When the Story Ends
After reading a great post on Brians blog (asourkraut.blogspot.com), I got to thinking a little more about the connections between math and story and a provcative conversation from today.
Having always wondered about the connections between math and literature, I am beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that they are connected through reality. God created the world, God sustains the world and in him all things live and move and have their being. And this poses many problems for us.
Because God's nature is not just unity, or plurality, but 3 in 1 and 1 in 3, His creation reflects those qualities as well. ( I am really not sure about any of this, but I am going to follow this sneaking suspicion for awhile anyway.) As I think about this complex creation, there seems to be many tools that we have been given to understand it. Particularly, math and story. Now with this complicated reality, we can use story to give us certain insights into the world, though it will not completely describe it. We can use mathematics to look at the world as well, but it will give us an incomplete picture. Basically, what we have with these two tools are devices that explain God's reality from a certain angle. Looking at an elephant from the side with trunk out stretched gives a vastly different understanding of elephants than an upclose view from the underside. Likewise, math approaches God's world from one angle and story from another.
Math and story together help to provide a better understanding of God's world. And it is precisely because they must be held together (Christianity seems to always hold the paradoxes of the world together in such a way that the beauty of the whole is greater by far than that of the individual pieces) that we as Christians need to be "well-rounded" in our education. If we don't balance our stories with math or our math with stories, I am guessing we will be thoroughly shocked at the sight we see when the story ends.
To understand this world, to take dominion over it, to glorify God and enjoy him forever, we must seek to live a fully Christian, Trinitarian life. This is only possible through Christ and his redeeming power. It means we must work to sanctify our sight so we look at the world through the eyes of Christ. And as our lens for interpreting the world is slowly cleared of sin stains by faithful obedience to God, we are then in a position to further understand this world through a balance of story, math, etc.
Having always wondered about the connections between math and literature, I am beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that they are connected through reality. God created the world, God sustains the world and in him all things live and move and have their being. And this poses many problems for us.
Because God's nature is not just unity, or plurality, but 3 in 1 and 1 in 3, His creation reflects those qualities as well. ( I am really not sure about any of this, but I am going to follow this sneaking suspicion for awhile anyway.) As I think about this complex creation, there seems to be many tools that we have been given to understand it. Particularly, math and story. Now with this complicated reality, we can use story to give us certain insights into the world, though it will not completely describe it. We can use mathematics to look at the world as well, but it will give us an incomplete picture. Basically, what we have with these two tools are devices that explain God's reality from a certain angle. Looking at an elephant from the side with trunk out stretched gives a vastly different understanding of elephants than an upclose view from the underside. Likewise, math approaches God's world from one angle and story from another.
Math and story together help to provide a better understanding of God's world. And it is precisely because they must be held together (Christianity seems to always hold the paradoxes of the world together in such a way that the beauty of the whole is greater by far than that of the individual pieces) that we as Christians need to be "well-rounded" in our education. If we don't balance our stories with math or our math with stories, I am guessing we will be thoroughly shocked at the sight we see when the story ends.
To understand this world, to take dominion over it, to glorify God and enjoy him forever, we must seek to live a fully Christian, Trinitarian life. This is only possible through Christ and his redeeming power. It means we must work to sanctify our sight so we look at the world through the eyes of Christ. And as our lens for interpreting the world is slowly cleared of sin stains by faithful obedience to God, we are then in a position to further understand this world through a balance of story, math, etc.
posted by Charlie at 11:58 PM
2 Comments:
Here's a thought I had after reading your post:
Math cannot properly exist without story.
Would it make sense to say that story must precede math?
Well, I think that if math cannot properly exist without story, then story cannot properly exist without math. Both story (whatever that means) and math describe what is real. Math didn't generate from story, but is a way to describe what is real from a different "angle."
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