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‘Progressive revelation’ even that term threw me off the first time I heard it. I was often told about a mirror reflecting the sun. I just barely got that one, but could never retell it to others and make sense. Because the core of the Baha’i Faith rest on progressive revelation to an extent that I feel unable to explain it adequately I have asked a fellow Baha’i to help me. Thankfully Justice St. Rain has given me permission to copy for you here some of his small booklet ‘One Light-Many Lamps’. Justice calls it ‘an exploration of why God would reveal so many different religions.’  Baha’is believe that the future will be marked by harmony and cooperation among the world’s religions. In 1995, for example, leaders from nine major religions, including the Baha’i Faith, gathered in London for a summit meeting on how they might work together to protect the global environment. The group founded the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC), and since then many of these same religious leaders have joined with the World Bank in a further initiative to tackle world poverty.  One Light-Many Lamps
“The purpose of religion as revealed from the heaven of God’s holy Will is to establish unity and concord amongst the peoples of the world; make it not the cause of dissension and strife. The religion of God and His divine law are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for the dawning of the light of unity amongst men.” --- Baha’u’llah That you are reading this booklet suggests that you are one of the millions of people who are curious about why there are so many different religions in the world. Perhaps you have even considered the possibility that they may all have something in common. If you are like most people, however, you are somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer diversity of religious expression. I mean, it would be nice to be able to find some common link between religions, but when faced with the undeniable differences in their theology, cosmology and practices, how could any sane person still believe that they all come from the same Source? Well, members of the Baha’i Faith do. We believe that there really is only one God, and that every major religion on earth is part of a single, unfolding plan that leads humanity to a greater understanding of our Creator. Insane? Perhaps. But if you give me just a few minutes of your time, I think I can offer some insights that will allow you to feel more comfortable with this wonderful possibility. Let me start by asking you a simple question: Is life on earth static, or do things change over time? A simple question, but crucial. Until a few hundred years ago, social, cultural, even scientific change took place at a pitifully slow pace. People could live their entire life and never encounter a new idea or significant new invention. From that world view, it was easy to imagine a “one-size-fits-all” solution to all human spiritual needs that would apply to everyone for all time. But now we live in a world of constant change. In retrospect, we can see that the world has changed dramatically over the past five thousand years. Cultures have grown, progressed and matured over the course of centuries. To the spiritually minded, it is obvious that if humanity has advanced, it is because God wants humanity to advance, God plans for humanity to advance, and God guides humanity’s advancement. And the way God guides humanity’s progress is through His Messengers, who are the Founders of the world’s major religions. What might that look like? Well, consider a school. The purpose of a school is to educate and guide students so that they can grow, advance and prosper. The Baha’i Teachings say that the purpose of religion is to help us grow and advance spiritually. In a school, students may have many teachers over the years, as they advance from class to class. Baha’is believe that the world has also had many teachers that have guided us as we matured and advanced from age to age. Many people recognize that Abraham, Moses and Jesus were all sent by the same God at different times, and if we look at their teachings, we can see that they build upon one another in a progressive way. Abraham taught that there is one God Who controls the laws of nature. Moses taught that God expects us to follow moral laws, and Jesus taught us that we should follow laws out of a spirit of love for God and each other. Each lesson built on the one before it. Each step seems small to us, but was significant at the time. Understanding the importance of progress in God’s plan for humanity helps explain why there are so many different religions, but it does not explain why they appear to be so different. The answer is that there are, indeed, some legitimate differences, but they are not as great as the differences that humans have made up along the way. Consider, again, the example of the school. If a first grade teacher warns students that they can’t subtract big numbers from small numbers and the fifth-grade teacher says that they can, both teachers would be correct. First graders live in a concrete world where you can’t have less than none, while a fifth grader is able to grasp the abstract concept of negative numbers. Religious understanding has also progressed from the purely concrete practices of animal sacrifice that the early Jewish community required, to the more abstract concepts of spiritual rebirth. When Christ taught that we must be “ born again.” He was using a metaphor that was beyond the reach of the earliest followers of Moses who worshiped a golden calf soon after leaving Egypt. It was the lessons learned through Moses that prepared the Jews for the message of Jesus, just as it is the lessons of the first grade teacher that prepares a student for fifth grade. Let me ask you another question. Do all children learn the same way? Until recently, educators assumed that lectures and rote memorization were the best way for everyone to learn. Now schools recognize many different learning styles. If we think of different cultures as different children of God, then we can appreciate the idea that God might use different tools, different symbols, and different processes when reaching people of different cultures. Each culture is like a unique personality. God’s Messengers tailored Their messages to capture the hearts and imaginations of Their followers. Baha’u’llah, the Prophet Founder of the Baha’i Faith, explains that each Messenger brought three sets of teachings—spiritual teachings, social teachings, and theological teachings. The spiritual teachings are the universal and eternal ethical principles that guide our behavior towards one another. Every messenger of god has preached the same spiritual message, though They used words, metaphors, and cultural references appropriate for the time and place in which They came. The social teachings are revealed for a specific time and place, and may be changed dramatically from one Messenger to the next. Marriage laws, dietary practices, forms of worship, etc, were designed to meet the needs of the culture of the time and prepare it to survive and thrive until the next Messenger arrived. All of this is fine, you say, but what about the really big differences between religions---the ones that can’t be reconciled by time or place? This is where theological teachings enter the picture. Theological explanations change based on our ability to understand them. Because they rely on personal interpretation, they are easily influenced by our hopes, desires and cultural expectations. No wonder they are the ones we argue about the most---both between religions and within religions. Theological are what divide Jews from Christians, Protestants from Catholics, Methodist from Baptist, and so on. If there is only one God and one religion, how did our theological teachings get so divided? I invite you to consider again the example of the school. If your child comes home from school and says ‘Teacher says that George Washington discovered America,” you would probably assume that your child misunderstood the teacher, not that the teacher was wrong. On the other hand if your child said “Teacher said when we die we go to live on Juniper,” you might give the teacher a call to find out what was really said. You would not take your child’s word for it, but you also wouldn’t want to ignore a potential source of conflict with your preferred world view. We don’t do that with other religions. We continue to take other people’s word for what their Prophets said. We assume a conflict and then dismiss the other religion as wrong, strange, crazy or backwards. If we treated our own religion with this level of indifference and distain, where would it lead us? Which of the several thousand distinct sects of your religion would you want to speak for you in explaining what your Founder said and what He meant when He said it? There is only one Jesus and one generally accepted New Testament, for example, and yet the differences between the different sects of Christianity are every bit as great as the differences between Christianity and Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism. In spite of this, no one would dare to suggest that there was more than one Jesus or that more than one God spoke to humanity through his teachings. So why would we insist that a different God spoke to Buddha or Krishna, just because their followers (many thousands of years after They lived) claim that their teachings are not compatible with those of Jesus. Let’s consider the most contentious difference between Western religious beliefs and Eastern: Reincarnation. They believe the references to “rebirth” are symbolic, not literal. Meanwhile, a 2003 Harris poll indicates that 21% of the people in the U.S. who consider themselves Christian also believe that they, personally, have been reincarnated. Many believe that Elias was reincarnated as John the Baptist and that Jesus will be reincarnated when He returns. So we have Christians believing Hindu beliefs and Hindus sharing Christian beliefs, and all of them are using scripture to support their perspectives. It is possible, then, that Buddha, Krishna and Jesus all taught the same thing, but that their followers chose to interpret it differently? If you read the sacred texts from each religion, you will be surprised by the similarities. The other major conflict between eastern and western religions is on the number of Gods they recognize. Common wisdom says that Christians, Jews, and Moslems believe in one God, while Hindus believe in hundreds of Gods and Buddhists don’t believe in any. Where is the common ground here? This question requires a level of openness and maturity that people bent on conflict are generally unwilling to invest. But if you are interested, here is an explanation. Baha’is believe that God is beyond human capacity to see, know or understand. While it is impossible to comprehend the essence of the infinite and eternal Creator of the entire Universe, it is possible to recognize and become attracted to the qualities of God that are reflected in His Creation---qualities such as compassion, creativity, patience, and power. When we love the light of God reflected in creation---and especially in His Messengers----then we become more spiritually radiant ourselves. The human soul is like a mirror reflecting the light of the sun. We can love the light, but we will never be able to comprehend the sun itself. When we try to describe the unknowable, we bump up against the limits of human understanding and create problems for ourselves. In the west, we don’t like admitting our limitations. Instead of admitting that we don’t really understand the God that we love, we create an image of God in our minds and then worship that image. But the image is not God. Loving the name or image of God is not loving God. We love God when we love God’s Virtues. If you love kindness, selflessness, patience and beauty, for example, then you are loving God. This is true even if you don’t use the word God, or associate the qualities you love with a single Divine Source. Loving the qualities of God helps us grow spiritually. To highlight this fact, some religions have chosen to associate names and images with each of God’s divine virtues. Catholics use the names and images of Saints to help them focus on the spiritual qualities that they need in their lives. Hindus give each of these qualities the name of a “god’ and an image that they can worship. From the outside, it can look as though both of these groups are worshiping something other than God. But most Catholics and many Hindus understand that there is one Universal Spirit that unites all of these separate qualities. This is what both Jesus and Krishna taught. When Buddha came to India some 2,600 years ago, fewer Hindus understood the uniting Spirit behind the many names of God that they worshiped. The people of that time were deeply invested in an anthropomorphic view of the gods. Spiritual leaders would often argue over which “god” was best, and they imagined conflicts between one “god” and another. As towns in the west would have “patron saints,” villages in India would have “patron gods” that would inspire rivalries and conflicts. The images of God that they fought over were truly products of their own imaginations. This is the culture that Buddha came to educate. Rather than try to re-write thousands of misunderstandings about the nature of God, Buddha took a very different approach. He said, in essence, “Since God is beyond our ability to understand, why argue about Him? Instead, let’s focus on the one thing we can know, understand and change----our behavior. Let us acquire godly virtues, and not worry about the God that they came from.” Since loving the qualities of god is the same as loving God, Buddha did teach the importance of loving God----but without using the word. For as Shakespeare might have said, Godly qualities, by any other name, are just as Divine. What’s more, this shift in emphasis does not mean that Buddha Himself denied the existence of God. In fact, there are two major sects of Buddhism that recognize a Divine Creative Force. They are not as popular in the U.S., though, where religious seekers, weary of the West’s anthropomorphic representation of God, are entranced by the idea of a “godless”religion. At some point, we have to ask ourselves, just how important are these theological questions, any-way? That may sound heretical, but the closer you look at the issues, the more blurry they become. Not only do some Christians believe what some Hindus believe, but what any one Christian group believes may change from year to year. In 1999, for example the Pope announced that heaven is not a place, but a relationship with God, and in 2006 decided that Limbo never really existed. This fluent understanding of the nature of God and our relationship to Him is also evident in our personal spiritual understanding. … It is very likely that your theological views have changed somewhat from what they were when you were younger. So if the underling foundation of religion is not the theological beliefs that have separated religions and denominations for thousands of years, then what is the foundation of religion, and is it truly common to all faiths? The answer to that question is already in your heart. It has been written in hundreds of different ways in the scriptures of every major religion, but here is the version you probably remember the best: “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandments. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (MT-22:37-40)” These commandments are the universal ethical principles that motivate all religions and are the reasons why God sends humanity Messenger after Messenger. The descriptions of how to do it, when to do it, why to do it, how you will be reward if you succeed in doing and how you will be punished if you fail to do it—these all change to suit the needs and understandings of the people to whom the Messengers come. But the goal is always the same: We are to turn our hearts to the transcendent---whatever we may call Him---- and reflect His qualities into the world through love for His creatures. When we set our hearts on this common foundation, all differences melt away. Buddhist, Moslem, Christian, Jew-----it doesn’t matter. We are all the children of God. Baptized, circumcised, in saffron robes or a veil, the outer trappings of obedience are not as important as the inner spirit that motivates them. Recognizing the common foundation and Divine originating Source behind all religions allows us to see each religion as an expression of God’s love for humanity. This realization moves us beyond mere tolerance to a new place: a place of appreciation,respect, wonder and love for the diversity of humanity’s reciprocal expression of their love of God. This special place of peace and appreciation is both universal and intensely personal. Yes, it is true: when everone understands our common spiritual heritage world peace will be achieved. But you don’t have to wait until then. When you come to accept our common spiritual heritage, then you will realize a new level of inner peace. You will begin to see the world differently. You will begin to see the world differently. You will see the connections between peoples and cultures. Things will begin to make sense in ways they never did before. Like pieces of a puzzle, the world will no longer seem fragmented and divided, but will be connected by threads of God’s divine plan that slowly but irresistibly tug the warring children of the world back together into a more mature and unified whole. No one has been left out. Everyone is part of the plan. History is not just a series of wars, but is a series of developmental stages, guided and inspired by successive Prophets that have brought us to the dawn of this amazing new age. Most important, recognizing the progressive, unified nature of religion will allow you to accept the possibility of a new Messenger---One whose teachings are designed for a world of technological wonders, disappearing borders, interdependent nations and spiritually mature individuals….. The above is by Justice St Rain And can be purchased at Special Ideas | The Golden Rule and Beyond | Religious Teachings on One Personal God | The Life of Baha'u'llah | Progressive Revelation | Some Basic Baha'i Principles | Jesus, The Bible and Me | Baha'i Gardens | | Return Home | Contact Us | My Baha'i Faith | Family | My Garden | MY Roses | Miniature | Plant Gallery Database | New Orleans Botanical Gardens | Feng Shui Gardening | Links & Resources | |
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