Defining Your Role in the Community

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Defining Your Role in the Community
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What Is Your Role?
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What Is Community?
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Hinduism
Buddhism
Judaism
Christianity
Islam
Bahai
Middle of 8th Century
Between 560 569 AD
After 1500 BC
560 BC
2000 BC
1844 AD
No Single Founder
Gautama Buddha
Moses
Jesus Christ
Muhammad
Bahaullah
Belief Hindus and Buddhists believe that an
individuals life span is part of a life cycle
(reincarnation) Fear Their greatest fear is that
life may continue in an endless cycle of births
and rebirths on earth. Hope Their greatest hope
is that they will find a way to escape this
eternal earthly life and unite with a universal
spirit that is above both meaninglessness and
meaning.
Belief Judaism, Christianity and Islam are found
among people who believe there must be meaning to
human life. Fear Their fear is that human life
and individual mens lives are meaningless.
Hope Their hope is that they will find meaning,
they stress belief in One God with it is possible
to communicate, who cares about those who believe
in him, whose worship can give meaning to the
believers life, and who can reward the believer
with continued life after he dies on earth.
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No man can learn what he has not preparation for
learning, however near to his eyes is the object.
A chemist may tell his most precious secret to a
carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser the
secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an
estate. God screens us evermore from premature
ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see
things that stare us in the face, until the hour
arrives when the mind is ripened then we behold
them, and the time when we saw them not is like a
dream. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
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(No Transcript)
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• The first Taraz and the first effulgence which
  hath dawned from the horizon of the Mother Book
  is that man should know his own self and
  recognize that which leadeth unto loftiness or
  lowliness, glory or abasement, wealth or poverty.
  Having attained the stage of fulfillment and
  reached his maturity, man standeth in need of
  wealth, and such wealth as he acquireth through
  crafts or professions is commendable and
  praiseworthy in the estimation of men of wisdom,
  and especially in the eyes of servants who
  dedicate themselves to the education of the world
  and to the edification of its peoples. They are,
  in truth, cup-bearers of the life-giving water of
  knowledge and guides unto the ideal way. They
  direct the peoples of the world to the straight
  path and acquaint them with that which is
  conducive to human upliftment and exaltation.
  The straight path is the one which guideth man to
  the dayspring of perception and to the
  dawning-place of true understanding and leadeth
  him to that which will redound to glory, honour
  and greatness.
• -Bahaullah, Tablets of Bahaullah, pp. 34-35

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Perspective
Purpose