Faith in the Bahá'í Faith holds that having a strong belief, a personal faith, is crucial to a healthy spiritual life. The Bahá'í Faith specifically relates how the abilities to know the truth are related to the overall goal of developing a praiseworthy character in addition to personally being aligned with the truth.
Knowing the truth for yourself[edit]
A core teaching of the Bahá'í Faith is an unfettered search for the truth. Another core teaching of the Bahá'í Faith is that science and religion should agree and not be opposed to each other (see the religion's views on science and religion.) As in other religions, it is held that having a firm belief itself can make seemingly impossible things possible, even natural. Being disciplined about this search for truth can be seen as a philosophy, and the literature of the religion sometimes praises philosophers. According to the Bahá'i Faith, the object of all learning is to achieve the presence of God in one's life, and thereby to know ourselves.
The Bahá'í Faith suggests that several ways of learning can help lead you to that goal:[1][2]
- Sense perception
- Intellect
- Insight
- The Holy Writings
- Experience and Research
- Spirit of Faith
Sense Perception[edit]
It is the most immediate way of knowledge and the broadest - shared with all animals.[1] The senses are relates by their inherent function in relation to the function of the nervous system arriving at specific and clear awarenesses of existence (eyes see light and it is perceived, and so on). Certain realities are revealed by sense perception, but it can be fooled (illusions) and there is much we have learned of the universe senses will never testify to (from special relativity, to the relationships of an ecology, to the role of motherhood and love, and of the love of God.)
Intellect[edit]
The ability to appreciate abstraction, to conceptualize things and perceive therein relationships, is a useful method of gaining access to truth - this is the practice of science and logic and mathematics. However it can be mislead as it depends on assumptions and correct applications of relationships - and so can be wrong. And there are certain gaps in reasoning - for example Godels' Theorem.
Insight[edit]
By awareness of the inherent qualities of a thing, implications can be known, independently of inductive or deductive reasoning methods. This is not just a matter of mystics - great scientific advances have been made by an insight, and when language and behavior fail to communicate, a parent can still intuit when their child is hungry or thirsty. But here again we can be mislead - that we may be attracted to or repelled from considering certain things over other things, or that we may become lost in our imagination of things that aren't true or simply relying on habit to tell us what we think we feel is true.
Holy Writings[edit]
It accepted by Bahá'ís that truly divinely authored speech or writing is infallibly true[1] - the problem arises what any specific reference actually means, or that the understanding should be literal, figurative, or both. The Bahá'í Faith, as every religion, take scripture seriously yet seriously is not synonymous with literally. Since Bahá'ís accept the divine authorship of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Qur'an, and have a respect for the divinely mandated station and message of the Founders of the major religions as well as the belief systems of the native peoples of the planet though noting that it can be difficult to separate truth from myth.
Experience and research[edit]
Experience and research are avenues where each method can be considered in relation to the others so that harmony is achieved and paradoxes reconciled. Experience and research also reveal that each avenue is one which learning itself affects - by training one can gain more precise appreciation of sense perception, a more extensive and sensitive application of intellectual relationships, a patience and clarity for insight, and sincere deepened and expansive respect for the sacred in life and all existence. As such the Bahá'í Faith has a principle of universal, or compulsory education with such topics as moral and spiritual education, engaging in a useful trade or profession, literacy and other implications. These are not conditions of understanding truth - they are the fruits of degrees of success of understanding truth which can further the effort of achieving further understanding. But all experience and research can still not result in all understanding and never error. In the Bahá'í Faith the Holy Books are held up as examples of incomparable authorship that could not have been achieved in their day by any person or cooperation of people, but are instead the work of God. And social fads and deranged application of human capacities could arrive at universally accepted and perfectly vacuous systems like nazism which in their day were held up as achievements of all avenues of human achievement and knowing.
Spirit of faith[edit]
The Spirit of Faith is a concept of a reality within the context of Bahá'í metaphysics and mysticism - it is situated between the human spirit, most identified with the rational quality of the soul, and the Holy Spirit which among other things is one of the main channels of God's attention and mercy to all creation[[1]]. In this situation the Spirit of Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, is from the Kingdom of God, and yet it is personal, not a Revelation meant for all mankind. The Spirit of Faith is also referred to as the indwelling spirit though both phrases are used in broader meanings as well. It has priority over all the other ways of knowing the truth for a person in that it can be far more immediate and all-embracing than the other ways of knowing for the person who achieves it. And yet it is recognized that having this condition does not automatically make an impact on anyone else and as such even those who attain to it should keep in mind all the ways of knowing the truth for the sake of each person - that God reaches to us 'where we're at' and leads us on as well as noting the goal of spiritual life isn't just to recognize the truth the fullest extent possible - it's also to develop a noble character. This condition is also capable of becoming a barrier between a person and God and knowing truth. Some mystics begin to think they stand in company with the Prophets when in fact they are still just human and have attained to no divine mandate[2] without which the Prophets would never have let themselves be known to the generality of humanity.
Progression and development[edit]
The Bahá'í Faith also references the idea that like many other things, the appreciation of truth, one's belief, and one's degree of faithfulness, is progressive. Major works of the Bahá'í Faith are renderings of the overall progress of the individual: Seven Valleys, Four Valleys, Gems of Divine Mysteries, The Book of Certitude all reference stages of coming to know God and one's self. There are also significant references in various places in Bahá'í literature with respect to the goal or importance of a praiseworthy character. For example a major initiative first mentioned in the first half of the twentieth century was to engage in the Double Crusade. Speaking to the United States Bahá'í community Shoghi Effendi said[3]:
(A) rectitude of conduct, which in all its manifestations offers a striking contrast to the deceitfulness and corruption that characterize the political life of the nation and of the partisan factions that compose it, a holiness and chastity that are diametrically opposed to the moral laxity and licentiousness which defile the character of a not inconsiderable proportion of its citizens, an interracial fellowship completely purged from the curse of racial prejudice which stigmatizes the vast majority of its people, these are the weapons which the American believers can and must wield in their Double Crusade. First, to regenerate the inward life of their own community, and next to assail the longstanding evils that have entrenched themselves in the life of their nation.
Thus half of the Double Crusade is about individual character and its issues within the religious community.
Various disciplines are mandated or suggested in the Bahá'í Faith as ways to grow, and protect, one's faith:
- Read the words of Bahá'u'lláh twice a day
- Read the daily obligatory prayers
- Teaching or promulgating one's belief (not proselytizing)
- Performing pure and goodly deeds
- Being obedient to the laws and teachings of Bahá'u'lláh
- Being detached from ego and worldly matters (not disengagement from)
- Eschewing gossip and backbiting
- Meditating on spiritual matters
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Ch1 - The Ways of the Search: Towards a Philosophy of Reality Eternal Quest for God: An Introduction to the Divine Philosophy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá by Julio Savi, George Ronald, Publisher, 46 High Street, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 2DN, 1989
- ↑ Ch2 - The Beginning of All Things Eternal Quest for God: An Introduction to the Divine Philosophy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá by Julio Savi, George Ronald, Publisher, 46 High Street, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 2DN, 1989
- Eternal Quest for God: An Introduction to the Divine Philosophy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, by Julio Savi, George Ronald, Publisher 1989
- Spiritualization of the Bahá'í Community A Plan for Teaching by National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Ireland and Adib Taherzadeh, 1982.
- Reason and the Bahá'í Writings - The Use and Misuse of Logic and Persuasion by Ian Kluge, 2001-09-02
- The Concept of Spirituality, by William S. Hatcher, 1982.
- Examination of the Environmental Crisis, by Chris Jones, 2001
- Towards the Elimination of Religious Prejudice: Potential Christian Contributions From a Bahá'í Perspective by Chris Jones, 2004
- Will, Knowledge, and Love as Explained in Bahá'u'lláh's Four Valleys by Julio Savi, (1994)
