The Quest: Helping our children find meaning and purpose

Drawing on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's profound explanations in Some Answered Questions, Harlan Scheffler explores the relationship between the natural world and the non-material world, between science and religion, to propose a scheme of education that will help children find their way in a globalised world now awakening to its spiritual purpose.

• What is life all about?
• What makes it work?
• How can children be encouraged to ask good questions and where can they find good answers?
• How can parents and teachers help children to develop the capacity to investigate truth independently?
• What can they teach children about religion without indoctrinating them into divisive ideas?

Many parents and teachers are troubled by present-day trends and their influence on the children they know or have responsibility for ⏤ trends such as indifference, apathy, and materialism feeding our increasingly fragile connections with our environment and with each other, our worldwide and unrelenting distrust of each other, our isolation whether racial, religious, societal or ecological, our war-torn planet, our divided consciousness where material things are true and non-material things are also true but are treated as poles apart.

This book demonstrates that logical and independent thought can be reconciled with spiritual insight. It explores how energy ⏤ spirit ⏤ motivates all forms, both in the natural world and the non-material world, and how an understanding of this can help young people to rediscover their connections to their surroundings and imbue their lives with meaning and purpose.