Philosophy:Faith in the Bahá'í Faith

Like most religions, the Bahá'í Faith holds that having a strong belief, a personal faith, is crucial to a spiritual life.

Knowing the truth for oneself

A Being disciplined about search for truth can be seen as a philosophy, and the literature of the religion sometimes praises philosophers. According to the Bahá'i Faith, the object of all learning is to achieve the presence of God in one's life, and thereby to know ourselves.

The Bahá'í Faith suggests that several ways of learning can help lead you to that goal:

• Sense perception
• Intellect
• Insight
• The Holy Writings
• Experience and research
• Spirit of faith

Progression and development

The Bahá'í Faith also references the idea that like many other things, the appreciation of truth, one's belief, and one's degree of faithfulness, is progressive. Major works of the Bahá'í Faith are renderings of the overall progress of the individual: Seven Valleys, Four Valleys, Gems of Divine Mysteries, The Book of Certitude all reference stages of coming to know God and one's self. There are also significant references in various places in Bahá'í literature with respect to the goal or importance of a praiseworthy character. For example a major initiative first mentioned in the first half of the twentieth century was to engage in the Double Crusade. Speaking to the United States Bahá'í community Shoghi Effendi said [1]:

(A) rectitude of conduct, which in all its manifestations offers a striking contrast to the deceitfulness and corruption that characterize the political life of the nation and of the partisan factions that compose it, a holiness and chastity that are diametrically opposed to the moral laxity and licentiousness which defile the character of a not inconsiderable proportion of its citizens, an interracial fellowship completely purged from the curse of racial prejudice which stigmatizes the vast majority of its people, these are the weapons which the American believers can and must wield in their Double Crusade. First, to regenerate the inward life of their own community, and next to assail the longstanding evils that have entrenched themselves in the life of their nation.

Thus half of the Double Crusade is about individual character and its issues within the religious community.

Various disciplines are mandated or suggested in the Bahá'í Faith as ways to grow, and protect, one's faith:

• Read the words of Bahá'u'lláh twice a day
• Read the daily obligatory prayers
• Teaching or promulgating one's belief (not proselytizing)
• Performing pure and goodly deeds
• Being obedient to the laws and teachings of Bahá'u'lláh
• Being detached from ego and worldly matters (not disengagement from)
• Eschewing gossip and backbiting
• Meditating on spiritual matters

See also

• Ethics in religion

References

• Eternal Quest for God: An Introduction to the Divine Philosophy of Abdu'l-Baha, by Julio Savi, George Ronald, Publisher 1989
• Spiritualization of the Bahá'í Community A Plan for Teaching by National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Ireland and Adib Taherzadeh, 1982.
• Reason and the Bahá'í Writings - The Use and Misuse of Logic and Persuasion by Ian Kluge, 2001-09-02
• The Concept of Spirituality, by William S. Hatcher, 1982.
• Examination of the Environmental Crisis, by Chris Jones, 2001
• Towards the Elimination of Religious Prejudice: Potential Christian Contributions From a Bahá'í Perspective by Chris Jones, 2004
• Will, Knowledge, and Love as Explained in Bahá'u'lláh's Four Valleys by Julio Savi, (1994)