Category: Distilled Insights

Everyone has problems that feel intractable, and most of us instinctively turn to other people for solutions. But Baha’u’llah says God alone solves problems. As ‘Abdu’l-Baha puts it in one of his letters, “Ask whatsoever thou wishest of Him alone… With a look He granteth a hundred thousand hopes.” Despite this assurance, we turn to…

A practical guide to navigating the Phelps Project, the Baha’i Library Online, and the AI translations Someone recently told me on Facebook that he couldn’t find the translation of Lawh‑i‑Sarraj, which I have been discussing in recent blog posts. That didn’t surprise me. Finding this tablet, or any tablet in the Phelps AI‑translation collection, is…

I have often wondered why the Badíʿ calendar has a month called “Questions” (Masá’il). The other day, I discovered something about the calendar that hints at one possible answer. I am no expert on the Badíʿ calendar. It sits quietly in the background of my life, giving rhythm to my days and years. I don’t…

Ukraine’s survival and the Lesser Peace: the two go together. The Lesser Peace is not the dream of disarmament, but the duty of justice. The war in Ukraine is a geopolitical crisis and a threshold moment for humanity. When aggression threatens the vulnerable, silence risks becoming complicity. The Baha’i teachings explain that peace cannot be…

No one is actually worthy of the grace of God. In The Seven Valleys, Baha’u’llah quotes Qur’an 16:61: “If God should chastise men for their perverse doings, He would not leave upon the earth a moving thing!” Baha’u’llah also makes a related point that a person who carries out all religious duties is not necessarily going to impress him….

You don’t need to be clever to know God; you only need a pure heart. Anyone can have a pure heart, no matter how clever they are. If intelligence was the quality a person needed in order to know God, then that would make God unjust. The setup for knowing God would not operate on…

Finding the truth about being truthful means recognising that being truthful can sometimes be a tricky thing to do. “Tell the truth!” people say, as if it is as easy as that. But what if no one else is telling the truth? In that situation, not telling the truth does not necessarily mean lying, it…

Ukraine is the canary in the world’s coal mine of justice. I am a big supporter of Ukraine. As a follower of Baha’u’llah, I consider it my religious duty to support Ukraine. But having said that, my support isn’t out of duty; on the contrary, I am passionate about it. In this blog post, I…

Baha’u’llah is a cure for conspiracy theories. He regularly tells his followers to eliminate their idle fancies and vain imaginings. Those two terms serve as umbrella concepts that incorporate an awful lot of mental baggage. Conspiracy theories, which are theories based in fear and on disinformation, are a good example of modern-day vain imaginings. These…

Where is the kingdom of God? Where is the entrance that goes through from this physical world into the kingdom of God?  The kingdom of God is found in a mysterious and unexpected place. Just as the entrance to Narnia was unexpectedly discovered at the back of a wardrobe, the entrance to the kingdom of…