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Parallels can be drawn between ASMA Praxis and certain
concepts in various religious communties. Only four will be mentioned.
As expressed in some of the Judaisms, the translation of the
Hebrew, and Lurianic Kabbalistic, term, tikkun olam, is repairing the world. Through its
reinterpretation by the Jewish Renewal Movement, it has
become a clarion call for environmental custodianship, peace, and
social justice for the poor.
The word jihád is
Arabic for struggle, not for
holy war. Many Islámic moderates have situated its
significance in the wrestling with one's nafs (Arabic cognate of the Hebrew
nefesh), the multiple planes of
the lower nature or ego, and
in an exertion for human equity, peace, and the the rights of the
poor. From their standpoint, only jiháds which are purposefully
defensive, of one's own or another religious community, should be
sanctioned on the battlefield.
With respect to Christianity, a myriad of liberals and
postliberals, including those identifying with Every Church a Peace Church
or Sojourners, promote
inclusiveness, peace, and social justice among both Christians and
those of other faiths. In the United States, the United Church of Christ and the
Disciples of Christ are two of the
more open and progressive denominations.
However, conservative evangelicals, constituting one of the more
influential categories of American Christendom, are among the most
passionate advocates for corporate capitalism, considered by some to
be oppressive of the poor, and among the most dedicated opponents of
economic socialism. Yet, these positions would be difficult to
support from the New Testament literature:
All who believed were together and held everything in common, and
they began selling their property and possessions and distributing
the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need. Every day they
continued to gather together by common consent in the temple courts,
breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and
humble hearts, praising God and having the good will of all the
people. And the Lord was adding to their number every day those who
were being saved.
-- Acts 2:44-47 (from NET
Bible)
Jesus also appears to have believed, in contradiction to
prevailing evangelical conceptions of salvation without works, that
the worthiness of individuals to inherit the Kingdom of God will be
judged on evidence of their benevolence toward the poor. This
text provides the locus classicus for his position.:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him,
then he will sit on his glorious throne.
All the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate
people one from another like a shepherd separates the sheep from the
goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the king will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are
blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was
thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you
invited me in, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and
you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."
Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when did we see you hungry
and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we
see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? When
did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?
"
And the king will answer them, "I tell you the truth, just as you did
it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did
it for me."
"Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you
accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil
and his angels! For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I
was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.
I was a stranger and you did not receive me as a guest, naked and
you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me."
Then they too will answer, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or
thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not
give you whatever you needed?"
Then he will answer them, "I tell you the truth, just as you did not
do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me. And
these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into
eternal life."
-- Matthew 25:31-46 (from NET
Bible)
Christ clearly expected His followers to serve the poor, and He
assessed their qualification for eternal life, in the Kingdom of His
Father, on the basis of their philanthropy. "And whoever does not
take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me," (Matthew 10:38,
NET Bible), He is quoted as
saying.
In a similar vein, the Apostle James, contending that a workless
faith is a contradiction in terms, advises, "... faith without works
is dead" (James 2:26, NET
Bible); and Paul, who had dismissed the salvific agency of a
faithless works (Ephesians 2:8-10), now, in a statement recalling
Benjamin Franklin's maxim, "God helps those who help themselves,"
counsels Christians, "... work out your salvation with fear and
trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to
work for His good pleasure" (Phillippians 2:12). Neither James nor
Paul were apparently willing to divide faith from works.
Finally, from a Bahá'í standpoint, faith and works,
or conforming oneself to God's Will, are inseparable and, for all
intents and purposes, identical. Faith implies works, and, according to
Shoghi Effendi:
Is not faith but another word for implicit obedience, whole-hearted
allegiance, uncompromising adherence to that which we believe is the
revealed and express will of God, however perplexing it might first
appear, however at variance with the shadowy views, the impotent
doctrines, the crude theories, the idle imaginings, the fashionable
conceptions of a transient and troublous age?
-- Shoghi Effendi, Bahá'í Administration,
page 62
And `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote:
Although a person of good deeds is acceptable at the Threshold of the
Almighty, yet it is first "to know," and then "to do." Although a
blind man produceth a most wonderful and exquisite art, yet he is
deprived of seeing it. Consider how most animals labor for man, draw
loads and facilities travel; yet, as they are ignorant, they receive
no reward for this toil and labor. The cloud raineth, roses and
hyacinths grow; the plain and meadow, the garden and trees become
green and blossom; yet they do not realize the results and outcome of
all these. The lamp is lighted, but as it hath not a conscious
knowledge of itself, no one hath become glad because of it. Moreover,
a soul of excellent deeds and good manners will undoubtedly advance
from whatever horizon he beholdeth the lights radiating. Herein lies
the difference: By the faith is meant, first, conscious knowledge, and
second, the practice of good deeds.
`Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of `
Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas, volume 3, page 549
Regarding the poor, Bahá'u'lláh wrote:
O YE RICH ONES ON EARTH!
The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not
intent only on your own ease.
-- Bahá'u'lláh, The
Persian Hidden Words, number 54
And the Universal House of Justice sharply criticized the
ideology supporting corporate capitalism for tending:
... to callously abandon starving millions to the operations of a
market system that all too clearly is aggravating the plight of the
majority of mankind, while enabling small sections to live in a
condition of affluence scarcely dreamed of by our forebears.
-- The Universal House of Justice, The Promise of World Peace
Briefly, among the categories of praxis which might be utilized in
Bahá'í service projects are those involving an active
participation in social and economic development. Opportunities for
volunteerism could run the gambit from assisting non-profit agencies
with low-income families and individuals to, perhaps more ambitiously,
designing programs for aiding displaced victims, especially the poor,
of natural and man-made disasters or planning and building
intentional communities for the poor and disenfranchised. The last two
of these projects are likely better suited to regional, rather than
strictly local, operation.
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