Post by Finnegan's WakeIn mine view - those who abuse children are deserving of the fires of
perdition. Those whose job it is to prevent abuse and protect children from
it and who fail to do so ought to consigned to the fires of perdition ...
but not before thay have been booted from their jobs.
Hi Dermod. Assuming you mean willfully fail, I couldn't agree more. I
think I know an Irishman who'd do a good job as fire stoker... ;-)
Post by Finnegan's WakePost by Ron HouseAnd the UHJ can't buy me, because price doesn't come into it. I have
obeyed every instruction ever given to me by the UHJ - and the Australian
NSA, for that matter. Every single one. The thing that stops them from
controlling me is not my disobedience to them, but their own impotence and
powerlessness. Theirs is a kind of dishonesty and underhandedness that is
so far from God that it confounds itself at every turn. I don't post much
here because (a) I have more timely things to do right now and (b) nothing
new of any significance has been mentioned here that might call for me to
post a viewpoint ahead of my schedule. But if I do choose (and the UHJ is
sweating blood that I don't) to say what I have to say on this forum, they
are in the unenviable position of having to admit to themselves that they
cannot issue an order to me to shut me up.
I am surprised that nobody has picked up on this. Have you something to
say? And what, pray, causes forebearance to say it, especially if it causeth
the Grumpies to sweat blood, if not lose control, individually and
collectively, of their sphincters?
Might what you have to say be related to this: -
"The time of unthinkingly obeying rules, even rules in holy books, or of
obeying religious committees or clergy, is long past, and this is the
message, framed in the language of their religious community, that Ron and
Gitie gave to the religious leaders. Unfortunately that message was a threat
to the power of those leaders, and they directed every member of their
religion to shun the discoverers of the Principle of Goodness. They sent
representatives even to countries which Ron and Gitie had never visited to
threaten to wreck the families of people who befriended them. Sadly, their
former religious community is required, on pain of having their own families
and relationships destroyed, to maintain this persecution even today."
If so, indeed even if not so, then please say it.
You're the first person to put these things together! Just shows how few
are really paying attention. :-) You can be sure your post is causing
all-nighters in the funny marble building in Haifa. Since you are
quoting the above passage from the academic website, I suppose it is no
biggie to translate it into Baha'i-speak on this forum.
On pilgrimage in 1987, my wife Gitie and I were subject to a spiritual
experience, which changed our entire outlook on life, the universe, and
everything. And soon after that, I discovered the Principle of Goodness,
which I firmly believe is key to changing the course of humanity from
needless suffering and death, to a spiritual civilisation guiding and
caring for the entire planet and all its creatures. This Principle is
simply a description of good and evil: Good is to try to benefit
everyone, evil is to try to harm any innocent one. I use the word
'discovered' very carefully. I did not _invent_ this principle, because
if you take a close look you'll find that every great soul humanity has
ever produced has espoused it, from Socrates refusing to help arrest
Leon of Salmis, to Jesus, to Buddha, Baha'u'llah, and so on. It is the
only thing that makes sense of Kant's categorical imperative, or that
explains why utilitarianism (the greatest happiness for the greatest
number) can so badly backfire on occasions and do terrible wrong. All I
did was find the above-mentioned very short and simple summary of this
great truth about spiritual reality.
In April 2004, Gitie and I wrote a confidential letter to the UHJ,
putting this before them, along with a message about themselves and
how we believed that God had given us the authority to supersede their
system of autocracy and central control with one of individual
understanding and investigation, with the Principle of Goodness as the
guiding insight. We described our spiritual experience and the
consequences which we saw flowing from it. The point here is that the
experience we had was outside the "Baha'i paradigm" (by which I mean
the fixed ideas about manifestations and revelations and appointed
holy books and even the wider set of legalistic religious concepts
that characterise many of the world's middle-eastern religions). Our
experience taught us how Baha'u'llah's teachings presaged an opening
of individual capacity beyond their closed ideas about the nature of
the spiritual realm. God could send His Manifestation (which
Baha'u'llah explained, is One) - that is, God could break into history
at any time and place of His choosing - to trigger the expansion of
consciousness and the raising of spiritual capacity and awareness.
Baha'u'llah's teachings and prophecies were completely in accord with
this new understanding, and our main wonder was how we and everyone
else had gone so long without seeing these possibilities. No more was
there any call for 'infallible' leaders whose word would be accepted
without rational judgement.
This meant, of course, that we did not have a revelation direct from
God, for the simple reason that these ideas were too small; there
would never again be anyone who could credibly make such a claim. The
world was growing up; humanity's relationship with God was steadily
outgrowing primitive relations of awe, wonder, and fear of a vengeful
diety. Only a standard consisting of all-inclusive care for all of
God's creatures would be accepted in the adulthood of our species. We
told the UHJ we would be promulgating the Principle of Goodness far
and wide, and we gave them three documents in addition to our letter
to them: We sent them the document _Light, Goodness, the Tree of
Life_, which is the seminal description of the Principle of Goodness.
This is identical in content to the downloadable e-book found at our
academic website, http://principleofgoodness.net . We sent them a full
description of our spiritual experience and how and why we believed it
gave us the authority to supersede any which they believed they held.
And, as it happened that the Australian NSA had shortly before sent
someone to try to blackmail us, especially me, into keeping quiet on
TRB, we had shown these documents to that person, he had given us some
objections to them, and we had answered his objections; we included a
copy of that answer to him in our communication to the UHJ as well.
Their response was to send a Counsellor, who of his own choice brought
along an ABM offsider, to have a discussion with us. The majority of the
two-hour discussion consisted of the Counsellor making sure he was very
clear about what our claims were, and putting to us what might best be
called 'devil's advocate'-type questions about the Principle of
Goodness. At the end he stated (exact quote) "I find that you are
sincere." At no point did he convey any message or command to us from
the UHJ.
We continued receiving the Australian Baha'i Bulletin, newsletters,
etc., for some six months, but we knew that persons were going around in
other countries trying (and, it seems, failing entirely) to persuade
people to have nothing to do with us; the ABM was threatening people in
other cities to shun us; when someone refused, he just dropped the
matter as if it never happened; all the people he threatened are
speaking to us to this day. It was sad, but perversely comical, to watch
these shenanigans going on. Then finally, someone told them that we knew
what they were doing, and immediately thereafter the Bulletins stopped,
but only after they had already made an official statement to the
Toowoomba Baha'i community at a feast, making a highly misleading
characterisation of our statements to the UHJ, and declaring that we
were covenant-breakers.
So the long and short of it is that our message to the UHJ was announced
officially on behalf of the UHJ in Toowoomba, albeit in highly
prejudicial and distorted terms, but it was announced nonetheless when
they broke our confidence. We ourselves have not revealed the detailed
contents of that message, except to a very few friends on condition of
confidentiality. This is the first time I have even approximately
described this communication publicly. Gitie and I are currently heavily
involved in promulgating the Principle of Goodness around the world, but
we know that we shall have to publicly put the other aspects of our
experience before the followers of Baha'u'llah (I do not say "the Baha'i
community" because I am quite sure that many more of His followers are
not in that community that are in it).
--
Ron House
Australian Birds: http://wingedhearts.org
Principle of Goodness academic site: http://principleofgoodness.net