The ASMA Program

ASMA Praxis™

The Liberationism of The Structurization Paradigm

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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.

Copyright © 2005-2006 Mark A. Foster, Ph.D., M.A., A.B.J., A.A.  All rights reserved.


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