The Sunday Mail
Flora Teckie
A Bahá’í Perspective
CREATING a united and happy family, in the Bahá’í view, requires new skills and commitment to equality which encourage communication and mutual trust, respect and affection between husbands and wives, parents and children.
Once more the world will be celebrating the International Day of Families on May 15. As we celebrate this important day, let us reflect on some principles for creating a united and happy family.
Family is where the individuals learn by example and the way they are treated, how people relate to each other.
Healthy family relationships are essential for the happiness and contentment of each family member and for the well-being of the society.
A healthy family is outward-looking – not just focused on its own well-being – since each nuclear family is a unit of the whole human family.
The family is a critical source of emotional and material support for its members.
If loving, unified, vital and joyful, a family can provide the ideal conditions for the well-being of its members in all facets of life – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
The following Baha’i Writings describe the impact of unity in a family, “If love and agreement are manifest in a single family, that family will advance, become illumined and spiritual; but if enmity and hatred exist within it destruction and dispersion are inevitable” and “… where unity existeth in a given family, the affairs of that family are conducted; what progress the members of that family make, how they prosper in the world, their concerns are in order, they enjoy comfort and tranquillity, they are secure, their position is assured, they come to be envied by all”.
Harmony and co-operation in the family as it is in the society is maintained in the balance of rights and responsibilities.
All family members “have duties and responsibilities towards one another and to the family as a whole,” which “vary from member to member because of their natural relationships.”
If their rights and prerogatives are not maintained, it is not possible to sustain the unity in the family.
The family provides the first environment for empowerment of our children in their spiritual and intellectual development.
Although the child receives formal education at school, it is at home that character, moral and spiritual attitudes are formed.
The family provides a fertile ground to nurture children to love the Creator, to become spiritually minded, to “conform to the rules of good conduct” and to acquire “all the graces and praiseworthy qualities of humankind”.
Marriage is an important mechanism for the maturation, and realisation of one’s many potentials.
Once we learn to give, to share, and to love in the context of marriage, then these and other spiritual practices can enrich the entire family.
Union in marriage presents each partner with the challenges and rewards inherent in any true organic unity: giving up some personal and individual privileges, making certain sacrifices, learning to care deeply, and standing ready to share in all the consequences of the partnership.
Marriage, the Bahá’í Writings state, is “A fortress for well-being and salvation” and that married couples should strive to become “loving companions and comrades and at one with each other for time and eternity”.
No other social structure has been able to replace marriage as a way of providing a balanced and stable environment in which children can grow and learn to become moral and social beings.
According to the Baha’i Writings, marriage, a divine creation, is intended to unite a couple “both physically and spiritually, that they may ever improve the spiritual life of each other”.
The observance of the equality of women and men is crucial to the well-being, happiness and unity of the couple and the whole family.
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