha’u'llah, the most recent in this series, has brought the teachings which are appropriate for today. He says:

The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.

Equipped with the teachings of Baha’u'llah, the very elixirs for the diseases of the age, Baha’is the world over are engaged in specific core activities aimed at addressing the root causes which result in the symptoms of these diseases plaguing humanity. Too many organizations and institutions address it the other way around — they address the symptoms, not the cause. This at best postpones further symptoms, but does nothing in the way of truly curing and preventing the problems from reocurring.

We believe in grassroots change. We believe in the power of the individual to arise and make a difference. To be an active agent of social transformation, rather than a passive bystander in the perishing of society, or someone who sits on his or her couch all day feeling depressed about the world but offering nothing more than complaints.

Our core activities include, as a vital component, children’s classes and junior youth classes. These classes aim at infusing these youngsters with morality, all-too lacking and underrated these days, so that they can use their lives for the betterment of society.  They are also expected to engage in service activities as a group so that the love of service, which may not be inherently there, can grow and together, they can gradually learn to be the kind of people who care about more than just their own existences.

We support, encourage, and are participating in social and economic development projects, especially those aimed at helping the under-served in our world have a voice, provide for themselves and their families.

We are working for change.

But, we can’t do it alone. We don’t want to do it alone. We want to work shoulder-to-shoulder with our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, our friends’ friends — in taking responsibility for our planet and together, rebuilding the world in which we live. Transforming it into that long-awaited Kingdom of God on earth.

Boys and girls, men and women, let’s rise up off our couches.  Put away the video remote control.  Stop checking your Facebook updates.  Forget about who your ex-boyfriend is talking to today.  Let’s not be those lost boys and girls.  Let’s be the agents of change.  Let’s transform ourselves and our planet, and let’s do it today.

• Iran Press Watch: The Baha’i Community is an initiative of scholar Ahang Rabbani, in which he translates articles about the situation of the Baha’is in Iran, as and when they appear in the Persian-language press. This site will certainly contribute to the growing awareness worldwide of the plight of Baha’is in the Faith’s country of origin.
• Baha’i Tributes, according to the About section, “is a blog which aims to share appreciations made about the Bahá’í Faith by outstanding figures from the worlds of politics, literature and religion and other fields of human endeavour.” Here is a snippet from one of the entries, the immortal words of Helen Keller:

The philosophy of Bahá’u’lláh deserves the best thought we can give it. I am returning the book so that other blind people who have more leisure than myself may be “shown a ray of Divinity” and their hearts be “bathed in an inundation of eternal love.”

I take this opportunity to thank you for your kind thought of me, and for the inspiration which even the most cursory reading of Bahá’u’lláh’s life cannot fail to impart…

1. Highly significant or important especially bringing about or marking the beginning of a new development or era.

Amidst all the fanfare surrounding the end of a unique journey to presidency in the United States, it seems apt to make mention of a historic American journey of a different kind, which occurred some one hundred years ago. A landmark event that, to this date, not many people know about.

It was in the course of these epoch-making journeys and before large and representative audiences, at times exceeding a thousand people, that ‘Abdu’l-Baha expounded, with brilliant simplicity, with persuasiveness and force, and for the first time in His ministry, those basic and distinguishing principles of His Father’s Faith…

The independent search after truth, unfettered by superstition or tradition;
the oneness of the entire human race, the pivotal principle and fundamental doctrine of the Faith;
the basic unity of all religions;
the condemnation of all forms of prejudice, whether religious, racial, class or national;
the harmony which must exist between religion and science;
the equality of men and women, the two wings on which the bird of human kind is able to soar;
the introduction of compulsory education;
the adoption of a universal auxiliary language;
the abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty;
the institution of a world tribunal for the adjudication of disputes between nations;
the exaltation of work, performed in the spirit of service, to the rank of worship;
the glorification of justice as the ruling principle in human society, and of religion as a bulwark for the protection of all peoples and nations;
and the establishment of a permanent and universal peace as the supreme goal of all mankind

– these stand out as the essential elements of that Divine polity which He proclaimed to leaders of public thought as well as to the masses at large in the course of these missionary journeys.

(Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By)

Fast forward a hundred years. Switch on the TV or tune into the radio, and many of these society-transforming ideals are now widely acknowledged by politicians and leaders of thought alike.

Those that aren’t accepted yet, eventually will be.

What remains is an acceptance of their Source.