Death is not good, it is the enemy of mankind. Do you like people dying? I ask this out of all sincerity, for if death is a friend and we reap an eternally better reward by dying than by living, what is the point of continuing on this earth? You are not condemned to hell in bahai, you are just condemned to a further away point from God than others. If death is not the enemy, there is no reason to continue living when we are better off being dead corpses.
For my part I believe in a God who values the material world he created and will not doom it to a heat death, or cold death end.
Ignatian,
. I sense a grief here in you, for which I sympathize deeply. You sound as though you are grieving the loss of someone close to you. Just a hunch, but if it be so, my heart goes out to you.
. Now I wish to share with you two losses, if I may, out of respect for your sentiments, which you have expressed. The first loss was that of my mother, at age 70, who died of cancer just three days before her first grandchildren were born to their mother and me, twin girls.
. Mom had suffered from cancer for five years, had surgery, chemotherapy, and was physically blind at the end. Yet her mind was still keen and her soul beaming with light, while her body withered away. The death of her body was indeed God’s greatest blessing at that stage of her life, although it meant that we could no longer communicate in the way we are accustomed to with one another, as you and I, and others are now.
. My other loss was nearly five years ago, one of those beautiful girls. This was the greatest tragedy of my life, the deepest loss, the worst grief, and utterly impossible to bear without faith in God and constant prayers for strength to endure such a premature loss of a child just shy of her 25th birthday.
. I will share a third, that of my brother, at age 18, back in 1970, in a car accident west of Wounded Knee. He had signed up to go to Viet Nam, having enlisted to go into the Rangers, in some sort of Rambo fantasy. What he would have done over there and how he would have come back is what prompts me to add him to this brief commentary.
. Mom’s death was clearly “a messenger of joy”, for her suffering ceased. My daughter’s life ended her mental agony from bi-polar disorder and the wrong medication prescribed. Only faith tells me that “she” did not die, but rather it was her body, and a thousand people praying for her assures me that she is ok, with God, and her grandmother, and grandfather, who passed a few years ago at age 99.
. As for my brother, he did not go to Viet Nam because of the accident, so he did not kill men, women, and children in a senseless war. So in his case I can reason that death was a messenger of joy for the families of those whose lives he did not take, or if he had died over there, for ours in a whole other context. I see no difference between My Lai and Wounded Knee, and thank God that he was spared in any such participation.
. For anyone reading this and not understanding the context of the reference which you are having difficulty with, I will quote from the Hidden Words of Baha’u’llah that which you cite:
“O son of the Supreme!
I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom?”
. For me, there is great reassurance in these words of the life to come, which is the true life, and that our life does not end with the death of the body. Our body is like a coat, or a suit of clothes, woven of the fabric of this physical world. It is not eternal, nor meant to be. It is our soul which is real, and which we must prepare for when it no longer has this physical flesh to inhabit and learn from and grow through.
. This life is important. We should live healthy and care for ourselves in this, our natural life. Yet if it must be sacrificed early, then let it burn brightly in that sacrifice, and if it is to live its full length, let it be done so as nobly as can be, as a living sacrifice, in service to God and His servants.
. May God bless you in whatever grief you carry. My heart grieves for your losses as it does for my own.
. Most assuredly, my prayers are with you.
. Dale
