Tact in communicating teachings and laws

Communicating specific teachings and laws

• Communicating the need for the Fast
• Diet in public discussions

Need to be uncensoriously forbearant with others (in matter of personal purity)

"...If Bahá'í youth combine such personal purity with an attitude of uncensorious forbearance towards others they will find that those who may have criticized or even mocked them will come, in time, to respect them..."

(From a letter of the Universal House of Justice to a Local Spiritual Assembly, July 9, 1973)

Bahá'í youth should not indict non-Bahá'í friends for loose morality (but should not follow their ways)

"...The young people who are living between these two eras, and seeing the destruction of old institutions are therefore apt to discard all respect for them and in fact view with contempt any person that may still cherish the old. Hence we see the loose morality prevalent among them. This condition is not true only of America and Europe but also of the East, and I dare say in the East more than in the West.

"Even though the Bahá'í Youth should feel with the condition in which they see their non-Bahá'í friends and not indict them for it, they should not let themselves be carried by the wave of world events as they are being carried. ... To make them follow our ways we should sympathize with their plight but should not follow their ways. We should take our stand on a higher plane of moral and spiritual life and, setting for them the true example, urge them up to our level. The young people should read what Bahá'u'lláh and the Master say on such matters and follow them conscientiously. That is if they desire to be true to the teachings and establish them throughout the world."

(On behalf of Shoghi Effendi, 26 October 1932 to an individual believer, published in "Bahá'í News" 443 (February 1968), p. 8; in Youth (compilation, no. 2253)

See also

• Laws
• Need to promote morality
• Introducing the laws to seekers and new believers
• Sequence of teaching (being gradual, but also not to expect too little before entry into Faith)
• Raising concerns with fellow believers about statements or actions apparently undermining the Covenant

To-dos for this page

• Add links to references on avoiding bringing up certain laws early on in teaching; add mention of need to bring up challenging issues in one's community, however (and quote on tolerance and righteousness)