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closeOn Faith: Progress of mankind inside the progress of spiritual faith
Dr. Chris Gilbert
guest columnist
We make sense of the world through rules. They are our boundaries, our “truths.” Our deepest truths are called paradigms. Understanding how to be a good person, parent, partner or friend is shaped by our paradigm.
The more a society believes in their paradigms, the more they become reality. Want an example? Look at the old world’s paradigm about a flat Earth.
The truth in past ages was, if you ventured too far from home, you would sail off the edge of a table-top world. It wasn’t the truth, but it was their truth. And that deep belief ruled their lives for thousands of years.
Eventually, the flat-world paradigm was replaced by reality. We grew past our once deeply held but very mistaken version of a flat Earth.
No matter how widespread or deeply believed paradigms are, some just aren’t reality. And incredible opportunities present themselves when better truths are discovered and accepted.
At least Columbus thought so.
In the 1960s, the United States had “Whites only” drinking fountains, and legal segregation was our truth, our rule.
Thank God, America has shifted to a far more just and loving reality based on the better truth of equality.
What a profound change this re-examination of the old rules brought us!
So, try this truth: Christ has already returned. As the Bible and other Holy Books predicted, He came like a thief in the night about 170 years ago, and His name was Baha’u’llah, Persian for “The Glory of God.”
That’s what a dear but seemingly misguided Baha’i friend told me more than two decades ago. My response to her, “Ah, come on! I know the truth of Christ’s return. We all do!”
Perhaps your reaction to her words is similar to mine: It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? We know the truth. We know who Christ was, when he’ll be back, and how he will come.
But my friend’s words launched me on a sacred voyage. I examined how I had come to know my spiritual truths.
What I discovered was a remarkable perspective not only on Christ’s return but on mankind’s spiritual reality.
And I didn’t have to sail off the edge of the world to find it.
In reading the texts of the great religions, including the Hindu Baghavad Gita, Jewish Torah, Muslim Koran, Christian Bible and Baha’i Kitabi’aqdas, I discovered a universal and inclusive spiritual message that my old truth missed.
I discovered a new paradigm that speaks eloquently about how the unity of mankind advances through teachers sent over history by one God.
No religion takes precedence over another. The Jewish faith, the Christian faith, the Muslim faith, the Baha’i faith and others are a progression of spiritual classrooms at the same spiritual school.
The reality of all great faiths is that each is meant to bring us greater capacities for spiritual love, not to destroy the previous classrooms.
If all religions defend their sole truth, they become exclusive and less loving.
Can anyone be, at the same time, spiritually loving and still exclude the love and faith of others?
The reality of the old “separate religions” truth is that, if we gathered together all the great faiths at one table to talk about world peace, we still wouldn’t achieve it!
Why? Because each representative at that peace table, caught in their own spiritually exclusive truth, would know that only they had the real answer to Divine guidance. That their manifestation was the “real” one.
A more inclusive and loving truth is that each one of the faiths represented at that peace table would actually holds one critical step — one piece of the sacred puzzle — which would fit with all the others to support the progress of mankind’s spiritual journey.
The Baha’i faith brings us that new truth.
Founded on the progressive nature of mankind’s spiritual education, it includes all of the great faiths.
It teaches us that we are students who are moving forward along different spiritual paths toward one God.
So, here’s the paradigm to ponder: The promised Return has happened. We have been offered a new plan based on all the previous ones with newer rules to create a Heaven on Earth that is promised by all the great religions.
Baha’u’llah has provided us the next classroom in the “School of God,” offering reminders of God’s universal truths that are common to all great faiths, and He provided those new rules that were needed for the complexities of our current age.
He brought us a truly spiritual classroom that offers a comparative, rather than competitive, religion.
As Baha’u’llah, founder of the Baha’i faith states, “Strive day and night ... that all religions become reconciled, so that no racial, religious or political prejudice may remain and the world of humanity beholds God as the beginning and end of all existence.”