Mark A. Foster
Sent: 04 September
2005 13:54
To: Baha'i Studies
Subject: Re:
Self-Definition
Tim,
At 06:49 AM 9/4/2005, you wrote:
>>A
person can define himself as anything, there is no way to
control
>>that. However, that doesn't mean the rest of the world must
accept
>>that self-definition.<<
As a sociologist of
religion, I have no alternative but to accept the self-definitions of people. As
an individual, I also do not want to judge people. My assumption is that people
are adherents of whatever religion they claim.
With respect to
Covenant-breakers, I do not associate with them out of obedience to the
Universal House of Justice. However, I would not go any further than that. I
simply do not, as an individual, question anyone's religious
identification.
...
Mark A. Foster . http://markfoster.net ...
this
lowly one would add this namely that:
It would be nice if we read these two
paragraphs a couple of times before we delve into this
subject
***A corollary of the abandonment of faith in God
has been a paralysis of ability to address effectively the problem of evil or,
in many cases, even to acknowledge it. While Bahá'ís do not attribute to the
phenomenon the objective existence it was assumed at earlier stages of religious
history to possess, the negation of the good that evil represents, as with
darkness, ignorance or disease, is severely crippling in its effect. Few
publishing seasons pass that do not offer the educated reader a range of new and
imaginative analyses of the character of some of the monstrous figures who,
during the twentieth century, systematically tortured, degraded and exterminated
millions of their fellow human beings. One is invited by scholarly authority to
ponder the weight that should be given, variously, to paternal abuse, social
rejection, professional disappointments, poverty, injustice, war experiences,
possible genetic impairment, nihilistic literature-or various combinations of
the foregoing-in seeking to understand the obsessions fuelling an apparently
bottomless hatred of humankind. Conspicuously missing from such contemporary
speculation is what experienced commentators, even as recently as a century ago,
would have recognized as spiritual disease, whatever its accompanying
features.
60
If unity is indeed the litmus test of human progress,
neither history nor Heaven will readily forgive those who choose deliberately to
raise their hands against it. In trusting, people lower their defences and open
themselves to others. Without doing so, there is no way in which they can commit
themselves wholeheartedly to shared goals. Nothing is so devastating as suddenly
to discover that, for the other party, commitments made in good faith have
represented no more than an advantage gained, a means of achieving concealed
objectives different from, or even inimical to, what had ostensibly been
undertaken together. Such betrayal is a persistent thread in human history that
found one of its earliest recorded expressions in the ancient tale of Cain's
jealousy of the brother whose faith God had chosen to confirm. If the appalling
suffering endured by the earth's peoples during the twentieth century has left a
lesson, it lies in the fact that the systemic disunity, inherited from a dark
past and poisoning relations in every sphere of life, could throw open the door
in this age to demonic behaviour more bestial than anything the mind had dreamed
possible.
If evil has a name, it is surely the deliberate violation
of the hard-won covenants of peace and reconciliation by which people of
goodwill seek to escape the past and to build together a new future. By its very
nature, unity requires self-sacrifice. "...self-love", the Master states, "is
kneaded into the very clay of man."59 The ego, termed by Him the "insistent
self",60 resists instinctively constraints imposed on what it conceives to be
its freedom. To willingly forgo the satisfactions that licence affords, the
individual must come to believe that fulfilment lies elsewhere. Ultimately, it
lies, as it has always done, in the soul's submission to God.
Failure to meet
the challenge of such submission has manifested itself with especially
devastating consequences throughout the centuries in betrayal of the Messengers
of God and of the ideals they taught. This discussion is not the place for a
review of the nature and provisions of the specific Covenant by means of which
Bahá'u'lláh has successfully preserved the unity of those who recognize Him and
serve His purpose. It is sufficient to note the strength of the language He
reserves for its deliberate violation by those who simultaneously pretend
allegiance to it: "They that have turned away therefrom are reckoned among the
inmates of the nethermost fire in the sight of thy Lord, the Almighty, the
Unconstrained."61 The reason for the severity of this condemnation is obvious.
Few people have difficulty in recognizing the danger to social well-being of
such familiar crimes as murder, rape or fraud, nor the need for society to take
effective measures of self-protection. But how are Bahá'ís to think about a
perversity which, if unchecked, would destroy the very means essential to the
creation of unity-would, in the uncompromising words of the Master, "become even
as an axe striking at the very root of the Blessed Tree"?62 The issue is not one
of intellectual dissent, nor even of moral weakness. Many people are resistant
to accepting authority of one kind or another, and eventually distance
themselves from circumstances that require it. Persons who have been attracted
to the Bahá'í Faith but who decide, for whatever reason, to leave it are
entirely free to do so.
63
Covenant-breaking is a
phenomenon fundamentally different in nature. The impulse it arouses in those
under its influence is not simply to pursue freely whatever path they believe
leads to personal fulfilment or contribution to society. Rather, are such
persons driven by an apparently ungovernable determination to impose their
personal will on the community by any means available to them, without regard
for the damage done and without respect for the solemn undertakings they entered
into on being accepted as members of that community. Ultimately, the self
becomes the overriding authority, not only in the individual's own life, but in
whatever other lives can be successfully influenced. As long and
tragic experience has demonstrated all too certainly, endowments such as
distinguished lineage, intellect, education, piety or social leadership can be
harnessed, equally, to the service of humanity or to that of personal ambition.
In ages past, when spiritual priorities of a different nature were the focus of
the Divine purpose, the consequences of such rebellion did not vitiate the
central message of any of the successive revelations of God. Today, with the
immense opportunities and horrific dangers that physical unification of the
planet has brought with it, commitment to the requirements of unity becomes the
touchstone of all professions of devotion to the will of God or, for that
matter, to the well-being of humankind.
64
Everything in its history
has equipped the Bahá'í Cause to address the challenge facing
it.
(Commissioned by The
Universal House of Justice, One Common
Faith)
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