In a world where people are killing each other every day because they all believe their religion is the only “correct” one, the Baha’i perspective is rather refreshing. Baha’is believe that all religions are really just the same thing at their roots and that everyone in the world should be united through the common ideals of justice, love, and equality.
It’s kind of nice, huh? Of course, the cynic in me says it’s also ridiculously naïve to believe that all people will ever unite around anything, let alone religion, but it’s a nice idea nonetheless.
In the book The Baha’i Faith, author Moojan Momen explains: “Since Baha’is believe that all religion emanates from the same spiritual source, they also consider it inevitable that all religions . . . will, to some extent, contain echoes of each other.”
Baha’is emphasize the notion that, because there is one God who made everything that exists, all religions also come from God—and all the prophets and founders of all the great religious traditions were simply messengers who were trying to set us on the same spiritual path.
As Brandon Toporov and Father Luke Buckles put it in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religions, “Baha’i believers regard [Baha’i founder] Baha’u’llah as the most recent in a long line of divine messengers that includes Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.”
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| Moses, Jesus, and the Buddha—different dudes, same ideas, at least according to Baha’i. |
Baha’u’llah may be the latest of these great messengers, but he might not be the last. Baha’is acknowledge the possibility that another prophet may arise someday to continue showing us stupid humans the right way to live—but Baha’is also believe that won’t happen for at least another 1,000 years.
So we’re in the clear—for now. I guess that means we might as well unite and stop killing each other. How ’bout it?
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