Chastity: living up to high standards

A few months ago, I asked my friends on Facebook to suggest topics they'd like me to blog about. One friend commented "chastity". Huh?! I brushed it off. A few weeks later, two more friends made the same suggestion. It took me a long time to be comfortable with the topic. First, I realized I hadn't studied enough/ hadn't been in any gathering where this theme was discussed. So, my background knowledge was very limited. Second, who talks about these things anymore? We're all told Hey, no sex before marriage. Hey, no skimpy dresses. Hey, no cursing. Full stop. Lust and sex are pretty much in the same category as depression and suicide -- a taboo. You just don't talk about them. Or perhaps just in my social circles? But when I finally gathered the courage to address one of those forbidden topics - suicide, I became overwhelmed by the private emails/responses I received from readers (thank you to everyone who shared your insights and stories with me) I realized there are so many people out there who really want to talk about these things. We need to break out of our boxes and address these realities. People are ready for a discourse.

So here's to opening doors...

What is chastity?

According to Shoghi Effendi, "Such a chaste and holy life, with its implications of modesty, purity, temperance, decency and clean-mindedness, involves no less than the exercise of moderation in all that pertains to dress, language, amusements, and all artistic and literary avocations. It demands daily vigilance in the control of one's carnal desires and corrupt inclinations. It calls for the abandonment of a frivolous conduct, with its excessive attachment to trivial and often misdirected pleasures. It requires total abstinence from all alcoholic drinks, from opium and from similar habit-forming drugs. It condemns the prostitution of art and of literature, the practices of nudism and of companionate marriage, infidelity and marital relationships and all manner of promiscuity, of easy familiarity, and of sexual vices..." (The Advent of Divine Justice, p.30)

That's quite heavy, isn't it? Very high standards too. But if you take your time to read and reflect, chastity, in the Bahá'i Faith is about moderation and vigilance. It does not call for absolute transformation into saints or monks (to live as isolated individuals). The laws aren't rigid, so what is modesty when it comes to dress, language and arts is left to the individual. But there are some laws that are a clear NO. Total abstinence from alcohol, drugs and immorality.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ commanded "Thou shalt not commit adultery", and revealed in 1 Thessalonians (4:3) that we should abstain from sexual fornication, and in 1 Peter 2:11, that we are urged
to abstain from fleshy lusts. Centuries later, in the Qur'an, the men are told (in 24:30) to lower their gaze and guard their private parts. So it is no surprise then that even a new religion - the Bahá'i Faith, echoes these same teachings. 

From a letter dated 14 January 1985, written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer: "As to chastity, this is one of the most challenging concepts to get across in this permissive age, but Bahá'is must make the utmost effort to uphold Bahá'i standards, no matter how difficult they may seen at first. Such efforts will be made easier if the youth will understand that the laws and standards of the Faith are meant to free them from untold spiritual and moral difficulties in the same way that a proper appreciation of the laws of nature enables one to live in harmony with the forces of the planet."

Now, the big question is why? 

I really appreciate how the paragraph above reminds us to think about why we have such laws. I'll add a few more lines from another letter from the Universal House of Justice (19 April 2013): "In recognizing the Manifestations of God for today, a believer also acknowledges that His laws and exhortations express truths about the nature of the human being and the purpose of existence; they raise human consciousness, increasing understanding, life the standard of personal conduct, and provide the means for society to progress. His teachings serve, then, to empower humanity; they are the harbinger of human happiness, whose call, far from compelling obedience to an arbitrary and dictatorial regimen of behaviour, leads to true freedom."

As Bahá'is, we know that our purpose in this world is to prepare for the next world. Transforming our individual characters, our lives, our souls (acquiring Divine attributes and virtues) goes hand in hand with transforming our communities, contributing to the advancement of civilization because we are organic with our environment. Look around you, and what kind of society do you see? Is our contemporary society not one consumed with moral decay and regress? Genocide, war, human slavery, racism, domestic violence, corruption, political slander. If we surrender ourselves to these norms and practices of the wider society, how can we ever expect the conditions around us to change?! "His teachings serve, then, to empower humanity; they are the harbinger of human happiness, whose call, far from compelling obedience to an arbitrary and dictatorial regimen of behaviour, leads to true freedom." 

I'm not going to start listing down what Bahá'i laws or standards are. They're  in the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Guardian -- about art that's pleasing in the sight of God, about a kindly tongue being the lodestone of the hearts of men, about unsoiled clothes --  for each individual to study and investigate on their own (that's one of the beauties of not having a clergy). But we should always remember that we'll never fully appreciate these guidance or laws unless we also understand why we have them in the first place.

Next, we wonder how can we realistically uphold the high standards we know of? Look at social media today, you can't scroll through your home page without seeing more photos of butts than faces. You can't enjoy a road trip with the radio on without hearing the F and the B and the A and the S words. It's "love" month and all the commercials tell you that the ideal date on Valentines Day would be to watch the new movie about sadism and masochism (fifty shades of grey).
It's tough, and I suddenly remembered a line from one of my favorite books, Prescriptions for Living, in which Ruhiyyih Khanum refers to chastity as "one of the rarest of all moral gems in the world today". It's rare, indeed, but it does not mean it's lost.

When you look up the word chastity in the dictionary, it refers to abstaining from sexual relations outside of marriage, but I've always understood it as something beyond the bounds of relationships. In the Bahá'i Writings, it implies the purity/non-perversity of clothes, language, music, literature... to basically not become a slave to our animal impulses. With Valentines Day coming up, I felt it's timely to discuss chastity from the point of view of sexual relations. The spiritual laws on this are engrained in the Holy Books of all religions, and in some countries it's a national law (adulterers are punished) so repeating these will be futile. Now, there are people who are probably thinking, how can my intimate relationship with someone or something I do in the privacy of my bedroom hinder the progress of mankind? Here's where I ask you to dedicate the next half hour to listening to some beautiful insights of Nabil Moghaddam: