Search results

Dear Sarah, Not quite. I've mentioned Bahiyyih Nakhjavani's book Asking Questions before, but her thesis is that the test is a challenge to our understanding of these basic concepts. It's not so much to get us to accept inequality as it is a test that forces us to rethink what equality...

Re: Baha'i Laws Laurie, Ah, I see, though I think our difference might be a bit more narrow than you'd expect. Not only is it OK for me to make my feelings known to the institutions, I am obligated to make my feelings known. I am, however, equally obligated to make my feelings known to...

Dear Laurie, I think we've already outlined them. Excerpts from the Individual Rights and Freedoms letter, the Constitution of the Universal House of Justice and discussions of the process by which Baha'i Law is applied and the details of the Baha'i electoral process are rife with...

Re: Baha'i Laws Dear Laurie, I'm afraid I don't understand the question. What responsibility do I have for the decisions of the Universla House of Justice that you think I might be abdicating? Are you interpreting my adherence to the clear denunciations, in the Baha'i Writings, against...

Re: Baha'i Laws Dear Laurie, Regarding my discussion of geometry: Dang, and I thought I'd been so careful to explain it. I suppose any globes you have are packed up at the moment, but, when you get your hands on one, grab yourself some string, and start "drawing lines" on the glob by...

Re: Baha'i Laws Dear Laurie, Quick answers are, no, I don't agree and no. No institution answers to me. They answer to God. Couldn't one say the same thing about any aspect of our physical nature that impedes our spiritual growth and development? My apologies for breaking up you...

Re: Baha'i Laws OK. The kids are fed, and Beth is blissfully ensconced in a chemically altered world (muscle relaxants). Back to Hatcher, process, law and sanctions. We cannot grow spiritually in a social vacuum. Salvation, then, is something we do in a social context. In the context of...

Re: Baha'i Laws Luna (Can I call you Laurie?) Before I get back into the discussion, I want you to know I have no hard feelings. My absence from the thread through most of the day had nothing to do with the tone of the posts. My colleagues and I at work had an afternoon of what we...

Re: Baha'i Laws

Re: Baha'i Laws No. I'm not sure how that answers my question. Are you claiming that I'm sitting in judgement of any particular individual? When did we start playing by fundamentalist rules? You suggested quoting the Aqdas, and quoting only some of it at that. Actually, that's...

Re: Baha'i Laws Dear Luna, I understand what your objection is. I don't understand the basis for your objection. What makes these particular sanctions "unfair and discriminating"? Well, I don't see why it should be limited to some of the laws, but I have no objection...just so long as...

The subject of law and sanctions has arisen within the context of Baha'is and political partisanship. I feel the issues are important enough to bear a distinct thread, so I'm taking the liberty of breaking the subject out into a new thread. In that thread, Lunamoth wrote: It's difficult to...

Luna, First, yes, this has strayed off topic, but I don't think it's simply about homosexuality. It's about any law observance of which we find difficult, and I think all of us find at least one of these laws difficult to uphold. No small consideration ought to be given to Baha'u'llah's...

Interesting. I'm inclined to think exactly the opposite. I don't know that it really matters, though. I doubt that it's possible to have justice without integrity or to have integrity without justice.

There's a story about `Abdu'l-Baha which is likely apocryphal, but it so matches His character that I've repeated it quite often. As the story goes, `Abdu'l-Baha was visiting with the Baha'is during his travels to America. The affair was rather informal, and `Abdu'l-Baha was expounding upon...

Dear Steven, As much as I'd hate to disagree with one of my colleagues, and a fellow Mac user to boot, I think this is a distinctly uncompelling line of reasoning to a non-Baha'i. A part of the issue is what happens to religious minorities within a society whose governance is patterned...

Re: Non-partisanship... Luna, That's correct. The song was written by K. C. Porter, who is a Baha'i. It's my favorite song on the album, and that's not because a Baha'i wrote it. I think the line is actually not quite that stark. As I'd said, it is no mere platitude that one of the...

:) Seriously, one resolution of the problem of evil I've seen is to understand "good and evil" not as properties of things but as relationships between things: i.e. that the only way we can ultimately say that something is "good" or "evil" is by comparing it to something else. Wikipedia has...

OK. So, do you have any thoughts on the meaning of the physician metaphor itself?

Brian, First, I wouldn't use the word "guardianship" in describing the role of the Universal House of Justice, because the Baha'i Faith has an institution of the Guardianship that is distinct from the Universal House of Justice. Second, the Universal House of Justice's role is more...