Wholeness, Not Fragmentation: Why Only Spirit Can Unite
Everywhere we look, the world groans beneath the burden of its own divisions, now supercharged by a staggering cocktail of hypocrisy and hubris. From the most strident ideologues to the self-appointed stewards of public morality, we witness calls for “unity” flowing from precisely those corners most addicted to the business of division—an irony lost on the spiritually bankrupt. It’s as if we are living out the warning to the church of Laodicea: “rich and increased with goods,” blithely self-assured, but in reality lukewarm, blind, and naked—convinced of our own moral superiority, even as secular humanist virtue signaling metastasizes into full-blown mind-viruses. The loudest proclamations of empathy and justice ring hollow, as our so-called “maturity” manifests not in genuine love or solidarity, but in self-righteous posturing that pretends to outdo God Himself in moral purity. The result? Every “ism,” every cause, multiplies new tribes and new trenches—while those waving banners of “unity” are the very agents of fragmentation they claim to oppose. Is it any wonder that the ideals and principles we all profess break apart into exhaustion, bitterness, and mutual suspicion the moment they encounter real life? What is it, fundamentally, that we have failed to see?
The Universal House of Justice, with the clarity of prophetic vision, insists: no arrangement of principles, no checklist of causes, can ever substitute for the Word of God - which has poured forth across time and space, through the living, generative force of spirit. Wholeness cannot be achieved by cobbling together our favorite parts or drawing boundaries ever more precisely around our group or grievance. As Bahá’u’lláh affirms:
“These principles and laws, these firmly-established and mighty systems, have proceeded from one Source, and are the rays of one Light. That they differ one from another is to be attributed to the varying requirements of the ages in which they were promulgated.”
—Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, CXXXII
The underlying reality is unity. The multitude of teachings, practices, cultures, and even commandments are not contradictions, but facets—rays refracted from the prism of a single divine light. We are not meant to choose one at the expense of others, or elevate a single virtue into an idol. True unity is capacious, not cramped; it is a vast, relational wholeness, not a mere consensus or conformity.
The Patchwork of Slogans, the Call for Spirit
You can hear it in contemporary discourse:
- The left speaks of “intersectionality,” searching for a language of inclusion that can hold many identities.
- The right defends cohesion, aching for a story large enough to bind us together.
- In nonprofit boardrooms, social justice seminars, and even faith communities, calls for loyalty to a more specific cause generates exhaustion as slogans, campaigns and strategic plans generate a never-ending parade of reworded policies; missions, visions, statements of intent, backed up by yet another version of “anti-bias training” that fails to live up to its intent.
The deeper question remains unanswered: Where is the heart? What is it that softens us toward one another? What builds trust, humility, and genuine curiosity? What nourishes hope when policies fail or slogans falter?
“Unity is a condition of the human spirit,” the House of Justice reminds us. “Education can support and enhance it, as can legislation, but they can do so only once it emerges and has established itself as a compelling force in social life.”
—One Common Faith
Not Simplicity, but Synthesis
It is tempting to think that unity requires sameness or the elimination of difference. But in the Baha’i vision, unity is more akin to a symphony or a garden—a synthesis of diversity, revealing a beauty impossible for any one voice alone.
As Bahá’u’lláh states:
“There can be no doubt whatever that the peoples of the world, of whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from one heavenly Source, and are the subjects of one God.”
—Bahá’u’lláh
This is not mere tolerance, or polite coexistence. It is a recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—that each tradition, each insight, each cultural inheritance is a gift meant to be woven into something grander than itself. The antidote to fragmentation is not forced uniformity or empty multicultural clichés, but the living power of spiritual unity.
A Memoir Thread: Finding Wholeness in the Ruins
In my life, I have experienced the costs of fragmentation firsthand: Family relationships strained by competing narratives of truth. Communities divided over a single issue, unable to see the humanity of “the other” in the opposing camp. My own heart pulled in competing directions—idealism versus realism, belonging versus honesty, action versus reflection.
It has always been in the places where spirit was present—where prayer, humility, and a deep anchoring in something higher than ourselves prevailed—that solutions appeared, healing began, and new possibilities emerged. These are not abstract truths. I have seen entire rooms change—in assemblies, at dinner tables, in conversations with those “on the other side”—when participants let go of the urgent need to be right and opened themselves to the possibility of being changed.
A Vision for All: Beyond Slogans to Substance
The world is hungry for this vision—a vision both vast and intimate. It is seen in the small gestures of kindness that deflate a heated argument, in the space created when someone says, “I do not know, but I want to understand you,” in the palpable sense of presence that comes when friends gather in prayer across boundaries of belief.
True unity needs spirit at the center. “The power through which these goals will be progressively realized is that of unity,” the Universal House of Justice tells us. “Its one certain source lies in the restoration of religion’s influence in human affairs. The laws and principles revealed by God, in this day, Bahá’u’lláh declares, ‘are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for the dawning of the light of unity amongst men.’”
—One Common Faith
Series Hook:
Isn’t it time to move beyond slogans—to a vision both vast and intimate, where all virtues find their place?
Invitation: From Fragment to Wholeness
Where in your life do you sense the longing for a more complete unity? Do your communities struggle to balance difference and togetherness? Have you seen, even for a moment, a unity that was not the erasure of self but the flowering of all?
Share your stories and reflections below. Where do you see hope? Where do you see the temptation to settle for a narrow part instead of seeking the whole?
Next week, we will move from vision to invitation—a call to spiritual maturity, to religious unity that rises above even our best attempts at social reform. There is work before us. But as the Baha’i writings assure, it is a work we are prepared—if we are willing—to undertake together.
Let’s leave behind the fragments. Let’s seek wholeness, the true source of unity.
All scriptural and Baha’i quotations appear as originally revealed and authorized. The series continues next week with “The New Call: Religious Unity and the Next Chapter for Humanity.”
