During the Naw Ruz Diner, one of the women seated at our table tried to elucidate the finer points of the Baha’i faith and philosophy to us. It is a shame that I cannot remember her name, and I forget to get her contact info. She was certainly kind and wise, and she tried hard to get the message across, she even tried to yell over the Brazilian music later in the night. But before the band started, as we were making our way, most thankfully, through an amazing meal, she said something that hit home, something I whole heartedly believed:

“Man is a talisman.”

I now know that it is a quote from this section of Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, which goes on to say how we can come to know God with a proper education. But it could have easily been something an atheistic philosopher would have said (not to say that the two always come hand-in-hand) about humanity. I believe we do contain “gems of inestimable value,” and we are capable of such great insight and understanding. To me this quote said that we are valuable in light of us simply being and having an intellect, not in believing in God or having potential therein. To me we are beautiful and boundless without God and he seemed superfluous to this message.

I have been very busy this month with university, and it doesn’t seem like it wants to let up for a while. But during this last week of my time as a Baha’i, I want to make an earnest attempt at understanding God. While I was at the library I picked up a copy of the Kitab-i-Iqan as well as A Short Introduction to the Baha’i Faith to help that sort out this inner conflict I seem to have.

Please understand that I have spent most of my life as an atheist, and my reasoning has been that God was largely unnecessary in my personal life, as well as a wholey illogical concept. Through science and philosophy, and my own intellect, I could understand the world and all within it, leaving no place for God. Like Laplace famously said to Napoleon, “I had no need of that hypothesis,” I never saw the need of a designer, or some kind of ethical rule maker. I believe that we created the idea of God as a stand in to explain all those mysterious things in the world, or to help us order society or cope with death, something that we can now do without.

But God is a big part of what it is to be Baha’i, and belief in some kind of deity is a large part of the majority of the religions I will be practicing this year. Ideally I could be converted every time, to get that insight and that alternative perspective and thus gain a genuine understanding of each religion. But that leap of faith doesn’t seem like a return trip. If I could see the world with God, to have a genuine belief in His existence and involvement in my life, it seems doubtful that I could go back to being an atheist. Some part of me knew that when I took on this project, but I could still try to get a better understanding- a less muddled view of how that world works. At the very least, I would like to be able to jump this minor hurdle that comes up everytime I see someone praising or worshipping God- that it is all just kind of unnecessary.

So here I am now, on the other side of a one-way mirror, trying to peek into that monotheistic world. If anyone from the other side would share their own insights or stories of how they came to believe in God, or their understanding of what or who God is, I would be eternally grateful.