How I Became a Humanist #7: Dan's Death

Dan was a member of our prayer group.  I didn't know him well, but we prayed together every week. We also confessed our sins to one another....

Joe, myself and a few others had just come back from a Skillet concert.  As we drove towards Barbier parking lot, we noticed several cars parked haphazardly around Dearborn Commons.  Through the window of the building I could see people quivering and hugging.  They looked to be crying.  Joe parked his car in Barbier and I headed over to Dearborn Commons.  There had been an accident.  Some of the students from the school had died.  Rochester College is small enough that all of the students tend to know each other - this is especially true of the students who live on campus.  You get to a point where you can recognize a person from half-way across campus, in the dark, simply by observing their gait.  Students from small liberal arts colleges will understand.

Ferndale/Hoggatt Halls and Dearborn Commons

Seeing one's own mortality in another's death affects everyone differently.  All the students and faculty were moved by the event in their own ways.  I'd had some things happen in my life over the last year or so that made me believe that following God as a Christian was the only thing that really mattered.  With Dan's death, I took religion to a whole new level.  Within about a month of Dan's death, I'd changed my major to religious studies/communication.  I began spending all of my spare time studying religion and doing spiritual things.  I read the Bible cover-to-cover three times over the next year.  This doesn't include the readings I did for classes or sermons.  It also doesn't include the readings I did with whatever young woman I happened to be dating.  Yeah, I was a hot date.

This was all happening at about the same time Emanuel's House was being born.  I was surrounded by people who were experiencing similar things.  It all fed on itself.  When the next semester hit and I began taking Bible, theology and church history classes, I went from being a sub-par student to finding myself with over a 3.0 GPA.  Soon after I was on the Dean's List.  This was a big deal for me.  Academic achievement was not a concern growing up.  The truth is, I didn't care about it even then.  I just happened to love my studies so much that an evening in the library was anything but a chore.

Like this Bible is highlighted, mine were always highlighted with comments written in the margins.  

Over the next three years, several things grew out of my religious intensity and my studies.  At first, I became something of a Charismatic Christian.  I began to ditch most of concern for Church of Christ doctrines, minus the sacraments and a preference for taking the first century Christianity seriously.  I became obsessed with biblical studies, Church history and with understanding the various expressions of Christianity.  This curiosity eventually led me to study both philosophy and other religions.  I'll write about all of these things and their affect on my faith in subsequent posts. 

Comparing Baha'i with Christianity

When I visited the Baha'i Center in DC two weeks ago, I found myself comparing the Baha'i faith with Christianity.  I suppose this is only natural.  As I did this, I found several similarities.  This is especially true if one views Christianity through the lens of the early church.  Here are just a few observations.

• The Baha'i meet in houses, just like the earliest Christians
• They often have central houses for larger Sunday meetings, but not always
• During the week they meet in each other's houses for meals
• The main house is used for community events during the week (like AA meetings or yoga).
• They emphasize charitable work
• Early Christians stayed behind during plagues to care for the sick
• They paid for burial for the poor and took in orphans
• The Baha'i actively work on justice issues in their neighborhoods
• Like early Christians, they strongly encourage adoption
• They emphasize fellowship
• Early Christian worship usually involved a communal meal that culminated in the Eucharist
• The Baha'i Center is built for fellowship.
• The Baha'i meet in each other's homes for a meal during the week.  They call these Fireside chats.

Even their claim that Baha'i is a successor to previous revelations is a Christian theological move. From the beginning Christians have claimed that their religion was a natural successor to Judiasm, and that their savior fulfilled Jewish prophesy.  The Baha'is claim that Baha'ullah is the return of Jesus, because Jesus comes again and again to different cultures with different names.  They claim that Baha'i is the fulfillment of the prophesy that Jesus would come again.  And just like Christians see the Old Testament as instructive, but not binding because it's part of an older covenant, the Baha'is see older scriptures as instructive, but not binding because they are part of earlier revelations for earlier time periods.

While Christians didn't adopt non-Jewish scriptures, their early apologists sometimes claimed that Jesus was the fulfillment of pagan religions hopes or even prophesies.

• Paul claims that his God is the unknown God that pagans are worshiping Act 17:23
• Zoroastrian Magi visit Jesus in Matthew 2
• The Zoroastrians had a prophesy that the Savior would be born of a virgin
• They also believed in a Holy Spirit through which goodness is revealed - the ideas are not identical.
• Matthew doesn't directly say that Jesus is the fulfillment of Zoroastrian prophesy, but this is probably the only logical conclusion to draw.  

The place that I found the traditions most aligned, however, was in the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven.  When talking about the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus preaches a certain kind of moral life.  It's one where the peacemakers, rather than the war hawks, are honored.  It's one where his followers don't judge, because the standard they use will be used against them.  It's one where they love their neighbors and their enemies.  Jesus' Kingdom of Heaven is a new social order his followers bring to earth through faith, love and action.

Baha'is also use the term "Kingdom of Heaven."  I'm not sure if they mean the same thing, but the idea of God's servants bringing peace and justice to the world through love, action and faith is a dominant Baha'i theme.

The two religions fail to see eye-to-eye in several respects.  Most Christians see Jesus as God, but Baha'i see his as a divine man/being who continually returns to humanity to reveal God's will.  Christians are not likely to accept the idea of Jesus returning as a teacher, rather than a divine being calling them up into the sky.
Baha'is don't seem to think that Jesus died for the removal of their sins.  I didn't ask.  The topic never came up.  Evangelicals in particular are unlikely to agree with the Baha'i understanding of Heaven and Hell.  Most Evangelicals believe that Jesus (as defined by Christianity) is the only way to Heaven.  Several even believe that their particular sect of Christianity is the only sure guarantee.  Baha'is, on the other hand, think that one's spiritual development on earth will continue along the same path in the afterlife, regardless of dogma.

Certainly other comparisons and contrasts could be made, but I know too little to say more.

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If you have a religious tradition you'd like to learn more about, let me know in the comments below and I'll try to visit and write about it.