What I have learned in the almost 20 years I have been a Baha'i, is that we can not judge the spiritual station or even true personality of someone else.
At 02:53 AM 2/5/2004, you wrote:
There have been many really good Baha'is. These people have obviously been humble. What I have noticed over the years is that humility and self-delusion often go together. Humble people often genuinely believe themselves to be of a lower station than they really are, and express views which are false.
It is only your judgement, based on limited information, as to whether something someone says about themselves is "true'" or "false." Even if you know people personally and see them often, it is not possible to know everything about them.
I lived in a community once where I heard about the great service of an early believer in that community. She had been dead for several years before I moved there, but people would still mention her name and how wonderful she was. A couple years later, I got to know one of her children. My friend had a lot of mental baggage that she was still dealing with after 60 years. While her mother my have done a lot for the Faith, she was not very successful at being a mother. The people in the community only remembered her as a "wonderful person," they did not remember or maybe they didn't see the problems in her family life.
Interpersonal communication is very troublesome. It's not always easy to say exactly what you mean, and even if you did, there is no guarantee that others will hear it the way you meant. The examples you give may only approximate what the speaker really meant and the understanding of those hearing/reading it may also be insufficient. So I don't think anyone can truly judge the spiritual station of another person or judge that they are being self-delusional.
Barbara Clements
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