“The believers must discriminate between the two extremes of bringing
people into the Cause before they have fully grasped its fundamentals and
making it too hard for them, expecting too much of them, before they
accept them. This requires truly keen judgment, as it is unfair to people
to allow them to embrace a movement the true meaning of which they have
not fully grasped. It is equally unfair to expect them to be perfect
Bahá’ís before they can enter the Faith. Many teaching problems arise out
of these two extremes...”
27: BAHÁ’ÍS (TWO KINDS OF)
“There are two kinds of Bahá’ís, one might say: those whose religion is
Bahá’í and those who live for the Faith. Needless to say if we can belong
to the latter category, if we can be in the vanguard of heroes, martyrs
and saints, it is more praiseworthy in the sight of God.”
28: BAHÁ’Í WAY OF LIFE (THE STRENGTH OF THE CAUSE)
“It is good for the Bahá’ís to learn that being a Bahá’í is essentially an
inner thing, or way of life, and not dependent on fixed patterns.
Important as our organized Institutions are, they are not the Faith
itself. The strength of the Cause grows no matter how much disrupted its
activities may temporarily be. This we see over and over again, in lands
where the Faith has been temporarily banned; at times when the believers
are persecuted and even killed; where they are serving all alone or
scattered and isolated. So it has been a stimulating experience for the
American believers to be without their schools for a few years, rather
than a depressing one.”
29: BAHÁ’U’LLÁH (IN ACCEPTING)
“In accepting Bahá’u’lláh you have accepted Christ in His appearance as
the Father, as He Himself so clearly foretold. The Catholic Church does
not believe this; on the contrary, it still awaits the return of Christ.
If you decide, in order to be buried next to your dear husband, to return
to the Church, you either would have to, in good faith, deny Bahá’u’lláh
or you would be just using the church as a means to satisfy a desire of
your own, which would certainly not be an upright and conscientious thing
to do.
“When you think that your husband’s soul is now free of the limitations of
this world, and that he no doubt is beginning to see religious truth in
its true light and to appreciate the station of Bahá’u’lláh, you should
ask yourself whether he would wish you to leave the truth for this day and
re-enter the church just for the sake of your dust being near his dust.
Your spirit, when you pass away, will be near his spirit; of what
importance, then, is the body? He will pray for your guidance in this
matter.”
30: BELIEVERS, NEW (ACCEPT CAUSE WITHOUT QUALIFICATIONS)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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