Let Us Try Peace, as an Experiment

Whatever thou dost and upon whatever occasion thou showest any effort, the end will prove fruitless except in teaching the Cause of God and in serving the divine Kingdom.(Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdu’l-Bahá v1, p. 212)

Although the London World Peace Forum has attracted a great deal of interest, yet those who have looked have not participated. Yes, you are free to leave comments and even post your own blog on this site. Email me at peace@drdiscount.ca for more info.

Is peace achievable without religion? In my view, I think not. How can religion be the cause of peace when so many wars were fought in the name of religion? Yes, religion has been corrupted by man and used as an excuse for war, but the essence of true religion is peace. God commands us, “Thou shalt not kill,” (Exodus 20:13) but man does not listen. Christ Jesus expanded this,

Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. (Matthew 5: 21 - 24)

If there is one God, There must be one religion. If we are all God’s Children, then we must love one another. We are one family. We share one Earth. The multiplication of gods has always been regarded as evil. If your god tells you to kill me because I do not follow in his ways, then one of us must follow a false god. The True God that created us to know Him and to worship Him tells us that we are not even to get angry with one another.

God periodically sends messengers to us to keep us on track. There was Adam, Abraham, Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, Mohammad, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh to name a few. So many times mankind has clung to the messenger and forgotten the message. They all taught us to love. They all taught peace. When we use their names as an excuse to go to war, we do Them a great injustice.

You do not need to agree with me. Only turn to the message that your religion has brought and find in it a reason to love all mankind. As I said, there is only one true religion and the fact that it has been called by different names throughout the ages in inconsequential. If you have a different concept of God than I do, that is not surprising. God the creator must be infinitely greater than His creation. Therefore He is beyond our comprehension and we may have experienced Him from completely different aspects. The Ocean is only a tiny part of His creation, but someone living in Hawaii would have a different perception of the Ocean than someone from Alaska. Do we need to kill each other because one sees it as warm and the other cold? No, but we can learn from each other and get a greater understanding of the Ocean.

This is the purpose of this forum. We learn from each other about our own humanity and no longer fear the unknown. When I learn that you desire peace and security, a good life for your children, and have much the same concerns that I do, I learn that you are not much different than me. Now we can help each other instead or fearing each other. Fear leads to hate and hate leads to war. Now learning from and about each other makes the unknown to be known, fear to vanish, hate to transmute into love and war to become peace. Is that not better? We can at least try it to see if we like it. We can always go back to hatred and war if we think that is better. But let’s at least try peace.

As for the Atheist, I have not forgotten you. I once had a friend that would tell those who did not believe in God that she also did not believe in the God that they didn’t believe in. In order to say we do not believe in God, we need to have a concept of God that we don’t believe in. If I said I didn’t believe in xwvrptskd, you would say, “What is that?” You couldn’t say whether or not you believed in it until you knew what it was. So the concept you have of God that you don’t believe in, well I don’t believe in that concept of God either, so we don’t need to kill each other over that either. If I keep going, there will not be any excuse left for war, and that is what I am attempting to do, but I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts whether or not you agree with me. Let’s get this discussion going and start learning what makes each other tick.