A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis
LESSONS LEARNED BY THE AUTHOR (Part 8)
For vision to be effective, it needs a champion
In the Smart Strategies Series, Success in Sight: Visioning edited by Andrew P. Kakabadse, Frédéric Nortier and Nello-Bernard Abramovici we learn that “Biblical and historical leaders all appeared to have and, thereby, followed a vision. Moses had a vision that he would lead his people out of bondage. Alexander the Great had a vision for expanding Macedonia through Asia Minor. Mahatma Gandhi had the dream of an independent India, whilst Martin Luther King, Jr., an admirer of Gandhi’s philosophy, had a ‘dream’ (vision) of an America in which there were equal rights for all peoples. Nelson Mandela, like Moses and Martin Luther King, had a vision of delivering his people from the bondage of apartheid into a South Africa driven by equal rights.” “The basic difference between a mission and vision is that a mission speaks for the purpose of the organization and a vision describes what the organization will look like in achieving its mission.” “The Martin Luther King, Jr. Message is that for vision to be effective, it needs a champion. A motivating vision, or one that produces ‘creative tension’, by its nature implies business or organizational innovation, which often departs in a significant way from past practice, requiring quite different organizational capabilities.” “The new idea either finds a champion or dies.” “This literature highlights the capacity of champions to inspire and enthuse others with their vision of the potential of an innovation.”
A vision for the Bahá’í Faith
The Bahá’ís are the champions of building a new civilization. In Century of Light there is a vision for the Bahá’í Faith which is summarized in the chapter The Vision of the Bahá’í Faith.
The spiritual regeneration of the planet
Revealed to the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada in 1916 and 1917, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan elaborates on the call sounded by the Báb to the “people of the West” to “issue forth from their ‘cities’ and aid His cause.” In the Tablets of the Divine Plan ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’ fashions in broad outline a master plan for the spiritual regeneration of the world and entrusts its execution to the Bahá’ís of North America, whom He urges to arise and to propagate the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh throughout the planet and thereby set in motion the redemptive forces released by Bahá’u’lláh’s revelation. The task of implementing the Divine Plan fell to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s grandson, Shoghi Effendi, whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá appointed Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith in His Will and Testament. Shoghi Effendi envisioned the Divine Plan as a “laborious and tremendously long process.”
Prayer and meditations
In 2013 I had another life transforming experience when I was found to need a triple bypass for my heart. All went well but when I returned to hospital to have my stitches out I was found to have an infection and was not allowed to go home. In hospital I had three bad nights when I resorted to prayer and I resolved to assign to prayer the same priority in good times as I had in my bad time in hospital. This lead to my writing the chapter on Prayer and Meditation.
Religion
Across the world, billions of people hold the belief that God has spoken to humanity through a human intermediary, with teachings that should be the basis for individual and social life. Perhaps the greatest challenge that could be presented to a human being, is a claim by another individual that He, too, was sent by God with a Message that can heal the ills afflicting society. The belief that one religion is the only truth and that all other religions are wrong or heretical has led to the most horrendous loss of life throughout man’s history. My own personal experience of the religious conflict in Ireland – between the Protestants and Catholics – led to a search for the truth about religion as recorded in the chapters on Religion and The Bahá’í Faith.