Indeed, the expenditure of enormous energy and vast amounts
of resources in an attempt to bend truth to conform to personal desire is now a
feature of many contemporary societies. The result is a culture that distorts
human nature and purpose, trapping human beings in pursuit of idle fancies and
vain imaginings and turning them into pliable objects in the hands of the powerful.
Yet, the happiness and well-being of humanity depend upon the opposite:
cultivating human character and social order in conformity with reality. Divine
teachings shed light on reality, enabling every soul to investigate it properly
and to acquire, through the exercise of personal discipline, those attributes
that are to distinguish the human being. “Man should know his own self”,
Bahá’u’lláh states, “and recognize that which leadeth unto loftiness or lowliness,
glory or abasement, wealth or poverty.”
- The Universal House of Justice (From a letter dated 19 April 2013
written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice)
