There is an oft-quoted Bahá’í maxim that says that if religion brings about more hatred than harmony then we are better off without religion. It is by this measure that Bahá’ís also measure their own worth as a community.
Service to the world of humanity, becoming the cause of harmony, easing the burden of everyone whose path they cross, and making sure that their behaviour each day is better than the previous day’s – these are all goals which Bahá’ís worldwide attempt to realize through their daily lives.
As a matter of faith, Bahá’ís – since the earliest days of their religion – have been active in setting up social projects to serve the needs of communities around the world. The vast majority of these have looked beyond the confines of self-help objectives for the Bahá’í community alone. In fact, it may be fair to say that such Bahá’í projects have only been ‘inward looking’ when intense persecution in certain countries has made it impossible for them to extend their desire to serve the wider community.
Schools have been the most popular amongst these social action projects and there are numerous well established Bahá’í inspired schools the world over – for example in Macau, India, Guyana and Zambia. However, projects also relate to other areas of life – such as agriculture, literacy, empowerment, health, challenging racism and environmental protection. The Bahá’í ethos in initiating such projects is simple. They are designed to raise the capacity of populations to take charge of their own lives and to develop the skills, knowledge and insights to progress their communities. Projects are developed in free and open consultation and in a spirit of equality and respect for populations and their traditions.
In recent years, the entire Bahá’í world community has become engaged in three lines of social action that are proving to be core activities for community building. In a predominately voluntary capacity, Bahá’ís are getting involved in a comprehensive syllabus of child and young teenage education, hosting meetings for prayer and reflection, and propagating study groups in neighbourhoods which use the Bahá’í sacred writings to train participants to become useful members of society.
As Bahá’ís we believe that a human being’s purpose is essentially a spiritual one. We are born into this life to develop our spiritual potential. But in Bahá’í metaphor this physical existence is a mere shadow of our true reality. The body is the temple of the soul and is destroyed on our physical death only to release the bird of our soul from its mortal cage. Since life’s purpose is to develop spiritual qualities while in a physical frame, then projects that aid individuals to focus on the spiritual – by pausing to reflect in devotional gatherings or by considering spiritual texts and reflecting them in a life of service to others – is actually core to human development.
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