How to Acquire the Knowledge of God

Baha’u’llah wrote that “The beginning of all things is the knowledge of God …” If this statement is true, I told my friend Jesse, no one time or place or population has cornered the market on the Faith of God. 

This also means that the Bible is not the only collection of books that offer a glimpse of the revelatory process. 

The Old Testament books are so old and such a patchwork, that the glimpse of reality behind them is fragmentary — like looking at God through a kaleidoscope or prism and trying to get a sense of what the Creator is. The fact that prophets like Ezekiel take exception to the claims made in earlier Biblical accounts makes discernment even more difficult. 

RELATED: All the Prophets of God Came for One Great Aim

Perhaps this has been a factor in the human tendency to divide God into bits — Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer, or the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — in the hope of better understanding.

Many more recent instances of revelation are different in structure and context, even as they are the same in spiritual content. Take the teachings of Zoroaster and Buddha, for example, or Muhammad, the Bab and Baha’u’llah. The newer revelations are, as you would expect, more coherent because, in some cases, they originated from a single source rather than from a collection of observers with different levels of spiritual awareness, education, capacity for self-expression, and attention to truth and detail.

Regardless of what any church or secular leaders seeking power have done to the collection of books we call the Bible, the words of Christ have survived to do just what he said they would — judge us by our relative success or failure to heed them.

When I was about 17 or so, I stepped away from church doctrine and studied the Bible — especially the prescriptive parts — independently. I threw out the interpretations I had learned from the pulpit. What I found was staggering. Most of what my church held as essential doctrine was a mere blip among Christ’s teachings, if it even appeared among them at all. 

Instead of accentuating and practicing Christ’s clear message about what it means to be human, church leaders extrapolated dogmas that divided Christians from believers in earlier revelations and even from each other. The “articles of faith” articulated for the various churches my family attended over the years did not touch on what Christ said we should do; instead, they laid out what the church fathers said we should believe about Christ. 

What Christ, himself, emphasized was seen as applicable only to those who had already been “saved” by belief in the aforementioned doctrines. Even the Greatest Commandment, to love God and love each other — which Christ framed as a primary commandment essential for the continued life of the spirit — was relegated to a secondary station. 

Christ gave that commandment as a cause, although I was raised to believe it was an effect. 

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. …This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. – John 15: 10,12

How clear is that? 

I emerged from my study wondering what happened over the centuries that had shifted our focus from doing and being to simply believing or professing belief. 

Today we can each pick up the Holy Books and read them and understand their plain language for ourselves. If we do this, we will find that those essential teachings of Christ about love, compassion, justice, detachment, kindness, etc., are echoed in every sacred text since we started committing these things to memory and ultimately writing them down. 

The prophetic title of Jesus of Nazareth was Immanuel (God with us) – and the Baha’i teachings tell us that it applies to all of the revelators. As far back as Krishna and beyond, these holy beings, speaking as the Voice of God, made the same claim:

I am the Way, and the Master who watches in silence; thy friend and thy shelter, and thy abode of peace. I am the beginning and the middle and the end of all things; their seed of Eternity, their Treasure supreme. — Krishna, Bhagavad Gita 9:16-18 

This indeed is the Way — there is no other — for the purification of one’s vision. Follow this Way. I have taught you the Way … making the effort is your affair. The Buddhas have pointed out the Way. — Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada vs. 274-276 

I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by Me. If you really knew Me, you would know My Father as well. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him. — Jesus Christ, John 14:6,7 

This is the way of thy Lord, leading straight: We have detailed the signs for those who receive admonition. For them will be a home of peace in the presence of their Lord: He will be their friend, because they practised righteousness.  — Qur’an, Surah 6:126-127

Baha’u’llah completes the dialogue: 

… He [God] hath manifested unto men the Day Stars of His divine guidance, the Symbols of His divine unity, and hath ordained the knowledge of these sanctified Beings [the prophets] to be identical with the knowledge of His own Self. Whoso recognizeth Them hath recognized God. Whoso hearkeneth unto Their call, hath hearkened unto the voice of God, and whoso testifieth to the truth of Their revelation, hath testified to the truth of God Himself …. Every one of them is the Way of God that connecteth this world with the realms above ….  They are the Manifestations of God amidst men, the evidences of His Truth, and the signs of His glory. 

As Buddha noted: “I have taught you the Way … making the effort is your affair.” There is a vast difference between professing to believe in the Way and making an honest effort to follow it.