And it is in this capacity, in keeping with my responsibility as a believer to apply the principles of Baha’u’llah to our current situation that I want to make a suggestion. With all respect for the other members of the faith who may feel differently, I would like to indicate a few places where, at this early point in our development, we are allowing the truth to get away from us. Like the sun that is always moving westward through the sky, God’s truth has not been still since Baha’u’llah’s lifetime. In several crucial areas, I believe we need to catch up. If we hang on too hard to the truth that was revealed, we will end up clutching at nothing.
One example of how I believe conditions have changed significantly since Baha’u’llah’s day concerns sexual morality. In the nineteenth century, homosexuality was not simply condemned, homosexuality in the sense we know it today was not understood at all. It was not even an issue. In this situation, Baha’u’llah could no more be expected to write in favor of same-sex marriage than Mohammed could have been expected to endorse women’s suffrage in seventh-century Arabia. It would be simply inconceivable. And yet what responsible Muslim claims that because the Koran does not say women should have the right to vote, they should be shut out from democratic elections? It is not so much that Mohammed is against women voting as that universal suffrage, for either gender, is something that never occurs to him. Discerning Muslims understand that it is not the letter of the teachings that applies here, but the principle. The Koran never says that women should have all the rights men do, but it does say that women should be valued and cherished, that their souls are of full importance to God. In considering this question, they look past the precise wording to the spirit that dwells within the words, looking not at what Mohammed said specifically about women, but at the general dignity he accorded them in his revelation.
In the same way, I think Baha’is must not stop with the strict and uncompromising definition Baha’u’llah presents of marriage — two people of the opposite sex — and instead we must see this issue in terms of the spirit of the faith. Baha’u’llah certainly never endorses gay marriage, but he also insists that religion must keep up with science and remain in harmony with new discoveries. And it is here that the matter becomes more complicated. This is because there is less and less question what position science takes on this issue. As more evidence emerges, it is becoming clear that sexual orientation is something natural, the product of a combination of genetic and environmental factors, and not a sin or vice as was universally believed one hundred years ago. This is a classic example, I think, of how we must decide between the strict letter of the Baha’i teachings and their life-giving spirit. On the one hand, Baha’u’llah is very clear about marriage being for a man and a woman only. On the other hand, he is equally emphatic that religion be reconciled to science. This is a case where there is no simple answer, where no Ruhi response will do. It is necessary here to think. It is necessary to make a choice.
And who should make this choice? Two hundred years ago it would have fallen to the priests, and individual believers would still have had someone else to rule for them. That was the right way in the past, but it is not the right way today. This revelation calls for independent investigation of the truth, and this means all of us must decide independently. If we are moral absolutists like the current president and pope, if we have one correct answer for all times and all places then this choice will be easy. But if we take the moral relativist view, which I believe is a more appropriate Baha’i view; there is not a simple solution. We cannot accept anything Baha’u’llah prescribes blindly, but must test it to be sure that it really applies to our particular situation. This goes for what the faith teaches on same-sex marriage, on capital punishment, on reproductive rights, and even on the prohibition of political involvement. This does not mean the literal teachings on any of these issues are wrong, but it does mean that they are not automatically right, either. Not only may they be right in one time and not in another, they may be right for one person but be utterly inappropriate for someone else. God’s truth never changes, but the human condition is relative, and even the best rules need to be applied creatively and flexibly in relation to the problems of each human being.
And it goes without saying that the same applies to what I have said here. I do not presume to deal in the absolute truth, which is too big for any human being to see all at once. I am only offering suggestions which may or may not prove useful to other people in their individual situations. I am not even sure about the specific recommendations I have made. Perhaps this is not the best time for the faith to endorse same-sex marriage; perhaps the world as a whole is still not ready. I wrote this essay not so much to suggest that the literal teaching is wrong on a specific issue, as to challenge the idea that it cannot be wrong on any issue. More than single out any particular commandment, I wanted to ask whether we need to swallow everything whole. It is not this teaching of the faith or that which I object to, it is an attitude which is often implied towards the teachings generally. We see this attitude whenever someone tells us ‘Baha’u’llah says’ as if it were an unanswerable response to any question, whenever someone uses the phrase ‘a fundamental principle of the faith’ as if here all difference, all discussion, all thought must stop. It is the attitude that treats life like a Ruhi lesson where every question has a ready-made answer waiting for it, an answer that is the same for every person, short or tall, male or female, black or white. It is a one-size-fits-all approach to the difficult choices life puts to us. With an attitude like this, there is no room for personal difference, for an individual solution to fit you and me in our individual needs; there is no allowance that truth, so often, is relative to each of us. Another great principle of the faith is unity in diversity, and it is to remind the believers, myself included, of the value of diversity that I have written this. We need to recognize that just as God has a unique and incomparable destiny for each age and for every individual, so the answers to the difficult moral questions we face have not one but many answers, depending on time and place and person. As human beings we often want the choices we make to be simple, but God, who thankfully is much wiser, always ensures that they never are.
-Moral Relativism and the Bahá'í Faith, Brendan Cook (2006)
0 comentários:
Post a Comment