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Gender and the Divine World
In Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings, God has no gender. Indeed, to think of God in anthropomorphic terms (as a kind of “super human”) is entirely imaginary. To every discerning and illuminated heart it is evident that God, the unknowable Essence, the Divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress. …[1] However, the topic presents us with complexities. First, we have to pause to clarify our thinking about what we mean by “gender”. Gender has layered biological and cultural aspects and it is easy to mix them up. Aspects of gender such as “pink” and “blue” for example are recent – and purely cultural inventions,…
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When Foreignness is Accentuated
One of the challenging aspects of abolishing foreignness is the sheer scope of the concept of “foreignness.” Foreignness can be all-pervading. It can manifest itself in our thoughts and our laws, in our attitudes and our interactions, in our beliefs and our behaviours. Articles on Abolish Foreignness explore a range of approaches to abolishing foreignness, and the range of these discussions suggests the complexity of the topic at hand. I’d like to discuss here another social mechanism that can contribute, depending on how we employ it, either to the reinforcement of or the abolition of foreignness: language. The diversity of languages on our planet is a valuable part of our…
