Insights on family teaching

"Most men are disappointed and become doubtful with all the age-old authorities: kings, teachers and fathers have drastically fallen. For hundreds of centuries, it was kings, teachers and fathers who taught with absolute power and not the reverse. Today, if you are not Baha'i, you may act against your king, your teacher and your father too! Some day, if you really conduct a better life, your father may wonder and start looking into the lessons which amazingly change his son. As at this early period of the Faith, we Baha'is still don't know well about the Baha'i Faith, how it works, how it affects the world, how it will progress and exist beautifully among other religions and other cultures. Our world is a world of confusion, of mystery, of love, of hope and of certitude. When we accept the Faith, we don't know it completely, we don't agree with all the teachings, we don't practice happily and completely. There are still Baha'is who quarrel with other Baha'is, who commit sins, who leave the communities. Yes, we are like students of a new school who never graduate and never become perfect. Other people are like students of old schools and the illiterate. They keep on moving around as usual, some will enter the Baha'i school, keep on learning and practicing new ideals, others may waver still and other may leave the Faith and keep on seeking for something else. Each Baha'i will continue to learn and to serve in his own way. As for me, I think that I will continue to learn thankfully, to continuously discover the mysteries of God and to joyfully introduce this new school to other people. Of course I am praying for God to guide them, but I don't think that I can do anything for them. Finally, each individual will be responsible only for his own life before his conscience and naturally before God. God has His mysterious ways to conduct mankind into His Divine Plan. See, Iranian Baha'is are bright stars in almost every country in the world, while they are still persecuted in their homeland. Most people don't know yet who are the Baha'is, they have no apparels of monks and no title of priests. In fact, they are not yet Baha'is; they are learning to become Baha'i. And while learning they try to humbly and patiently introduce the new and divine school to people who miserably and dangerously wander in the darkness of separation from the love and knowledge of God..."

~ Personal and humble opinion of a Dear Uncle of mine


"God's greatest gift to man is that of intellect, or understanding.

The understanding is the power by which man acquires his knowledge of the several kingdoms of creation, and of various stages of existence, as well as of much which is invisible.

Possessing this gift, he is, in himself, the sum of earlier creations -- he is able to get into touch with those kingdoms; and by this gift, he can frequently, through his scientific knowledge, reach out with prophetic vision.

Intellect is, in truth, the most precious gift bestowed upon man by the Divine Bounty. Man alone, among created beings, has this wonderful power."

~ Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 41