Conceptions of faith
Mon, 01 Jan 1996 Filed in:
Journal
It seems so awfully strange, that we
should be bound to agree with the religious sentiments of our
current era. As I look around, I realize that the Faith will look
so different from the way it does now — when its membership will
include all sorts of people, from every walk of life. Are the
attitudes today the same as they were in the 1920s? Our sense of
“propriety”, of “reverence”, of “appropriateness”: these are more
social conventions that came with our mother’s milk! If there is a
Law governing a certain detail of human life, that’s different; but
where there is no law, we have complete freedom of action. That is
the nature of our free-will. I would say that 5% of being a Bahá’í
lies in dealing with the Law. This would mean that the other 95% is
the relationship we form from our own sense of His Divine Reality.
It shouldn’t be dictated to us by others, no matter how subtlely or
kindly. Of the three things necessary to comprehend His Teachings,
Bahá’u’lláh lists among them “freedom of spirit”. Outside the
dictates of the Law, our spirits have been given the prerogative to
soar, and soar, and soar; anything that would bind us is a chain
from this world.