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To be a Baha'i does not mean therefore that one works selfishly, with an eye on the next world, for one's own salvation, but rather that one participates fully in this earthly life and cooperates in the building of this kingdom of peace as envisioned by the prophets. This will be realized neither in the way Christian zealots have imagined nor as so many socialists envision the creation of a new order, neither by God's cosmic interference in our order of existence with the consequent transformation of human nature which would then no longer be capable of evil, nor simply by the resolute adherence to the commandment to love one's neighbour, nor by the wholehearted observation of the exhortations in the Sermon on the Mount, as Leo Tolstoy vaguely dreamt. It will not come about simply by destroying the old social structures in revolutionary civil wars or by trying to build a new society free from contradictions in which man, no longer suppressed or exploited, can fulfil himself and will spontaneously become "good". The kingdom of peace will come to men neither as a cosmic event, as some Christians, on the basis of a literal interpretation of the Scriptures, expect, nor "from the barrel of a gun" (Mao Tse Tung). Peace and justice cannot be bombed on to the planet. They will be the fruit of a complete transformation of human consciousness and of a laborious building process by a new race of men.
(27:2)
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