When Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed His Message to the world in the nineteenth century He made it abundantly clear that the first step essential for the peace and progress of mankind was its unification. As He says, “the well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.”

To this day, however, you will find most people take the opposite point of view: they look upon unity as an ultimate, almost unattainable goal and concentrate first on remedying all the other ills of mankind. If they did but know it, these other ills are but various symptoms and side effects of the basic disease - disunity.

(Letter of 8 December 1967 written by Universal House of Justice, quoted in Wellspring of Guidance)

Questions:

Meditate upon and memorize quotations numbers 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 19 and 20, then in light of the above passage, try to correlate these quotations to answer the following questions.

1. How can we regard the world in order to better understand the nature of problems afflicting society and explain the solutions to them?
2. What are the differences between symptoms & signs and the basic disease? Bring several examples
3. Why are we as Bahá’ís not, for example, directly participating in the disarmament movement?
4. What is the nature of the universal crisis afflicting mankind today? Is it lack of money and material resources?
5. Can you give the first model answer to the question of why there is so much suffering in the world if God is compassionate.
6. What is the greatest cause of disunity in the world, and how can we overcome this?