Becoming a Baha’i

I am honored that Christina asked me to share some personal experiences to illustrate my experience as a member of the Baha’i Faith. My hope is that this discussion will allow people, including myself, to examine their personal belief systems in a meaningful way. The Baha’i’s believe that it is the right and responsibility of every human being to find their own spiritual truth. We call this concept “The independent investigation of truth”. I am not out to convert anyone, only to share my own truth and see how it aligns with other peoples.

A brief history of my religious life before becoming a Baha’i is as follows. I was raised protestant. My mom was the one that insisted we went to church. She was not really tied to a particular Protestant denomination. Depending on where we lived, we were Baptist, Methodists, and Presbyterians. My mom was usually very active in the church. She would always be on committees that would help people out in different ways, visiting shut-ins, cleaning the church, organizing youth group activities and so on. She helped me to have a basic belief that God exists and wants us to do good things. My father on the other hand was an agnostic. If he ever prayed, read the bible or performed any other religious acts, I never found out about it. He considered himself a “social member” of the church. His view was that there were lots of nice people in the church that he liked to spend time with and he was willing to tolerate all their talk about God so long as they could have a good laugh once in a while. He helped me to become an independent thinker and to question authority.

When I was in high school, I was very turned off to organized religion when I saw a group of wealthy church patrons have the minister of our church removed. The minister was someone who I loved and respected because he helped all people regardless of their ability to contribute to the church. He had helped our family deal with my father’s Alcoholism more than once. So I was hurt by that event, and when I went to college, I really didn’t pursue a religious community at all. I began to do yoga and meditate and pretty much develop my own sense of what I thought my relation to God should be.

By my late 20’s I had pretty much given up on organized religion. That was when things began to change. It started when my wife and I moved from Rochester, NY to Olean, NY. We did this because we thought it would be a good place to raise a family. After we moved, my wife was in culture shock. She had gone from being a fairly well know professional musician in the Rochester area to a place where no one knew her and she didn’t know very many people. One day she saw an advertisement in the paper about a talk on “Spirituality and Music” that was to be given by the Baha’is. Well, I had never heard of the Baha’i Faith, but she had been to a Baha’i event when she was in high school and she wanted to go to the talk. I didn’t want to go, but my wife is one of the smartest people I have ever met, so I encouraged her to go and check it out. When she came back from the talk, she was very excited. She had liked the talk and the people had been very nice to her. I was pretty skeptical of a religion that met in peoples houses and talked about spiritual issues. I told her I thought it sounded a little cult like. Since she knows me a little too well, she said something like “Well, why don’t you come to the next talk and make up your own mind about it?” So I decided that I would.

A couple of weeks later, I showed up at this house with kind of a chip on my shoulder. I was there for a talk about “The equality of women and men”. (which is a foundational teaching of the Baha’i Faith). To my surprise, the woman giving the talk had graduated from Portville High School, which is where I went to school. The people seemed to be very friendly. As a brief introduction to the Baha’i Faith, the presenter explained that the Baha’is believe in something called “progressive revelation”. The idea is that there is only one God, and that this God sends divine messengers to the earth every so often to keep mankind progressing spiritually. That means that Krishna, Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. are all from the same God and they all brought the teachings that mankind as a whole needed at that point in human history. This idea made sense to me and it answered many questions that I had always had about why the religions all seemed to have the same teachings, but that they all thought that they were the only ones who were right. At the conclusion of this discussion, she went on to say that the Baha’is believe that there have been two new prophets sent in the 1800’s. The first was called “The Bab” which means “the gate” in Arabic. His mission was similar to that of John the Baptist in the Christian tradition. He was to inform the people that a new messenger was about to appear and that they should be looking for the new promised one. The second, was called “Baha’u’llah” which is an Arabic title that means “The Glory of God”. A Baha’i is then someone who believes that Baha’u’llah is the newest divine messenger from God and tries to follow his teachings.

So after this introduction, the presenter went on to talk about Baha’u’llah’s teachings about the equality of women and men. By now, I was enjoying the new ideas being presented and I had many questions, which I started asking, one after another….still with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder as I recall. Anyway, the Baha’is very kindly answered all my questions to the best of their ability. In some cases, they actually admitted that they really weren’t sure of the answers, but would be happy to give me some more information to read. I remember thinking that it was very good that they didn’t have programmed answers for everything and that they seemed like genuinely kind people.

After this introduction, I actually investigated the Baha’i Faith for over a year. At that time I was looking for hypocrisy in the community life. In Christina’s terms, perhaps I was looking to see if people were trying to align their “expression” with their “faith/belief”. I found most of the Baha’is to be sincere in their attempt to make their inner life and outward actions consistent with the teachings of their religion. Finally, just before my first son was born, I began to feel as if the personal religion I had built for myself was not sufficient to raise a family. I decided that I believed that Baha’u’llah was who He said He was and that the Olean Baha’i community would be a healthy place to raise my family. Sixteen years later, I believe that more than ever.

Mike

Technorati tags: Bahai, faith, beliefs, gender, equality, religion

Add comment November 18th, 2006

First Religious Topic

My friend, Mike, is Baha’i (I had to look it up too). We have spent some time discussing some basics of religion, a little of my religious background and his, and he wondered why I have not blogged on the topic that I seem so interested in.

There are several reasons I have not blogged about religion. Mainly, I don’t want to attract any trolls and nothing seems to attacted them than better than a little religious pragmatism. I must admit, religion is an area that I am extremely passionate about although it is a private passion. It is almost too taboo for me to discuss openly although I love to engage others to hear their perspective on the subject. Most (including my husband) would probably mistake me for an atheist and I rarely correct them, nor do I find this an offensive label even if it is inaccurate. Only my closest friends have ever taken the time to understand my deeply religious past and how it has lead me to become an extremly curious agnostic.

Despite, or perhaps due to, my intensely religious past, I now separate religious discussion into the following elements: Organizations, Social Groups, Faith/Belief, Expression, Power, and Truth. I have found these categories to be quite useful when someone starts talking about religion because they are usually only referencing one of these elements rather than all of them and therefore I can understand where they are coming from without feeling the need to get on a soapbox full of research (it is truely amazing how little people know about their own professed religion).

Organizations are the established and most talked about facets of religion. Organizations can usually be researched extensively through wiki’s, dictionaries, encyclopedias and many have their own websites and printed materials that can be used to understand the history and doctrine. Most people associate themselves or characterize themselves as one of these organizations.

Social groups refer to a group of people that have generated a status que amongst themselves. Social groups are often found within organizations and people can be part of several social groups, even if they appear to conflict with each other. Social groups allow individuals to move beyond an organization’s restrictive doctrine. Vegetarians are an example of social groups.

Faith / belief is the rhetoric that an individual proclaims to others. Behavior is often affected by faith / beliefs and social group pressure to express faith / belief. Faith / belief is often instilled at a young age or heavily influenced by a paradigm. They are rarely researched and that is why I have separated faith / beliefs from truth. For example, someone that has survived a car accident is cared for by a Born Again nurse that regularly prayed with them during their recovery. This individual now associates his survival and recovery with the Born Again organization and swears by its doctrine. Although some may say this faith / belief is based on experience, the fact remains that someone else could have nursed them back to health and this “faith” / “belief” would not exist.

Expression is the outward display of all of the above mentioned areas. Expression rarely matches personal truth, but often matches the doctrine of an organization or status quo of a social group. Going to church every Sunday is often an expression of status quo or organizational doctrine. Guilt is a consequence of expression not matching personal truth.

Power is the reason things happen. Many refer to power as God. How often have you heard someone say that God gave them the power to survive or win or succeed or that natural disasters are God’s wrath? I stumbled upon this element of religion in grade school while learning about Greek and Roman gods. They were taught to explain things that could not be explained with the limited science that their societies had at their disposal but that thier experience had taught them to fear and account for. Although many have been taught that their specific religion has transended that level of reason, research shows that the term God is still to this day and in most organizations, used to explain something that is difficult to measure or prove and to keep the population under control.

Personal truth is the glue that holds a person together. It is what makes them tick. It is there when no one else is watching… it affects our dreams and it is the most suppressed part of organizations and social groups. Suppressing personal truth, as I mentioned, often leads to feelings of guilt. For example, many are taught that killing another person is wrong but may be called upon to fight in a war. Organizations and social groups may find this form of killing acceptable but the individual finds themselves tormented with guilt because their life experience has taught them to value human life. Personal truth stems from research or from practical life experience and may be different for each individual.

I will attempt to explain my religious past and current personal truths in future posts. Meanwhile, I have asked Mike to guest blog and explain Baha’i from a personal perspective. I am keenly interested in what cannot be found in wikipedia, namely, personal truths.

Technorati tags: religion, , atheist, , agnostic, , Bahai, , faith, , God, , guilt, , beliefs

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Add comment November 11th, 2006