Prayer and Fear

Prayer Punishment and Fear Freedom

By John Taylor; 2007 May 01

Today's essay (or at least the version on the Badi Blog) begins with a photograph of Silvie's art work, pen on banana, drawn just after school yesterday. Her theme of terror -- the banana defies you to eat it -- is just what I find myself wishing to talk about this morning. I start off with prayer.

Prayer Punishment

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

This witticism of Oscar Wilde would have gone over like a lead balloon if he had said it in an Islamic country because the Muslim holy book, the Qu'ran, says virtually the same thing, repeatedly and in deadly earnest. Allah will punish us by giving us what we want, so ask what God wants. He and He only knows best what is good. This is why freedom was never given the same high value in Islamic lands as in Europe. Among Muslims there was much talk of just rule, but not of freedom. There are good spiritual reasons for that. If what we regard as good is really harmful, a good prayer cannot be for harm. Prayer must be for a middle way between greedy wish fulfillment and dull, slavish resignation to what we cannot change. Ask for the Golden Main. Prayer, ultimately is for inspiration. In prayer we find out what really is good for us. We may not know this consciously but in prayer we can ask God to energize us in working it out in the good life ...

Which raises the question: What is the most common human prayer?

My guess would be that prayers for money are the most common, by far. `O God give me a superabundance of money, a color TV, a Mercedes Benz.' But excess of prosperity, according to the Qu'ran, is among the most common and severe forms of divine retribution. For one thing, with possessions come fear, the constant dread, justified or not, that somebody will come along and take your hoard away. A society steeped in materialism is ridden by fear, by theft and rumors of theft. Fear mongers run rampant,

"Those in whose hearts is a disease - thou seest how eagerly they run about amongst them, saying: `We do fear lest a change of fortune bring us disaster.'" (Qur'an 5:55, Yusuf Ali)

No need to detail how important fear is in the governance of a materialist society. Defense spending is a good fear thermometer. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, when the threat of nuclear attack from an ideological enemy was real, if somewhat exaggerated, America indulged in an astonishingly expensive arms race. When Communism fell, military funding dropped for a time but even before 9-11 and the subsequent military adventurism, the arms buildup had already topped Cold War highs.

After money, what is the most common prayer? Surely the answer to that is power. With great power fear is wrapped up. What is the greatest kind of absolute power? Surely, the answer to that is slavery. If I own a human being, I am in a position of power that few other posts, no matter how influential, can ever equal.

In the Caribbean, slavery fed the plantations that fueled the prosperity of industrial Europe. When it was colonized it was soon found out that the aboriginal peoples made poor slaves. They preferred to die rather than endure slavery. So slaves were imported from Africa. Slavery so scarred the imagination of the inhabitants there that, even after slavery had been outlawed, there arose a strange caricature of the slave economy, the quasi-religious practice of the zombie. A zombie is made, not born. A victim is drugged into a coma, passes for dead and is buried, then is dug up and kept in a stupor in order to be secretly used by the perpetrator as a totally compliant slave. This robot-like creature was made into the ideal slave by chemical means.

The zombie is surely the only kind of person who qualifies -- albeit artificially -- for what Aristotle held to be the only kind of creature who should be a slave, one whose very nature is slavish. Since Aristotle taught that man by nature desires to know it surely follows that no human should be a slave, since slaves blindly obey and knowledge as often as not interferes with obedience. A zombie was incapable in that drugged state to learn or know anything much, which made him the perfect slave. Needless to say, even the threat of being made into a zombie spread terror among the population, and increased the respect paid to the practitioners of this cult. Thus in a weird caricature the ghost of slavery continued to spread fear after its passing.

Fear is the heritage of slavery. Slave owners and their descendents were and are ruled by fear every bit as much as slaves, potential slaves and other victims of the slavery system had been. Reading last week about the life of Martin Luther King, I noticed that one of the benefits he held up to the White man from his "Freedom Now!" program of erasing racism was the prospect of freedom from fear. White America, he perceived, was in terror of the Black man -- not only the Black man, mind you; since 911 the fear has shifted over to the Brown man, the Muslim, as well.

But none can doubt that fear is the first symptom of gross inequality, of excess power and too much comparative wealth. Fear is the enduring product of the old slave-owning tyrannical order.

Fear Freedom

All this is by way of background to one of Baha'u'llah's most portentous statements, which He makes at the beginning of His Will and Testament.

"In earthly riches fear is hidden and peril is concealed. Consider ye and call to mind that which the All-Merciful hath revealed in the Qur'an: 'Woe betide every slanderer and defamer, him that layeth up riches and counteth them.' (Q104:1,2) Fleeting are the riches of the world; all that perisheth and changeth is not, and hath never been, worthy of attention, except to a recognized measure." (Tablets, 217)

This abjuration of wealth and power at the beginning is followed in the next two paragraphs by one of the most important divorce declarations in the history of religion. Baha'u'llah permanently abjures in His Order both wealth and power. He sets religion firmly on the grounds of the Unseen, not on earthly attachments or worldly influence.

The result is that there can never be conflict or interference between His Order and wealth and power. That is not to say that the wealthy and powerful may not for a while misperceive or ignore this clear declaration, leading to a temporary period of persecution. Baha'u'llah in fact has prophesied that this will happen. But in my opinion it is one of the most important jobs of the Learned to emphasize and re-emphasize the fact that the essential Baha'i spirit is to resolutely hold to the principle of non-interference of religion in politics, and explain the reasons why this is so.

Two of the best explanations of why faith must be cut off once and for all from wealth and power can be found in the deep, inner meanings of the two citations from the Qu'ran that we featured earlier. The first quote states that fear is the product of a kind of heart disease. Its victims "eagerly ... run about" crying that change will end in disaster. Fear sickness leads to obscurantism and reactionary politics.

The second Quranic passage, cited by Baha'u'llah in the above passage from the Kitab-i-Ahd, states that the hoarder defends himself using slander and defamation. Thus greed and fear-sickness lead to propaganda and other abuse of language, all of which tend to crank up the levels of fear in society. Swearing and loose, abusive words harm the soul first of all, and the world after that. Curbing one's own tongue is the first step, according to the Tablet of the Seeker, on the path to truth. A sincere seeker of truth starts by abjuring abusive, destructive words, and even idle and excessive speech.

This is an age when we can look forward to freedom from many former blights of the past, not least of which are fear and misuse of language. We have hope, but we must learn how to be free in order to be free. The Guardian wrote,

"That which was applicable to human needs during the early history of the race can neither meet nor satisfy the demands of this day, this period of newness and consummation. Humanity has emerged from its former state of limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities. New bounties, perfect bestowals, are awaiting and already descending upon him. The gifts and blessings of the period of youth, although timely and sufficient during the adolescence of mankind, are now incapable of meeting the requirements of its maturity." (Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day is Come, 119)