GOD BLESS AMERICA

BAHA'IS ADVISED TO BEG FORGIVENESS, HEALING, FROM INSTITUTIONS OF THE FAITH -
FOR READING THEIR OWN HISTORY!

THE EVIDENCE WAS IN FRONT OF ME FOR DECADES. I saw administration tread good Baha'is like perpetrators of crimes so vile they could not be named. I saw them advance bad Baha'is up the ladder of every institution. It took 30 years for God to get through to me that He has nothing to do with these people. Thirty years!

From the beginning it was instilled into me that They (non-Baha'is) are wrong, bad, repulsive, and in desperate need of our teaching. I was taught that Baha'is are everything. I learned to control my disgust when one more Baha'i said of another Baha'i, "Oooooh, he/she's a beeeooooootiful Baha'i " but saying it seemed to get you points.

Persian food must be wonderful. It has fed an old, old nation for a very long time. It generally shows up on the tables of Baha'i potluck dinners. A lot of people eat it. Invariably it made me feel like a grenade was going off in my stomach. Eventually I stopped putting it on my plate. Then Baha'is would question me. "Why no Persian food? Oh, so-and-so's mother made it! Oh, try just a little!" Then, with deep concern: "Why not?" It was as if my loyalty to the teaching of the oneness of mankind was being challenged, indeed as if I had stepped beyond the Tree Beyond Which There is No Passing. But do you know what? I never questioned. I never challenged the offensiveness of their questioning. But I never put another fork full of Persian Potluck into my mouth again. God must have seen something in me worth saving.

From the moment I laid eyes on the words of Baha'u'llah in a Hidden Word, I was in love. I never stopped loving that Word. I love it today. That Word is what I allowed myself to subordinate to the words of the Fear- and Power-Mongers in Baha'i Administration, to the "friends" who were probably more or less as insensitive to the urgency and creativity of the Word as I.

I think that no one who has fallen in love with the Word of God can ever be separated from that Heaven. I have, as the Bible states, been cleansed. I am free of the past and free of sin. Now I can live for Him instead of living for an amalgamation of paper-pushers and power brokers called The Baha'i Faith. Now the Word is all around me, and within me. Nothing can ever separate me from that Word.

In this month of Questions, I have studied the words of people in Baha'i history. I have considered why some of the Will and Testament does not fit with other parts of it. I reflect that Bahiyyih Khanum was there when her Brother died, and wonder why it took her months to get a typewritten translation of His Will to a few select Baha'is outside the Holy Land.. A lightbulb went off in my brain when I read that it was translated by none other than Shoghi Effendi. What a plum! I wondered why the Will was not treated like a legal will by the Palestinian government, and how much the family had to pay to keep it that way. I am intrigued that Britain's foremost forensic scientist examined photostats of the handwriting and pronounced that several witnessed signatures just did not match the handwriting on 'Abdu'l-Baha's Will. I wondered why Shoghi Effendi, who lived and died by everything British, discounted the expert's report.

I followed the money trail: who stood to profit by Shoghi Effendi's inheritance of the mantle of the Faith, and who would lose? Why did Shoghi Effendi respond with a tight fist against any attempt to make public the document for further examination? And why were 'Abdu'l-Baha's three Muslim brothers cut off? Who fabricated the monstrous acts that they supposedly committed against anyone whose behind they refused to kiss? Questions.

I have learned that Baha'is are not permitted to learn these things or ask these questions. They are taught that questions open the questioner to a mysterious "spiritual illness" which he can only heal by coming to Baha'i administration, admitting his action, and begging for forgiveness. In other words, questioning, exercising one's intellect and reason, are seen as shameful acts, almost in the manner that the Catholic Church once condemned self-pleasure. Begging forgiveness for asking a question! This is the state of the Baha'i Faith and has been for nearly a century.

Years ago on the Baha'i Library Forum, some brave soul asked the Baha'i teaching on masturbation. Consequently two letters were produced, to John Cornell from the Guardian. They were known as the Cornell letters. Mr.Cornell had asked Shoghi Effendi the same thing. Shoghi Effendi replied, somewhat evasively, that that was why God invented marriage. (Presumably, so one could cease self-pleasure and share it instead.) That information must have been craved by tens of thousands of Baha'i youth and singles who really didn't know where they stood and respectfully wanted the Guardian's word on it. Guess what. In not too long a time, the Cornell Letters disappeared off Baha'i Library. Maybe I just got rusty in my search skills, but I could find them no more. Was it yet another case of silencing the questioner?

Begging forgiveness for asking a question! Fearing Divine wrath for reading! Seeking wisdom and not being able to find it! This, in the religion that peoples its upper administrative strata with Ph.Ds, M.D.s, professors, educators, lawyers, judges....men and women of considerable learning. But it is not the "learning" that the holy books always teach. That "stranglehold on the minds of men" attributed to the clergy belongs to Baha'i administrators. There's just no question about it.

God bless America!