CG Didymus
Veteran Member
That's awesome that you apologized. That is impressive and a big plus of being, or striving to be a true Baha'i.A better quote for this situation is this one. I impugned her character with that other quote, and it didn't address the situation as well anyway. Here's the quote:
Moreover, call thou to mind the one who sentenced Jesus to death. He was the most learned of his age in his own country, whilst he who was only a fisherman believed in Him. Take good heed and be of them that observe the warning.
(Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 10)
Learning, if it is just intellectual, and you are attached to whatever you think you know, actually works against accepting the new Manifestation. You need to see the spirit of the scriptures, not just have intellectual knowledge concerning them.
I apologized to her, and offered this second quote.
I agree that taking some Bible verses too literal causes all sorts of problems. But taking things too loose makes them kind of meaningless. Like if I was a Jew, and read in Matthew how he uses Isaiah to say that the virgin birth was prophesied, that would be enough for me to reject Jesus. But then Matthew go on about the killing of the boys in Bethlehem and quotes a verse as that event was predicted. Then something about God calling his son out of Egypt and that he'd be called a "Nazarene"?
It doesn't take deep scriptural knowledge to see that this Matthew guy was just pulling verses out of context and throwing them out there and claiming that all these were fulfilled prophecies. But then, did the events that supposedly fulfilled the prophecies even happen? I even question the virgin birth. To me, that's something that could easily be a made-up legend. Who was there? Then the trip to Egypt? And the killing of the young boys? So, do we accept what it says in Matthew, or do we research it out?
Trouble is... what if we become convinced that Matthew had made all this up? What do we do with Jesus? Well, for me, if I was a Jew, I'd reject him. For non-Jews, that didn't know or care about the details, I wouldn't have a problem believing Matthew. But then where do the gospels take us from there? By the time we get done reading all the epistles along with the gospels, Jesus is "The Savior". We were all doomed to hell but now have a free ticket to heaven. Just believe in and follow Jesus and we will have our sins forgiven. And, by what is written, there is no other way to get our sins forgiven. Our good deeds won't do it. All we can to is accept the sacrifice Jesus made.
So, that is where "fisherman" kind of knowledge will get us... believing Jesus is the only way, and later, when the Christian leaders made him into a God, we'd believe that too. So, we can't be too dumb and too gullible. We need some knowledge. And Baha'is do try and impart some knowledge to help us decide correctly... What is the truth about God? So, here we are. Trying to figure out what is BS and real.