Friday, May 15, 2009

Your Religion Leveled Up!

During my research concerning Ethiopia I happened to chance upon a relatively minor reference to a faith called the Baha'i, which had  a fair number of followers there.  Further research revealed that Baha'i is a religion with Islamic roots (in much the same way that Christianity has Jewish roots) that purports to being the most appropriate religion for the modern world (which is an odd way of putting it, but more or less in line with the claims of most other religion).

It's attitude towards other religions is where it gets interesting, however.  Rather than denounce other faiths as false, they believe that each of them was a sort of update, a new covenant between God and the world which was socially and spiritually appropriate to that time and place.  Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, etc, are each viewed as Messengers of God, who each arrived to teach a way of life which was closer to God's truth than the last one (since God is too great for a human to comprehend, all religions are just approximations which become gradually more correct with each successive generation.

Though they believe that their religion is the most correct, the still choose to trace their lineage to every other religion in the world, emphasizing the unity of human religious experience.

1 comment:

  1. You do realize that we are going to be reading about the Bahai after the Rastafari.. ?? So this is a good sneak peak..

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