Questioner: When I look into history, I see many times that whenever a group arises which preaches peace and non-violence, it almost always meets aggressiveness. So why is it that so many people are afraid of peace and non-violence?
Huzoor (rh): You see, I believe either we have been reading different histories or we have been drawing different conclusions from the same facts. I have read history, I’m a fond student of history, but I draw different conclusions from that. Those generations which work for peace, they never change their stance and they never become oppressive. Look at the early history of Christianity, for 300 years they preached peace and sacrifice and worked for peace and sacrifice and offered themselves in sacrifice against their prosecutors and prosecutors and perpetrators of cruelty. They never changed their stance. When the things changed, new generations were raised, not in suffering, but in wealth, in opulence, in government. It was those generations, they neither preached peace nor understood peace, but with the passage of the time, under the influence of their greatness, they started following the path of their predecessors, not Christians, but those who were oppressing the Christians. So the history can be read from this point of view as well, with a different message. No followers of any prophet at the beginning of the message ever exercised cruelty against anybody. They were always at the receiving end. But later on, I agree with you, the generations which followed much later, only those generations changed their attitude who had ultimately become victorious. They forgot that it was the humility of their forefathers which had won them victory. They forgot that it was the sacrifices of their forefathers which had made them emperors and sovereigns of the world. And having forgotten that, they were lost in the power they possessed and started behaving like the cruel peoples of the past. So it is the positions which make the difference. And the position of humility always remains correct. But if I’m wrong here, if you still disagree, please explain your question and I’ll answer that part of it.
Questioner: You gave an interesting answer to a question I didn’t mean to ask.
Huzoor (rh): That is why I said there may be some misunderstanding, yes?
Questioner: Yes, I meant whenever a peaceful group arises, there are other groups who are aggressive to them. Why are peaceful movements always oppressed?
Thank you, thank you. This is a question with which we fully agree. So I do beg pardon for having misunderstood your question. And when I answered a misunderstood question, I hope you did not misunderstand me. There we agree, yes. Now this is a very important question and it is also very essential to understand the underlying philosophy. All the prophets and the sources, and I do not just refer to the Judaic prophets or Christian prophets, I take the whole world as such. If you read the history of religion, you will be surprised to learn that all the prophets were treated alike in this regard. All attempts were made to root out the truth at the beginning and to destroy it by force. Why? This is the question. The answer is many fold, but there are two important aspects which I want to bring to your notice. Number one, they claim to be from God. And the people say, what is the evidence of your truth? How can we believe you are from God? The evidence is, one evidence is, that the society around them, the hostile society is overwhelmingly more powerful than they are. They join their hands to uproot them, to destroy them. And they do not defend themselves with the same weapons. Even when they defend themselves with weapons, the odds are so much against them that logically it is impossible for them to be considered emerged victorious. Yet they become victorious, without fail, every time. Go back to early period of Christianity. Jesus Christ was not opposed only by the Judaic overlords from Judaism, but by the representatives of Roman Empire. The great Roman Empire pitched against a preacher of peace, humble man, without any weapons, without anything to defend himself, preaching the same attitude to a few who had accepted him. The entire society was pitched against him, of his own people, and the empire on top of that. Yet what happened? Every time power conflicted, came into conflict with powerlessness, the Christians grew in number and in power, rather than being reduced into nothingness. So this, I believe, this is my personal belief, is the greatest proof of the existence of God and the existence of truth. So by their sacrifices, they established an evidence in favor of God and godly people which has no match. Because false people cannot continuously offer sacrifices for falsehood. False people must work for some ulterior motives. So that is one reason why this happens. The second reason is based in human psychology. The old order, when it is challenged by a new idea, which is potentially more powerful, shakes the society. They know that although materially the proponents of the new idea are very small and insignificant, but they know that the idea is powerful. And the powerful ideas ultimately emerge victorious. So they were not trying to crush a humble Jesus Christ and his few humble followers. They were afraid of the truth they were carrying. The truth was very powerful. It was overwhelming. It was bound to emerge victorious. So the society deep inside recognizes the truth, yet they defy it. And this is why they will be punished. If they had misunderstood, God could not punish them as I have already stated earlier. It would be unjust on the part of God to punish a society which misunderstands a message. But their cruelty to the message proves beyond a shadow of doubt that they understood the message. They knew it to be right, they knew it to be powerful. That is why they oppose it. So these are the two important points I wanted to bring to your notice. Thank you.
