Exploring Faith, Recognition, Obedience and Openness

The idea of faith is something I’m still struggling to get my head around. For most of my life I have thought of Faith as necessarily involving some act of blind trust. In fact, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has told us quite explicitly that faith should not be blind:

“By faith is meant, first, conscious knowledge, and second, the practice of good deeds.” -‘Abdu’l-Bahá

The first time I read this quote I wondered if the ordering of the sentence, with conscious knowledge “first,” was to be taken literally – a.k.a. that conscious knowledge is a precursor for us to be able to truly practice good deeds. I actually see this as a sort of chicken and the egg kind of problem: conscious knowledge and good deeds are mutually reinforcing – we consciously know things by experiencing them through our deeds, and conscious knowledge through investigation the holy writings also guides our actions by providing us with an ideal standard for our deeds.

I find that this relationship between knowledge and deeds is further illuminated by the following passage, which L recently directed me to:

“The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed. It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Source of Divine inspiration.” (Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 19)

Here, “recognition” and obedience (“observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world”) are noted as being “inseparable.” For me, this dynamic relationship between recognition and obedience and the inseparability of the two is the underlying point. Simply saying you believe things or merely recognizing them with your brain means little if your actions do not work in accordance with that belief. This quote also states that the opposite is true: simply doing goodly deeds is insufficient without the recognition of God. That seems a bit hard to grasp, no? For me personally, this is far more challenging to accept (because aren’t good deeds still good without recognition of God?) This makes so much sense in today’s context, but this ignores an investigation of the origin of how certain deeds have normatively arisen to be good for society… which I understand to be through the teachings of various incredibly wise teachers throughout history… Manifestations, prophets, whatever you want to call them...

Brief aside: I do wonder to what extent recognition is here meant to be the same as “conscious knowledge,” for that would certainly be more in line with how I’ve understood the notion of faith through the Christian perspective. That is to say, while one should investigate the writings and teachings of any manifestation as much as possible, at some point one consciously chooses (or not) to recognize/accept those teachings as being reflective of God. I’d be curious to hear others’ thoughts about whether this is what is meant by conscious knowledge?

Coming back to the quote from The Aqdas, one must be careful in reading this not to put a fundamentalist bent to it… even when we accept certain teachings as the truth and work to align our deeds as much as possible with those teachings, we should always be open to being proven wrong, be open to a new truth emerging. This is absolutely necessary because, as humans, our understanding of the truth is always going to be partial. At one of my recent visits to Bosch, we were discussing this relationship between recognition and obedience. R mentioned that recognizing and obeying simultaneously is obviously very challenging. There might be times where we’re better able to align our deeds with the “ordinance” of Bahá’u’lláh (or Christ, or Buddha, etc.) but we’re struggling with the recognition and conscious knowledge part of the equation. Similarly, the reverse can be true. Dear wayfarers, I do not think we should despair when this is the case. Bahá’u’lláh is providing us with an ideal standard towards which we should work, and clearly this is incredibly hard to attain with perfection. My sense, from my own experience, is that the more that we’re able to make progress in one of these dimensions, the more likely we are to progress in the other dimension as well. Perhaps the twin nature of the inseparability of recognition and obedience could even be interpreted to mean that progress in one dimension inherently implies progress in another… what do others think?

To close, I was recently incredibly relieved and comforted to read the following quote by Shoghi Effendi, which also provides a useful warning to heed us from fanaticism.

“It must be remembered, however, that the maintenance of such a high standard of moral conduct is not to be associated or confused with any form of asceticism, or of excessive and bigoted puritanism. The standard inculcated by Bahá’u’lláh seeks, under no circumstances, to deny anyone the legitimate right and privilege to derive the fullest advantage and benefit from the manifold joys, beauties, and pleasures with which the world has been so plentifully enriched by an All-Loving Creator. ‘Should a man,’ Bahá’u’lláh Himself reassures us, ‘wish to adorn himself with the ornaments of the earth, to wear its apparels, or partake of the benefits it can bestow, no harm can befall him, if he alloweth nothing whatever to intervene between him and God, for God hath ordained every good thing, whether created in the heavens or in the earth, for such of His servants as truly believe in Him. Eat ye, O people, of the good things which God hath allowed you, and deprive not yourselves from His wondrous bounties. Render thanks and praise unto Him, and be of them that are truly thankful.’"
-Shoghi Effendi (The Advent of Divine Justice)