True Faith vs. Blind Faith

By Megan Kathleen Olsen

Only through true doubt can one achieve true faith. Blind faith is a result of fear and laziness. Blind faith has no power, because it was not achieved through the individual search for knowledge and truth. How can one who has blind faith have true conviction, if they have not received true answers through the asking of their own questions? The only belief a person of blind faith has is a belief in comfort and community.

To achieve true faith, one must surrender to true doubt. Doubt of the certainties of existence. Doubt of all beliefs one has been told by family, friends, church officials, and society. Doubt of one’s own perceptions and realities. Only after one has been “cleansed” (if you will) of all rules, laws, beliefs, and agreements which are forced upon every human being from the day they were born, are they free to question without fear, guilt, or shame and find the answers they were meant to find.

A religious establishment like the Heterodox Baha’i Faith [that is, those Baha'is currently occupying Haifa and Wilmette] only has power in numbers. It’s a false kind of power. Their “faith” is based on perceived history, sense of community, threat of ex-communication, and blatant lies. They do not have a Universal House of Justice, but a Universal House of Cards. Under the slightest pressure of the truth which will one day present itself to all, their house of cards will crumble.

The Heterodox have attacked us not out of spite but out of fear. For all their power in numbers, they can never defeat the power we have in the truth. We are an indestructible wall built from our consistent defeat over adversity; a wall the Heterodox community will eventually break itself against. We have all come to the Orthodox Baha’i Faith because we have faced true doubt instead of running from it. We have faced that doubt and found truth faith on our own terms. It has brought us a freedom and a power no one can take from us. Not other Baha’is. Not a court of law. Not the world before which we stand and seek to alter forever.

Comments

[Robert Clifton]

Outwitted
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Edwin Markham

Dr. Susan Maneck is a known quantity. She has developed a world view through her independent investigation as far as she wants it to go. She has stopped dead in her tracks at this age and this era in this perpetually unfolding school of God. Stopping as she did is authorized by the writings. Also as authorized by the writings she has been assured a reward in the next life. She has made her choice. She is not wrong, she is merely stopped. It is human nature to want the world to agree with you. That would not be unity - that would be conformity, but it is not as Miss Olsen describes as “blind faith”. Susan Maneck nor very many of the ‘other’ Baha’is have ‘blindly’ adopted a world view.
Megan writes eloquently of blind faith. She is right on many points, and she writes just as eloquently when she switches to the search for truth as the right basis for establishing a faith. Again, she is right on many points.
Megan’s treatise breaks down because she goes on to ‘establish’ her world view a few paces down the path from Susan, but alas, Megan too has stopped. Not unlike each other they stand firm with the assurance that “… (they) can never defeat the power we have in the truth”. That is probably true, unless each unfetters their mind.
In the Prayers book on page 40 ‘…the highest development of humanity…’ is discussed as an extremely future event. It would stand to reason then that stopping at any point along the path to God to “establish” an unassailable point of view as the truth to which all must conform would be rather against the purpose of the writings.
To paraphrase Markham’s poem, “All are his servants and all abide by his bidding.”

Robert