Great. How do we go about doing such research - in an unbiased fashion?
Of course we all have biases, but if we are seeking knowledge of God we need to be
aware of our biases and make a sincere effort to put them aside, and seek only truth.
“O My brother! When a true seeker determineth to take the step of search in the path leading unto the knowledge of the Ancient of Days, he must, before all else, cleanse his heart, which is the seat of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God, from the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge, and the allusions of the embodiments of satanic fancy. He must purge his breast, which is the sanctuary of the abiding love of the Beloved, of every defilement, and sanctify his soul from all that pertaineth to water and clay, from all shadowy and ephemeral attachments. He must so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away from the truth…..”
From:
Tablet of the True Seeker
Satanic fancy just refers to our own propensity to follow what we want, our selfish desires. I do not believe in a being called Satan.
I never have felt bad. Religious beliefs just don't affect me. I am more interested in all the real problems that humans have without dealing with the imaginary ones.
Religion should be about the real problems that humans have... otherwise it is fit for the fire.
“Man is like unto a tree. If he be adorned with fruit, he hath been and will ever be worthy of praise and commendation. Otherwise a fruitless tree is but fit for fire. The fruits of the human tree are exquisite, highly desired and dearly cherished. Among them are upright character, virtuous deeds and a goodly utterance.”
Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 257
Nice for the messengers no doubt - but for the rest, they have to either believe they are true messengers or just charlatans and/or are just misguided. And who can tell when time effectively separates us from such individuals.
It is really not very nice for the Messengers because they get rejected and persecuted, tortured and imprisoned for the Cause of God.
We should never just believe they are “true” Messengers of God without thoroughly checking them out. There is a lot of evidence we can look at; their character, their life, their scriptures, the religion they established.
“What does it mean to investigate reality? It means that man must forget all hearsay and examine truth himself, for he does not know whether statements he hears are in accordance with reality or not. Wherever he finds truth or reality, he must hold to it, forsaking, discarding all else; for outside of reality there is naught but superstition and imagination.” – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 62.
A bit tough though when one voice seems to contradict others. Why on earth are there so many different faiths if God was the one talking to each, or does God just love inter-faith friction - as in our past history - or is God just a bit careless and/or not bothered?
The reason there are so many different religions is that each religion was revealed for a given age in history, to suit the needs of that age. When a religion no longer suits the needs of a successive age, God reveals a new religion, and so on and so forth, and this process of revelation has been with us from eternity and will continue throughout all of eternity, as mankind and the world he lives in changes over time.
God does not love friction but it was meant to be that religions would be separate until the “time of the end” when God would send a Messenger to unify all the religions. That time came in 1844. The problem is that the older religions do not want to be unified with a new religion because they hold fast to their own religious traditions and believe their religion is the “only way” to God. That is starting to change, but it is a long slow process, because religions have been separate all throughout history.
Well it's nice to know that God works in mysterious ways so as to inform the believers as to the purpose of creation. Shame the message seems to have initiated so many faiths, and to cause such disagreement as to what the message really is.
There is no need for disagreement because the eternal spiritual verities of all the religions are the same but the message is new and the social teachings and laws are new, and the older religions do not think we need anything new, so they reject this message. Baha’u’llah has now come to explain this, but as I said, people do not like a new religion because they are attached to their older religions and they see this new religion as a threat.
Some people are also afraid because in many ways it is very different from the older religions, but this is a new age, an age that was ushered in by the coming of a new Messenger. We can never go back to the old system of religion.
“The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.
Immerse yourselves in the ocean of My words, that ye may unravel its secrets, and discover all the pearls of wisdom that lie hid in its depths. Take heed that ye do not vacillate in your determination to embrace the truth of this Cause—a Cause through which the potentialities of the might of God have been revealed, and His sovereignty established. With faces beaming with joy, hasten ye unto Him. This is the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future. Let him that seeketh, attain it; and as to him that hath refused to seek it—verily, God is Self-Sufficient, above any need of His creatures.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 136
I was not raised in any religion, so I did not have any bias when I stumbled upon the Baha’i Faith at age 17. I almost immediately recognized it as the Truth because of its teachings, but I did not think much about God at that time, or for many decades… God came later and that is still a work in progress.
I really do try to understand how people who are attached to their older religions feel, but I can be a lose patience sometimes because it is so frustrating, since we can never have unity of the human race as long as people cling to the past and believe only their beliefs are right and everyone else is wrong.
PS I try to be courteous all the time but I am often a sinner.
Funny thing, I haven’t noticed…