 |
One of more than 12,000 golden tiles custom-made
to cover the dome of the Baha'i shrine on
Mount Carmel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. |
Was just thinking today about what the turning point for me was as a Baha'i, the point of no return as it were. The starkness of the reality that there is something profoundly wrong with the Baha'i Faith rudely woke me up when my mom was visiting us in Creston BC. The local Baha'i community had paid for a full page ad in our local paper which bragged about the great 'accomplishment' that Baha'is had rendered humanity by spending a quarter of a billion dollars on their terraces project. My mother obviously felt a great deal of pride but all I felt was dismay and a deep sense of embarrassment that this was the best contribution to humanity that Baha'is could come up with. Had it been a desalination project to provide fresh water for those thousands of Palestinians that survive without sufficient fresh water daily instead of a vanity project which wastes thousands of liters of fresh water daily I would have rightly felt some pride. When I later read Peter Khans excuse for my religion's focus on this extravagant Baha'i prestige project I knew my initial feelings of misgiving were well founded: "It gives us also insight to Baha’i strategy. For example, consider the Baha’i strategy to spend a vast sum of money on beautifying Mt Carmel at a time when the world is crying out for hospitals, for schools, for more effective means of agriculture, for scholarships for bright kids to get a good education. If you and I were running the world, the beautification of Mt Carmel, a construction of an elaborate series of terraces and a bunch of marble buildings would not be our highest strategy at a time of inadequate material resources.
 |
The children of Palestine and Congo drink
contaminated water, while thousands of liters of
clean water is used by the Baha'i administration for
the maintenance of its 12 hectares tourist gardens
in Haifa, Israel. |
Yet this is the Baha’i strategy; it is best appreciated, can only be appreciated, from a spiritual perspective. If you look at it from a material perspective, it’s either megalomania or some distorted sense of priorities. From a spiritual perspective, it is none of those things, it is the fulfillment of the millennia-old prophecies of the establishment of the seat of God’s administrative order on God’s holy mountain and all the spiritual forces that are attracted by that accomplishment. So, my point is that the most pressing need before us all over the world is that of acquiring a heightened spiritual consciousness." ***** So the "Baha'i strategy" is to spend liberally on Baha'i prestige projects while ignoring humanitarian concerns in the here and now? All the while putting the rest of humanity down for it's materialism???? IMHO the most spiritual actions a person can engage in is in helping out ones fellow human beings in the here and now. Peter Khan's excuse rang so hollow and so loud for me the din woke me from my deep slumber; I learned how indoctrination can cloud the eyes and the mind. It was at that point I knew I had to escape the cult that is the Baha'i Faith.
Complete Talk of Peter Khan :
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/2001/khannz.htm
By
Larry Rowe
Source : TRB
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/talk.religion.bahai/rsOgcGpzQJA
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