Blind Faith is Born
Up until a few generations ago, people did not choose their own beliefs as they do today. They had to accept the religion of their kings and rulers, the official religion of their states. When the Roman emperor Constantine became a Christian, the Roman Empire automatically became Christian also.
At that time, Christianity was divided into several camps along various theological lines. One of the most important of these was their understanding of who Jesus was. Some said he was God, others that he was an intermediary between God and mankind, and yet others that he was merely a gifted leader or inspired poet. So intense was the disagreement over this issue that blood was being shed over it.
Constantine felt that in order to unite his crumbling empire around Christ, he would have to do away with these differences. Therefore, in AD 325 he convened the bishops of the different Christian communities in Nicea and instructed them to come to an agreement on who Jesus was, which all would then have to follow.
They debated long and hard on the question as to who Jesus was, fully aware that until they had an answer the emperor would give them no respite. Finally, in desperation, one of them suggested a compromise that would encompass the claims of all three camps: the Trinity. God was three in one: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Constantine was not a theologian but a politician. His only interest was that the bishops come to a consensus in order to form a single, universal, monolithic church. He either did not realize or did not even care that the answer he was given responded to a completely different question: not who Jesus was, but who God was. Much less was he concerned about whether the idea had any Biblical grounding, which it did not.
So it was that the Trinity received the official stamp of approval and was imposed as a state doctrine throughout the empire. Thereafter, several theologians wrote entire volumes attempting in vain to find some scriptural or philosophical grounding for the concept.
Seeing their failure and the unrest it was causing in religious circles, the Church fathers realized that further scholarly research into the matter could again divide Christianity. So they proclaimed that to try to understand the Trinity was contrary to faith, and that all must simply accept it without questioning.
Those who could not acquiesce suffered terrible punishments, such as being burned at the stake. Use of the God-given intellect to understand religious matters was even banned by some groups as giving in to satanic temptation.
Little by little, this oppression of diversity of thought forged a culture of blindly accepting whatever any authority said was true. This is how the concept of 'blind faith' came into existence. It was so effective in squelching threats to the status quo, that it was later used in relation to other aspects of church doctrine, and even spilled over into matters of state.
Blind Faith Today
Today, this culture of blindly accepting the way religious authorities choose paint our world has been taken advantage of by economic powers as well. For example, in the USA, faith in Jesus has been hijacked by shrewd propagandists to achieve popular support for the vested interests of power groups ranging from political parties to the 'military industrial complex', thus giving way to the mass phenomenon of the 'Christian Right'.
Being Christian has been confused with being a 'full-blooded American", one major requirement of which is 'supporting our troops', which is confabulated with supporting the war effort. The upshot is that a Christian-majority nation is able to slaughter thousands of innocent people in distant, resource-rich lands without flinching, while standing by idly as thousands more are slaughtered in resource-poor lands without interfering.
People who seem intelligent enough in other aspects of their lives somehow suspend judgment when faced mass-forward political messages disguised as religious messages. And when questioned regarding the inherent contradictions involved, they fall back on the centuries-old "blind faith" argument. How tremendously convenient all around!
A Baha'i Approach
For a Baha'i, the words “blind” and “faith” are actually contradictory and mutually exclusive, at least if being “blind” means you either can’t or won’t use your senses to perceive the world around you and/or your power of reason to interpret it. For Bahá'ís, “faith” is conscious (open-eyed) knowledge and the constructive actions that result from it.
Faith is for working, while being blind makes it rather rough to get anything done without making a mess of it. Faith frees you from unnecessary worries, like being able to go to bed and sleep because your open–eyed experience has led you to believe that the sun will rise in the morning.
Faith saves time and energy, like being able to walk confidently without having to poke at the floor with your toe at every step, just in case it’s an optical allusion and you fall through. My point is that faith means work, and work takes faith, and being blind doesn’t favor either of the two. That is why we speak of the Bahá'í “Faith”, because we are part of a Movement, a Cause.
One should not confuse blindness with obedience (another objectionable concept to western individualism). The flight attendant who lets himself be talked through a jumbo jet landing does what the tower says because he is convinced that the lady in the tower knows far more about landing jumbo jets than he does, and not because he is stupid.
When you are an MD, you shouldn’t have to put your patients through years of med school before they accept your advice. If they are smart, they will trust you because they’ll know you’re the doc, Doc; and you will have an implicit (or explicit) agreement with them that says, “You do what I say and I will make you well.”
Likewise, Bahá'ís are people who have recognized Bahá’u’lláh’s “credentials” as the divine physician for this sick world and have made an agreement with Him that says ”you give us the medicine and we will administer it to the world”. That simple. No hocus–pocus. Just hard work.
The hard part is that the medicine comes, not in the form of cook–book recipes, but as general principles given to us by Bahá’u’lláh barely 150 years ago and that do nobody much good until they are applied. Their application requires a lot of thought and a lot of getting our hands dirty.
And why not Bahá’u’lláh? The world’s nations (even you and I, whether consciously or not) shape their (our) daily lives on the ideas of people with far fewer “credentials” than He. If ideas are the foundation of civilization, then our world is sick precisely because it is based on some pretty sick principles.
For example, someone once said that industrial capitalism is the institutionalization of greed, while Marxism socialism is the institutionalization of strife.
Be that as it may, our purpose is to help build a new world civilization based on entirely different concepts. To do this, first we tray to grasp these ideas ourselves and then help others grasp them. Next we look for ways together to apply them to the problems of the “real world”, and finally we share our findings with others.
This collective learning and teaching process requires people with commitment, it requires organization, and it requires discipline and obedience. This is not a free–for–all; it is a universal Movement, a united Cause.
Of course, our particular form of organization that makes this possible is in itself an “institutionalization” of these new principles. However, it has been said that “the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh goes far beyond anything humanity understands by the word ‘religion’. If the ecclesiastical systems of our world are religion, then the Cause is not; if it is religion, then they really are not.”
Note: The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of VirtualBahai or any institution of the Baha’i Faith.
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