The Investigative Burden of a Baha’i
An academic’s journey from faithlessness to faithfulness
August 17 2019
My first forays into blog writing were a stubborn attempt to rebel against the restrictions of my over 10 years of academic study: the adherence to seemingly arbitrary convention, the rigorous over-referencing requirements, the perils of letting creative and subjective thought creep in. It felt good, and was necessary. That I could communicate the main findings of my PhD in three blog posts added further doubt to the necessity of its five and a half year gestation period.
As this was happening, I was also undertaking a significant personal transformation, which I can best describe as a journey from faithlessness to faithfulness (see this post for a full definition of what I mean by these terms). Having got my PhD and a few other things off my chest, this journey now seems like the only relevant thing to keep writing about.
As a starting point for untangling this journey — which, in my case, was a journey from atheism to the relatively obscure Bahá’í Faith — there are many factors to consider.
Like many newly faithful, it seems, my journey was catalysed by humiliation. Not in an overly public sense — although, thanks to my naivety with the then emerging forms of social media (yes, that includes MySpace), there was certainly some of that. But more the personal humiliation in the form of a profound failure of one’s ego that is the most effective means God has of nudging us in the right direction: leaving us in an utter state of humility where we see the futility of our own will and desires if they do not align with His (or, if you prefer, Her, given there is no gender in the spiritual world).
Clearly, then, my chosen (or perhaps better described as assumed) worldview of atheism wasn’t working. Believing in myself and my inherent wisdom had failed miserably. When tested, when left by myself, I wasn’t as pure in motive as I thought I was; I would turn to selfishness, give in to temptation, like everyone else. Perhaps most disturbingly to someone who just spent four largely wasted years in university studying the scientific method, there was not a clear, logical, rational way to explain and resolve every situation.
Not surprisingly, it helped to become friends with people of faith, specifically religious people, and finding out that they aren’t all fanatical, smug, judgmental and humourless. They can also be detached, welcoming, open minded, and — very importantly — have some of the best senses of humour you have encountered.
Parallel but related to these spiritual and social revelations was an intellectual one: the development of a better understanding of religion, which made me quickly realise how limited my previous understanding was. Shockingly, religion wasn’t just a crusade against sex above other seemingly more urgent and destructive social issues. Religion doesn’t entail an invasion of community and political life by people who claim to be concerned above all else with spiritual life. In short, religion isn’t just Christianity (or more fairly, the worst of Christianity).
I arrived at the position that all, or at least most, religions are completely legitimate, serve their own purpose in a particular time and/or place. Most interestingly, there was even a religion that not many people have heard of that attempts to link the various branches of religion together. An underlying yet barely understood theoretical framework linking seemingly unrelated aspects of the material world together… this was something my academic brain could get behind.
There were two of the central tenets of the Bahá’í Faith that were most attractive to me when I was first investigating it as a solution to my spiritual dilemmas.
The first — progressive revelation, and in its extension the underlying unity of all major religions — is really very simple. There is one God, who throughout the course of humanity has, like a loving parent stuck between wanting their children to fail and learn life’s lessons the hard way but lacking the ruthlessness to let them fall too far, intervened to save us from ourselves. These interventions come in the form of Divine Manifestations who each bring with them a similar set of fundamental spiritual laws, along with different social teachings relevant to a particular time and place: becoming what we now know as religions.
As someone with no attachment to any particular school religious thought, this seemed entirely reasonable, and still does. I can, however, understand the challenges it poses to others. To people imbedded within Christianity, where (I may be about to reveal my ignorance) Jesus is widely understood to represent God Himself, who sacrificed Himself for the eternal salvation of mankind, and where his eventual return and second coming is conceived in various extravagant ways. To people imbedded in Islam, where Muhammad is widely understood to be the last of and the Seal of the religious prophets, and where subsequent false prophets are to be judged harshly. That the essence of God may have already returned, without the expected trumpets and fire, still virtually (but not completely) unrecognised, within the heart of the Islamic world in order to rectify the emergent issues within Islam, doesn’t really fit these narratives, and is needless to say blasphemous.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this principle is the challenge religion itself gives to our collective egos: that we as a species are not as accomplished as we generally like to believe, that we have brought ourselves to the brink repeatedly, and rather than being saved through our own ingenuity, it has taken outside help. But then again, not many people subject to an intervention are aware they need it.
The second principle that hopefully most of us can agree upon, certainly in the freedom loving West, is independent investigation of truth. Not every Bahá’í understands this principle the same way, but is essentially that every individual should investigate reality with an open mind and free from inherited traditions and superstitions.
This principle may, from the outside, seem hard to reconcile with many other Bahá’í teachings — particularly the numerous laws relating to personal and social life that are not overly ‘free’ in the sense that we might typically conceive. I have heard the principle simplified rather cynically as independent investigation of truth until you become a Bahá’í, before this right is forfeited for a new set of traditions and superstitions.
I get this view to an extent, even if I disagree. The way I have come to understand this principle is along these lines: that even after accepting to live by all these seemingly overly-detailed and onerous prescriptions, life remains incredibly complicated and subjective; there is still so much we don’t understand about our existence and so much that we must explore and investigate through our own eyes. Again, this ticked the academic box, particularly for someone who until recently was embedded in the bastion of subjectivity that is Humanities.
So, I was sold, from an intellectual perspective anyway — spiritually there was still much work to do, but that is for another time.
When combined, the implication of embracing the Bahá’í Faith for these ‘intellectual’ principles is the adoption of a significant and corresponding intellectual burden: to undertake a somewhat-thorough investigation into the teachings of other major religions in order to understand the unique contribution they have made to humanity.
This is a challenge. Firstly because, well, life. Then, because Bahá’ís are also supposed to read from their own Writings every morning and evening. Bare with me as I summarise briefly these Writings.
The Manifestation of the Bahá’í Faith — Bahá’u’lláh — wrote a lot: in total, it is suggested His works total around 15 times the size of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and 70 times the size of the Qur’an.
Then there is the Báb — a separate Manifestation that came before Bahá’u’lláh — who I once was told wrote almost as much (although, more impressively, this occurred over the space of around 7 years before his execution at the age of 30).
Then there is Bahá’u’lláh’s son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who was the official interpreter of these Writings, and who has a range of books, compiled talks and tablets. The main works of each of these three individuals should be understood as staples on your Bahá’í bookshelf.
Then there are an untold number of letters from formal institutions of the Faith, such as its current Universal House of Justice and its former Guardian (Shoghi Effendi, who also wrote the most prominent book covering the history and development of the Faith into the 20th century: ‘God Passes By’). Plus a range of additional historical and contemporary books by current and former believers, many of which (for example ‘The Dawn-Breakers’ by Nabíl-i-Zarandí, which detailed the earliest history of the Faith) are considered essential reading for any Bahá’í worth his or her salt.
Lord, have mercy (mercifully, a large proportion have yet to be translated to English).
So, on top of this existing obligation, one must now add the additional challenge of becoming aquatinted with the Writings of other religious traditions. For me, this often feels like a more urgent task than diving more fully into my still somewhat shallow understanding of the Bahá’í Writings.
Firstly from a practical teaching sense: as you might have gleaned from my brief synopsis of the beliefs of Christians and Muslims above, I am in a poor position to meet people of different faiths halfway when trying to explain fundamental Bahá’í beliefs in the context of their religious beliefs.
Secondly, because I know it will be good for me. I found the spiritual teachings related to Hinduism in particular very helpful for dealing modern Western lifestyles; I’m not planning to read all the Vedas, but I would like to know more about them.
Finally, because I’m still an academic, and I get kicks from just knowing stuff, and I don’t like the thought that followers of these religions have access to revealed truths that I am missing out on.
I want to try and read and understand the Bible myself, rather than just rely on Jordan Peterson lectures (which have been extremely helpful, notwithstanding the constant references to cultural marxism). I want to know the true meanings of the stories relating to Adam and Eve and the serpent, Cain and Abel, the Flood, and what these stories might say about current revivals of Luciferianism/Satanism. And I really want to read the Book of Enoch, to work out what the hell the deal is with those Nephilim.
And then there is the ultimate challenge: the Qur’an. Man I have tried to work my way through it, but it is hard work — not just because even the official English translation reads from back to front. But I must persist, as this is the book — along with the religion and culture that came from it — that the Bahá’í Faith was established in. Because of this, so much of what is in the Bahá’í Writings — not least the challenging set of spiritual laws that I mentioned previously — can only be understood with this context.
It’s hard not to be slightly overwhelmed at the investigative burden of this task. Yet, for me anyway, such a burden also gives new meaning to my over 10 years of intellectual wandering: rather than being wasted, it was in fact the perfect preparation for my greatest academic challenge.