Month: February 2019

Baha’u’llah

Published February 28, 2019 by admin

Baha’u’llah was born in 1817 in Persia to a prominent and wealthy family. He was raised in Tehran and a rural provincial village, known as Nur, where he spent much of his childhood- learning horseback riding, calligraphy, and other skills considered appropriate for those of noble birth. He was not taught Arabic, and similar to Jesus, Muhammad, and the Báb, He was not trained in religion in any formal way. When he was in his late teens, his father died and Baha’u’llah assumed control of the family’s affairs. He soon freed all the family’s slaves, stating later in His revelation that “it was not for him who is himself a servant to own another of God’s servants”. His talents and capacity were well recognized and he was offered a position in the royal court, which he declined, choosing instead to serve the poor in the area around his rural home . He and his young wife turned a portion of their house into a children’s hospital for the province.

When Baha’u’llah was 27 years old, the Báb’s first and most prominent disciple communicated a message to Him through an intermediary, a message that included a Tablet from the Báb himself. Baha’u’llah opened the Tablet, read a few lines, and stated to his brother- who was standing with him at the time- that these were the words of God. Baha’u’llah remained as a background figure while the Báb’s religion played out and they never met in person, always separated by hundreds of miles.

After the execution of the Báb, a young man, disconsolate over the loss of the Báb, took it upon himself to revenge his death and attempted but failed to shoot the Shah. The event raised the ire of the royalty, who went on a rampage of mass imprisonment and execution of the Báb’s followers, of which Baha’u’llah was now one of the most prominent members. He was taken from His home and thrown into a dungeon known as the “Black Pit”. With two heavy chains around His neck and death an imminent possibility, Baha’u’llah’s revelation began. The Gospels describe the holy spirit alighting on Jesus like a “Dove” and Muhammad referred to the Voice of His revelation as the “Angel Gabriel”. Baha’u’llah described a “Maid of Heaven” appearing to Him in the Black Pit and confirming His station as the one chosen to reveal God’s will to humanity.

Baha’u’llah was then exiled from Persia to the provincial capital of the Ottoman Empire, Baghdad, where he was able to move freely about the city for the next 10 years. He gradually assumed greater leadership of the followers of the Báb, and attracted interest by a wide range of peoples who came through the city. In this broader cultural climate, Baha’u’llah continued the conversation with humanity started by the Báb, teaching the ideas of the progressive revelation of religious truth to different audiences using different genres. In the Seven Valleys, he explained the truths in the poetic language of a mystic. In the Book of Certitude, he addressed traditional theological challenges from the perspective of Christian and Muslim scripture. In 1863, in a garden that has come to be known as the “Garden of Ridvan (Paradise)”, Baha’u’llah formally declared openly His mission as the one the Bab had foretold and the fulfillment of the promises of all previous revelations.

With His revelation, Baha’u’llah declared that the standard God expected from humanity had changed. No longer was it acceptable before God to promote exclusiveness and division. The beloved of God in this Day were those who were lovers of the entire human race and worked for the benefit of all. He instructed us to have a “world-embracing vision”, to “make each day better than its yesterday” and to be “worthy of the trust of your neighbor and look upon him with a bright and friendly face”, stating that His first “counsel” was for humans to have a “pure, kindly and radiant heart”. He wanted us to open our minds as well as our hearts, to be just and fair-minded, and “look into all things with a searching eye”. He promoted scientific thinking as an expression of humanity’s God-given and fundamentally spiritual rational mind and said that humans possessed spiritual capacities that were utterly untapped. He saw gems in the hearts of human beings and His religion is meant to mine them.

As Baha’u’llah’s influence grew, the Persian and Ottoman authorities decided to suppress His impact by exiling him further away, eventually to the Crusade fortress of Akka in the Holy Land, just 100 miles from Jerusalem. From this desolate prison, Baha’u’llah revealed the major Tablets of His Revelation, including some of the Tablets to the Kings and other calls for the unity of the human race.

After the declaration of His mission, Baha’u’llah spoke with the Voice of God in all His Tablets and letters, with a power and majesty that is extraordinarily compelling. It is impossible in a single post- or a lifetime of posts- to fully capture the range and majesty of Baha’u’llah’s words. He himself described it as an “ocean inexhaustible in its riches” and invited humanity to “discover all the pearls of wisdom that lie hidden in its depths”.

Photo is of the Shrine of Baha’u’llah in the Holy Land. Courtesy of Baha’i Media Bank.

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The Prophet of Shiraz

The Prophet of Shiraz

Published February 27, 2019 by admin

The Revelation of God for humanity in our time in history actually has two prophetic figures- the Báb and Baha’u’llah himself. The Báb proceeded Baha’u’llah and prepared Persian society for his coming and to accept His teachings, thus forming the community of early believers that have now spread His Revelation all over the world. This post will summarize the story of the Báb. A related post compares the life of the Báb with that of John the Baptist, to whom He is often appropriately compared.

The prophet known to history as the Báb (“the Gate”) was born in the Persian city of Shiraz in 1819 and trained as a merchant before announcing His mission as a Prophet of God in 1844 at the age of 24. Similar to Jesus, He had none of the features that would give him religious authority within His society. He never trained in religion and was not formally taught Arabic, the language of Islam. His claim to prophethood was distinctly against the traditional Muslim belief, who interpreted Muhammad’s self-description as the “Seal of the Prophets” as meaning He was the last prophet. Instead of a new prophet, Muslims anticipated a final Judgment Day, a Day of Resurrection, in which the final battle for ultimate victory would occur, with the “resurrection” of believers from their graves to fight the final battle. But here was a 24 year old merchant, with no army, no seal of authority, revealing verses in Arabic that clearly made claims to be a divine revelation. Virtually none of the things people expected to happen at the “end of time” were associated with His religion. Despite that, His religion spread like wildfire and inspired heroic devotion because of the power of His words.

His initial revelations had features that were reminiscent of the Quran itself, and it was regarded by his initial followers as a “new Quran”. They vigorously promoted it throughout Persian society and it soon became a mass movement of significant energy, matched only by the energy of the government and clergy to suppress it, who regarded it as a heresy and a threat to the State. The Bab was eventually brought to trial in the Persian city of Tabriz, where He was questioned about His claims by senior religious officials in the presence of the Crown Prince, the future Nasir-din Shah. He stood up boldly in the gathering and stated “I am the Promised One, I am the One whose name you have for a thousand years invoked, at whose mention you have risen, and whose advent you have prayed God to hasten.” The boldness of His statement led to the adjournment of the trial and His beating and imprisonment. The Báb remained a prisoner in a far off mountain fortress for the remainder of His mission, until He was put to death by firing squad in the city of Tabriz in May of 1850.

The Báb’s message went through several stages as He gradually revealed the full measure of His claim and His theology, culminating in the revelation of His major work- the Bayan– or “Exposition”- while a prisoner in the mountain fortress. In that and supportive works, He explained that God was an entity beyond human understanding to know in any direct sense, but He made His reality manifest “to His creation, through His creation”, specifically through the revelations that formed the religions of humankind. These revelations had occurred throughout human history and were a “natural phenomenon”, like the rising and setting of the sun, illuminating human understanding like the sun illuminates the material world. The revelations of God were evolutionary, as each one built on the others before it, continually unfolding to humanity the full spectrum of the knowledge of God, a process that could have no end.

Within that framework, traditional religious terms were given new meanings. The “Day of Resurrection’ was not like something out of a fantasy movie, but was the day when a new messenger brought a new revelation to humanity. “Paradise” was when anything reached its stage of perfection, a state that humans could only fully achieve by accepting the revelations of God. One fascinating angle on the Báb is the realization that He was a contemporary of many intellectuals and philosophers in Europe who have had a major influence on the modern conceptions of religion- thinkers like Feuerbach, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Marx. Because of the cultural distance, more so than the geographic one, the two intellectual streams never met, but the young Prophet addressed in creative ways the challenges raised by the their views. Ironically, while they predicted the death of religion, the Báb was almost simultaneously proclaiming its renewal.

He was described by all who met him as extraordinarily gracious and polite, elegant and refined in His bearing. He had to be moved in his prison several times because the guards who were responsible for Him came to be so devoted to Him that they no longer did their jobs effectively. His mission was one of sacrifice and martyrdom, and He knew it, and expressed it frequently in His writings, as there was no chance His society could accept such a challenging claim without severe persecution coming in its wake. Nevertheless, He always acted with dignity and composure, with an air of detachment in His writings that is very striking.

As His religion reached its climax, and He had tens of thousands of followers, He funneled all their devotion into the One who would come after Him- a figure He described as “Him Whom God Shall Make Manifest”. The Báb summarized His mission as to “devise means” whereby people would turn unto Him when he manifested Himself, for “thereby they will have attained the summit of their existence, and will have been brought face to face with their Beloved, and will have recognized, to the fullest extent attainable in the world of being, the splendor of Him Who is the Desire of their hearts.” Virtually every chapter in the Bayan mentions “Him Whom God Shall Make Manifest” and he clearly stated that all His laws and teachings had as their explicit intention that people would accept Him when He came.

The Báb’s promises reached their fulfillment 19 years later, when Baha’u’llah announced a new universal revelation to humanity in a small garden outside of Baghdad in 1863.

Photo is of the Shrine of the Bab and the Baha’i Gardens. Haifa, Israel. Courtesy of Baha’i Media Bank.

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The Quran and Islam

The Quran and Islam

Published February 26, 2019 by admin

Today we continue our survey of the scriptures and sources we will be drawing on at Sifter of Dust, focusing on the Prophet Muhammad, the Quran, and Islam.

The Prophet Muhammad was born in the year 571 AD in a backwater of the civilization of His time, along the trade routes that coursed through Arabia between the ancient Persian empire and the Byzantine empire, a remnant of Roman civilization. He was orphaned early in life and trained and worked as a merchant. After He reached 40 years old, He went to meditate in the cave of Hira, a mountainous cave near his home of Mecca, and was visited by an angel who told Him to “Recite!”, calling Him to be the bearer of a Revelation from God. For the next 23 years, the Prophet revealed the Quran- the “Recitation”- in a beautiful form of Arabic poetry. A community quickly developed around Him and persecution of that community in Mecca led them to flee to neighboring Medina, where the Muslim community continued to grow in influence, leading to further battles and ultimately the conquering of Mecca by the new community centered around the Quran. The Prophet entered the holy shrine of the Kaaba in Mecca, previously devoted to idol worship, and destroyed all the idols personally, teaching that only an immaterial God was worthy of worship. Every chapter of the Quran uses terms to describe the nature of that God, the most common being “the Compassionate, the All-Merciful”.

The new community of Islam was structured around belief in one God, and submission to that God- the Source of all Goodness- was the ultimate responsibility of all human beings. The social laws of Islam were a vast improvement over the tribal structure of the time, and every community member was expected to care for the orphans and the elderly, paying a religious tax that provided subsistence money for the disadvantaged.

Islam was a universal religion that recognized virtually every significant religion known to the people of Arabia before it as valid. There are over 25 previous “prophets” or “messengers” of God noted specifically in the Quran, but even that number was regarded as only a partial list. The Prophet Muhammad taught that both Christ and Moses (as well as other Hebrew prophets) were true, and both Jews and Christians were given special status in Muslim communities.

Islamic civilization spread quickly and within 100 years of the Prophet’s lifetime was already a major civilizing force. It spread into Persia, over Africa, down into the Indian sub-continent, and into southern Europe. It came to be regarded as the most advanced civilization on earth for several hundred years.

The source of all the “civilizing energy” was the Quran itself. The Prophet Muhammad drew a distinction between Himself and the recitations that flowed through Him, with the author of the Quran being the voice of God Himself. Verses of the Quran often start with “Say:”, emphasizing that the Quran comes directly from the Voice of God. The Prophet would comment personally in a less formal way on His religion, and those “sayings”- known as “Hadith”- were another source of guidance and spirituality for the Muslim community.

The Quran was the first Revelation of God that was directly transcribed in written form. (The words of Jesus were recorded and compiled years after His death.) For that reason, the written Word- the “Verses”- are held in high honor as their inner melody is the primordial Word of God itself, something that transcends even the outer words. Mosques devoted to the worship of God are embellished only by Quranic verses, and never images or idols. Quranic interpretation became a spiritual and scholarly pursuit, with enough volumes of interpretative works produced to fill many libraries. Mystical poetry and philosophy flourished under Islam and the depth and beauty of these outpourings is one of humanity’s greatest spiritual and literary treasures.

In addition to the Prophet Muhammad and His sayings, the other sources of guidance include early Muslim leaders, particularly Muhammad’s son-in-law, Ali Ibn Talib. Ali accompanied and supported the Prophet through much of His mission, and married his daughter Fatimah. After the death of the Prophet, Ali continued his sermons on the true nature of Islam and its implications, in addition to ultimately leading the Muslim community before his assassination by those jealous of his influence. Ali’s sermons and story are recorded in an 11th century compilation known as the “Peaks of Eloquence”. Ali’s virtues and greatness can be appreciated by the commonness of his name among Muslim populations, surpassed only by the name “Muhammad” itself. They are sometimes complexed together, as with the great American boxer “Muhammad Ali”.

We draw on the Quran, the Hadith, as well as the sayings and stories from the life of Ali Ibn Talib.

Image is of the Mosque of Karouan in Tunisia, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, Jean Marc Rosier at www.rosier.pro

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The Gospels of Jesus

The Gospels of Jesus

Published February 25, 2019 by admin

As we draw on the scriptures from the previous revelations from God on Sifter of Dust, we wanted to additionally highlight the history of their central figures as well, starting with Jesus Christ and the Gospels of Jesus. This may seem like a strange place to start, given the ubiquitous presence of Christianity in western societies, but statistics show that, even among people who are nominally Christian, more than half have never read the Bible and are not personally familiar with its contents. What follows is a brief description of the life of Jesus and the Gospels that describe his work and sayings.

The Gospels of Jesus are the accounts of Jesus’ life as recorded from four different perspectives, those of authors known as Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. The Gospels record not only the story of Jesus but the words He spoke in delivering His revelation. The Gospels are a portion of the “New Testament”, which also includes the letters of the Apostle Paul to the early Christian communities, and other supplementary texts. The “Bible” has two main parts- the “New Testament”, and the “Hebrew Bible”- (what Christians call the “Old Testament”). The Hebrew Bible tells the story of the Jewish people and the Revelations of Moses and other prophets.

Jesus Christ was not a priest or a rabbi by training and was a “lay person” from a religious perspective, having worked as a carpenter. As far as the Gospels tell us, He had none of the qualities that tend to make people famous. He didn’t write a book and had no specific personal talents or skills. He was not wealthy. He never owned a home, never married, and had no children. He taught his religion for only 3 years, during which time He had to move around frequently because He was under the constant threat of entrapment and persecution. When He died, he was only about 32 years of age. Roman histories of the time make only passing mention of Him, and even then only to say that He was someone who should be regarded as inconsequential.

Those facts are all that much more surprising when you consider the inconceivably large influence He has had on almost every culture in the world. The source of that influence is His incredible words and the effect that they have had on people’s hearts for centuries. He spoke with the Voice of God, but used simple metaphors and stories to explain spiritual truths. Those words and those truths are still as profound and important as they were when He spoke them. And they are almost entirely “spiritual’ in character. He did not focus on social laws, as His mission was to put the spirit of faith and love back in peoples hearts after they had become excessively attached to the formal ritualistic aspects of religion.

Ironically, almost all the things that people say in criticism of the Christian religion today- feeling like Christians are judgmental, or not broad-minded, or too ritualistic- are the exact opposite of what Christ actually taught. Christ’s message was a message of spiritual liberation, love of all people, and the love of God expressed in service for others. That’s not a criticism of modern day Christians, who often beautifully reflect the spirit of Christ’s teachings, but a point made to express how important it is to read the words for yourself and not rely on modern “popular” perceptions.

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Taking a Broad Perspective

Taking a Broad Perspective

Published February 24, 2019 by admin

One of the wonderful aspects of the Baha’i Faith is that, not only has Baha’u’llah given humanity wonderful and amazing new spiritual insights about the nature of the world and of ourselves, He also did that in the context of teaching the fundamental oneness of the great Revelations of the past. People tend to not stray very far when exploring religion and often will study seriously only the religion of their culture and their parents, and not familiarize themselves with another faith before making decisions about spiritual truth. This is of course a generalization and there are certainly exceptions. But Baha’u’llah has taught us that all the great Revelations of the past are true and are essentially for all humanity, even though they appeared within the framework of one particular culture or another.

In one passage, Baha’u’llah revealed- “Peerless is this Day, for it is an eye to past ages and centuries“. Today, we can look back from where humanity has come, and see the great Revelations of the past as stepping stones to the point we are at today. And we can also explore them. The spiritual insights of other faiths, faiths which had a profound effect on millions of people but may not have been part of our particular culture, will be new and incredibly enriching to us. People of Christian background can now read the Quran from the perspective of faith, a much different perspective than if you read it with a critical eye. Muslims, who did not traditionally read the Bible, though they accepted it as true, can now read it from the same perspective of faith and mine its spiritual gems. And both of them can read the Bhagavad Gita- the spiritual masterpiece of Hinduism- and draw on its insights as they course through life.

The oneness of religion is an incredibly enriching idea, one that we can use to enlighten ourselves as we strive to bring humanity closer together. Baha’u’llah told the world’s peoples to “cleave to that which uniteth you” and specifically made the point that “the peoples of the world, of whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from One heavenly source and are the subjects of One God‘ and that most of their religions were “ordained by God and are a reflection of His Will and Purpose“.

God is a really big idea, and maintaining a perspective that doesn’t limit our conceptions of God in any way is usually the path that captures the truth of God most completely. This doesn’t make the Baha’i Faith a potpourri religion. Everything is ultimately judged by the standard of the latest Revelation- as religions of the past were revealed for an earlier stage of humanity’s history. But spiritual truths, as opposed to social laws and customs, are timeless and other religions may have emphasized a spiritual truth in a way that illuminates our understanding beyond what would be attained if we only read about the religion from our culture.

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Introducing Sifter of Dust

Introducing Sifter of Dust

Published February 18, 2019 by admin

Welcome to Sifter of Dust! We are a small group of Philadelphia-based Baha’is who felt that this marvelous religion needed to be shared with the world more broadly, using all the modern tools by which people do that kind of thing. We thought a lot about the tone we wanted to strike. We wanted to be fair-minded and honest in sharing our religion, but also let our enthusiasm shine through. We wanted to take an approach that was always respectful of the need for people to have space when exploring a religion. We wanted to speak to our common humanity, all of us, all around the world, and challenged ourselves to present our faith in a rational way that anyone could understand. And we wanted to uplift, inspire, and inform anyone who came to our site.

The result is Sifter of Dust. May it become a forum where all people can learn about Baha’u’llah and the astounding faith He founded in a manner that is open, honest, and faithful to the spirit of the sacred Gift that He has given us all.

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