At the recently held interfaith panel discussion on Religion and Non-violence, hosted by the Hindu Students Council, the Baha'i speaker made what I thought was a pretty remarkable point about the source of the concept of non-violence in the Baha'i faith.
Most religious philosophies typically make a distinction between good and evil. This is particularly true of Judeo-Christian traditions, but to some extent also exists in other schools of thought. Essentially there exists a dualistic concept of good and evil - an independent existence is accorded to each (often personified by God and Satan, or angels and demons, or devtas and asuras), and there is the idea of an eternal battle between good and evil. It is really the existence of an independent concept of evil that causes many people to ultimately resort to violence in certain situations - for if you truly believed that certain things in this world are evil, then it would make sense to adopt violence to combat them, once other options are exhausted. And of course, once one in principle says that certain things in this world could be evil, where the line is drawn becomes a subjective judgment. For I could justify my actions on the basis that I believed some thing or some person to be evil. And the combination of my judgment, and the idea that it is acceptable to use violence to combat what is evil would sanction an attitude of violence.
However, the Baha'i faith clearly talks about the non-existence of evil. There is no dual nature to Good and Bad - all of creation is essentially Good. More details on this can be found in a previous post here, but to summarize, Abdu'l Baha talks about how the perception of evil/bad comes about either from the absence of goodness, or from the incompatibility between two good things.
Once one adopts this perspective, believing that there is really no evil in this world, that all that is created is truly good, one loses a firm basis for violence. If one believed there were nothing in the world truly evil, that everyone had some good in them, one would not have to be violent.
Note that by violence I mean an attitude of violence - not necessarily a violent action. At no point should one ignore the value of justice - and therefore it might be necessary to have a police force, take action against criminals, etc. But these are to be purely social actions - and from the point of the view of the individual, the right thing to do is to always be forgiving and merciful - in one's heart. Holding on to the belief that everyone's soul has its own spiritual equation with God, and that we are all somewhere along the path of progress towards God, will enable one to achieve that state.
God Hates Figs
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A blog I encountered argued that God hates certain groups of people, and
that therefore believers in God—specifically, Christians—should also hate
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3 years ago
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