G&E

On Good and Democratic Evil

By John Taylor; 2007 July 21

I imagine Baha'u'llah, looking down on this servant from on high, laughing and saying to the denizens of the Abha Paradise, `This guy thinks he knows the basic facts of the Baha'i Faith, let us just see about that.' So last night I was handed what is easily the toughest teaching test, at least intellectually, that I have ever had. What happened was that R, a freshly minted graduate of McMaster Theological Seminary, is now the CEO of the youth center and has asked me to become a volunteer there. To do that I had to sign a document acknowledging that they hold to the Apostle's Creed. Surprisingly, I only had to strike out two sentences from it, and put question marks next to a couple of others. Other than that, a Baha'i agrees completely with that traditional credo of Christians. Anyway, R said right off last night that he wanted to hear more about this Baha'i Faith, so I said yeah, sure, I'll be happy to oblige. Unfortunately, the only chance we got was while hitting the ping pong ball back and forth. So it went something like this:

"So, PING are the PONG Baha'i teachings PING naturalistic PONG in emphasis?"

In a sense I was prepared by my daily two hours of physical training, hitting the table tennis ball against the raised backing of my ping pong table while listening to books on tape. But, as I found out, it is one thing to separate out your left brain listening faculty from your right brain spatial calculator, and quite another to indulge in Q&A while hitting against a living, moving target. I did surprisingly well for a while, in fact probably better than I would have otherwise, since hitting the ball forces you to be concise and avoid mud puddles that bog the likes of me down. If I were the glib sort who is satisfied with pat answers, I would not be writing daily essays designed to stamp out the brushfires of my inadequate understanding. But then R zeroed in on the problems theodicy and good and evil.

Having just listened to the concise but highly opinionated primers "St. Augustine in 90 Minutes," and "St. Thomas Aquinas in 90 Minutes" I could say with confidence,

"Baha'is agree with Augustine in that we believe in relativistic but not absolute evil. Evil is not an absolute force, since God has all power, all the time. But there are ample examples in Baha'i history of very bad people, who out of envy try to commit the ultimate atrocity, which is to force a schism or split in a Faith designed to unify the world. The ego-force that motivates them, and all of us at times, is undeniably evil, though in relation to God it is the shadow of a shadow. But the condition of these people is communicable. If you associate with them you are liable to catch the same thing no matter how spiritually healthy you may be, so I guess you could say that we believe in the disease or viral theory of evil."

I had in mind this passage from an essay by the saintly Marzieh Gail, which I lately came across in my study of the early days of the Faith in America. She is talking about the base betrayal of Amin Farid, the Master's nephew-in-law.

"Fareed's efforts to destroy the Master (who had seen to his education from childhood) make a page of triple darkness in the annals of human evil. The Baha'i Faith does not teach that there is no evil -- only that there is no absolute evil. Relative evil is, however, very strong. We see Jesus and Judas, Muhammad and Abu-Lahab, the 'Father of Flame' -- Baha'u'llah and Siyyid Muhammad of Isfahan. Evil is the shadow cast by the light." (Marzieh Gail, Arches of the Years, 95)

So far so good, but when it came to answering R's questions about Baha'i theodicy, justifying God's ways to men, I had to cast my paddle on the table and accept defeat. This is a mystery of God that it takes a lifetime to understand. I have not lived a lifetime yet so I cannot summarize it, even briefly. Besides, Thomas had come over to complain of a breakdown on the table soccer machine that he and Silvie were playing. Soon afterwards, Tommy wanted to play Frag -- a board game inspired by first person shooter video games. There were few others in the Youth Centre, so I had to play too, though I do not enjoy that kind of amusement these days. Thus ended our conversation about the Baha'i Faith for that night.

The unfinished thought about the disease theory of evil stuck in my mind, though, and I want to try to complete it here, today. Baha'u'llah put it forward, front and center, when He addressed the only constitutional monarch in the world at the time, Queen Victoria. Specifically, here he addressed elected leaders, perhaps the only time in all of His Opus. Here He suggests that parliamentarians use the disease theory of evil as a world view. This is the best way to grasp the problems of the world in this age. Humanity is not evil, or attacked by evil forces, but only sick, albeit sick unto death.

"O ye the elected representatives of the people in every land! Take ye counsel together, and let your concern be only for that which profiteth mankind and bettereth the condition thereof, if ye be of them that scan heedfully. Regard the world as the human body which, though at its creation whole and perfect, hath been afflicted, through various causes, with grave disorders and maladies. Not for one day did it gain ease, nay its sickness waxed more severe, as it fell under the treatment of ignorant physicians, who gave full rein to their personal desires and have erred grievously. And if, at one time, through the care of an able physician, a member of that body was healed, the rest remained afflicted as before. Thus informeth you the All-Knowing, the All-Wise." (Summons, 90-91)

Here is a major correction to modernism and the Enlightenment Project. Rousseau and his "grandchildren" of both right and left held, same as this, that all men are born good. Individuals are not inherently evil (as the church taught), au contraire, there is no original sin. But they continued to hold that there is positive evil, only they shifted their original sin over to the collectivity, saying that civilization itself is inherently evil. Civilization is the problem, it is inherently corruptive. This, Baha'u'llah is saying, is a grave mistake. The body of mankind was healthy and can be healthy, if only it is cured. True, He concedes elsewhere, civilization taken beyond the bounds of moderation can become a breeding ground of evil, but that is true of everything, everything in moderation. But the fact is that civilization is not evil in and of itself. The real source of the problem is ignorance, He says here, is clear and specific. A sick patient treated by ignorant physicians whose cures are making the illness worse.

And, Baha'u'llah implies right off the bat here, the root of the problem is in the heads of democratic leaders. He says, "Let your concern be only for that which profiteth mankind and bettereth the condition thereof." Now that the majority of governments are democratic, our world is run by the very elected leaders being addressed here. We can see on a grand scale that apathy and parochialism suddenly the major element of the crisis of our age. The earth's climate is out of hand, the people are suddenly galvanized for change, demanding it, but our democratic leaders are mesmerized. They never cared for the profit of mankind -- as opposed to the narrow interests of the constituents who elected them -- and they probably never will, without some huge shock.

Concern for humanity is just not in them thar genes.

If you want to talk about evil, this is as pure, as despicably evil as it gets. We face famine, disease, disaster on a scale unheard of in history, the imminent demise of literally billions of people, and the democratic leaders care nothing, do nothing, think nothing about it.

Lest you imagine that democratic leaders in spite of all this do give a hoot, let me point you to the fifth chapter of Peter Singer's "One World," called "One Community." This will disabuse you of that very quickly. Singer of course is a professional ethicist who, unlike virtually all of his peers, avoids vain hair splitting and goes for the jugular. He actually talks about the ethical implications of things that matter, like foreign aid.

Years ago governments agreed that 0.7 percent of GNP would be a good start for solving problems on a planetary scale. Scandinavian lands give more than that these days but dead last among all is the "Great Democracy of the West," which at the time this book was written, in 2002, was sunk at a truly pathetic 0.1 percent. I fall to my knees and thank God that at there is at least one ethicist ethical and courageous enough to point out the gross apathy, the moral turpitude of such democratic leaders. If there were a truly planetary court, these hard hearted leaders would be hauled before it and charged with criminal negligence, with high treason to the collective good of humanity. They have by no means "scanned heedfully." As for those who elect them, we all should hang our heads in shame. The evil, or the disease if you will, is in all of us. We should all cry out for our sovereign remedy, and take it.