Reconciliation isn’t an idea that can be overlayed onto the current social, economic, or political systems. It isn’t a blanket that covers the present and allows something else to grow over top. This type of ‘reconciliation’ is doomed to fail.
Reconciliation is justice in action in all aspects of life, as individuals and as a society. Reconciling is the act of acknowledging injustice past and present, being clear-eyed and unwilling to turn away when it is uncomfortable. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote: “Mere knowledge of principles is not sufficient. We all know and admit that justice is good, but there is need of volition and action to carry out and manifest it…Action is essential.”
The action must one of emergence. Present day society is based on materialistic principles and values which promotes the injustices of the past. In a speech he gave in Paris in 1911, Abdu’l-Baha advised that: “The government of the countries should conform to the Divine Law which gives equal justice to all. This is the only way in which the deplorable superfluity of great wealth and miserable, demoralizing, degrading poverty can be abolished.”
The spiritual principles of justice, equity, respect, empathy, integrity, and truthfulness must emerge in the hearts, minds and in the actions of individuals in such wise as to transform individual and community life. These principles have an all encompassing vision enunciated by Bahá’u’lláh: “O Children of Men! Know ye not why we created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how you were created. Since we have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.”
The oneness of humanity, which is the primary principle and ultimate goal of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh, implies, as Shoghi Effendi (Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith) said, an “organic change in the structure of present-day society.”
This oneness of humanity is the seed out of which will emerge a new society based on justice and equity. Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.” This is not an easy remedy. It calls on the individual to search their inmost selves and choose to express spiritual principles in everyday life, in which a community and a society emerges and grows into a nation based on justice. It means to make the past invisible injustices, visible and creating just, respectful remedies visible in all of society.
See Canadian Bahá’í Community submission to Truth & Reconciliation Committee-Canada:
https://opa.bahai.ca/documents/advancing-the-conversation-on-reconciliation-in-canada/