:grin  
 
I think that this will be a good place to begin, as I am new to this site. Most noticable is your scepticism of any thing religious. \"Whatever man gets into his own hands he invariably patterns after his own image.\" This is especially true at our present juncture in time, as the convergence between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity is ratcheting up the tension and bringing out the most near sited and zealous of the communities. Please understand that this is a minority of Muslims and Christians. These people will stumble and fall. God has given them no mandate but peace and the golden rule. The rest is their own human pride. 
 
I was a Christian, often overlooking the shortcomings of Christianity because of my personal knowlege of the Lord. I have experienced Him so deeply in my life that I felt that my place was to help those who become entrenched inside of the religion. I found that they often replaced the wisdom of the teachings of Jesus with their own Junior High School politics, pullings stunts which would get their asses beaten down if they were performed in public. It becomes about political correctness rather than wisdom. 
The Baha\'is as a religion are presently experiencing this problem, becoming gate keepers who decide who is and who is not a real Bahai. It is sad. They claim to be the defenders of the faith, but they have no real faith. 
 
I come to the Bahai Faith by spiritual calling, having been led by dreams and vision to Baha\' u\'llah, convinced of the power and authority of His covenants. This is something which God is doing, and its context is well beyond our little minds. He is looking way down the road. Religion is made for man, not man for religion. Yet it is necessary to organize our beliefs and thoughts about God and man so that we can come to agreement and organize. Some see religion as a set of rules which qualify some and deny others. But this is a mistake. They are methodologies for spiritual development. 
 
The goal of mankind is to build the noble society on earth (the Kingdom of Heaven). In Buddhist terms, it is to ease the condition of human suffering. Remeber the addage \"a house divided amongst itself will fall\" or \"united we stand, divided we fall\"? As such, the mind of mankind must accept that we all share the same planet, and in fact we are as one living organism on this planet. We must come together if we as a species are going to survive.  
 
I do not believe that the world will become one giant theocracy. God help us. And I do not believe that this is communism, for communism believes in no God but man. I believe that mankind at large will evolve to a higher understanding of himself (herself) which is based entirely on the light of our sun, and the frequency of the intelligence of the cosmos which is the real power of our life. It is held in stasis by the very stars which allow life on our planet, but this is a very large discussion. 
 
Currently the Bahai Faith is in a lull before the storm. Soon the scriptures of the Jews, Muslims, and Christians will begin to come to pass in entirity. They will melt down into the Bahai Scriptures. This will happen with tremendous tribulation and quaking, shaking the foundations of life as we know it. And then they will listen, and understand. This thing is being done by God, not by man. Finally, they will come to terms with Baha\' u\'llah. He was a man, yet God spoke through Him with great vision. In the same manner, Jesus was another man whom God spoke through with great power. That is how it works. We are not to worship men, but God. And God is not human, but the Divine Eternal Being - the Universe. God is He Who Wrote the Stars. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Muhammad, and Bahaullah will all be on line, and this will create a very large, invisible spiritual platform which will radiate in the Most Great Peace of the Bahai Faith. But this will happen in the spirit, not by the politics of man. 
 
I believe that ultimately all nations will come to accept the UN as the covening authority over the nations, in a stucture similar to the US and its states. Then a central authority can control the arms race, prohibiting warfare outside of its mandate. This is also a very large discussion. 
 
But be of good cheer. And feel free to write back. Thank God that this matter is not in the hands of mankind, for surely mankind would kill us all. But God loves us, a gift which none of us deserve. He will do this thing for us, so that we might know and understand Him. 
 
Sayonara, 
Sonyata