Back-To-School with MrDonut

There is a new online course out called "How to Study the Baha'i Faith." MrDonut is astonished. He was just scanning the latest titles of the latest books written on the Faith by authors who are Baha'is, as well as the Ruhi Classes and Baha'i "How-To" books, and it appears that the academics are working overtime to fill the great abyss left in human understanding by the Central Figures and Institutions of the Faith.

It is plain to see that the revealed Word is inadequate to reach the minds and touch the hearts of today's man. Thank God! the intellectual Baha'is have sensed this need and every day are pouring another load of spiritual cement into the breach.MrDonut is concerned. Evidently there are people eager to pay $150 to take this course from the prestigious Wilmette Institute. or School For Big Baha'i Brains as it is affectionately known .

MrDonut's problem with all this is that this kind of supplementary reading and "education" seems to take the seeker one more step back from actual mystical knowledge, mysticism being that relationship between man and God. The course advertises that it will include study of "symbolic language to express spiritual truth." Which to MrDonut means Somebody is going to tell Me what It's all About. An educational agency of the NSA appears to believe that there is an unclassified segment of the literate populace that needs an Imam.MrDonut reads Baha'u'llah's Tablet of the True Seeker and sees nothing like a Wilmette Institute, although it may be possible that MrDonut himself requires a paid facilitator to unlock to him the mysteries of the Divine. After all, he is only a cat. Could the inability or unwillingness of the Baha'is to actually teach the Faith be a result of a subtle encroachment by Baha'i academics and administrators to relegate understanding and action to themselves, thereby leaving the rest of the Baha'is intimidated and reluctant to think?

Examining a list of , for example, current Auxiliary Board Members for Protection for the ____ States. MrDonut sees a plethora of advanced degrees, none of which appear to be in the field of the Baha'i Faith, Administration, or teaching the Faith. It appears that it has already been decided that there are two layers of Baha'i membership, two ways of salvation (mine and the one I impart to you), and no one doing the work. Does the Baha'i Faith need one more Suit at one more tea party to convince anyone of anything?

MrDonut looks for a day when true education will dominate the Baha'i Community, which in his opinion would be education of the hearts, empowered and sustained by ordinary Baha'is who are firm in the Covenant. Too simple? Perhaps, but then, MrDonut is a very simple cat.