Cold?

Imagine you are trying to read a page from a book with a faint torch. What you’ll probably do is hold the torch close to the page and shine it directly at the page so that the light hits the page perpendicularly, making the page brighter and easier to read off of.

But this is a bit of a boring conversation, so let’s take a moment to talk about the weather.

It’s getting cold.

Now, when the sun shines it’s light (photons) on us it also send us phonons (heat). So if we picture our torch as the sun, the page as South Africa and the light as heat then we can start to see why we are getting colder. The Earth is in an elliptical orbit around the sun, but the change in distance from the Earth to the sun is not nearly significant enough to change the temperature, especially considering that space is a vacuum so there aren’t many particles getting in between us. So the thing that changes the temperature is the angle. The Earth rotates around a tilted axis of 23.5 degrees to the vertical (with the sun and Earth on the horizontal). This means that SA will receive direct sunlight in Summer and will be at an angle in Winter.

Cool story bro. (yawn)

But stop and think about the awesome ferocity of this for a moment. The sun is 150 000 000 kilometers away, and tilting the SA 23.5 degrees has caused us to change seasons, 15 degrees Celsius, and the food that’s in season at Spar… Imagine you shone a torch at a piece of paper from that distance, and that tilting the paper about one sixteenth of a circle caused such a drastic change in the intensity of light the paper received that the way the Papes in Paperville who lived on your page was completely altered. You’d be pretty blown away (or I hope so!). Not only that, but this is no laser torch, it shines equally in all directions, and has been on for 4 500 000 000 years.

Now those batteries are some serious energizer bunnies.

I don’t expect you to feel as amazed by this as I do, but try embrace these numbers and your imagination for a moment.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth… And God said, “Let there be light“, and there was light.” Genesis 1:1 and 3

*This picture is for the northern hemisphere, South African seasons will be reversed for the same picture*

Imagination

Allow me the paradox of imagining a world without imagination. Without the use of our imagination to ponder alternatives we would be constricted to reality in a most animal-like way.

We would have no regrets, since we would never be able to imagine circumstances other than the ones that the decisions we made landed us in. 

We would have no envy, since we would not be able to imagine what it would be like if his car was mine and not his.

We would have no adultery since we would not be able someones wife likes us more than them and there would be no added excitement in doing so. 

We would have no pride, since we would never be able to imagine being anything other than what we are: loved and lowly. No better and no worse as a being than anyone else.

We would not have sin, since we would never have imagined ourselves counting as anything in comparison to God, and would thus never have imagined that breaking one of his commands would be beneficial in some way.

We would not have sin, since imagination and free will are in essence the same gift. 

But look around you.

Look at me and look at you. 

Look at that tree and look at your shoe.

(To spice things up with Dr. Seuss hullabaloo.)

We have imagination. Why? 

We have imagination because the God who created us in his image is an imaginative God. He didn’t create a simple universe containing a straightforward earth to be run by close minded and terribly boring automata called homo sapiens. He gave us imaginations (perhaps one of his greatest gifts), the opportunity to sin, and He imagined a way that we could be in relationship with him if we chose sin (the greatest gift). 

He gave us imagination so that we could imagine life with him.

He gave us imagination so that we could imagine life without him.

He gave us imagination so that we could have faith and hope.

He gave us imagination so that we could strive to be better.

He gave us imagination so that we could imagine an imagination-less world.

He gave us imagination so that we could so that we could desire him and his gifts and his salvation.

He gave us imagination so that we could imagine Heaven, and desire “on Earth as it is in Heaven” with everything because imagining Heaven makes everything on Earth insufficient.

He gave us imagination because He has one and imagination is one of the few things that set us apart when He made us in his image and placed us far above the animals and just below the angels. 

He gave us imagination so that we could look at our options but choose to love and glorify him anyway. 

He gave us imagination because He loves us. 

 

Brain

I waited at the door for the guy to walk through, but, probably because he preferred standing at doors than studying he indicated for me to go first.

Without a thought, or rather, without a thought I was aware of, one study-tired muscle called brain told other muscles to lift my right foot and simultaneously stick cold hands into pockets to get warm.

There they felt. Skin touches, nerves respond, signals, chemicals, neurons, nerve channels and I have realized that I have a crumpled paper in my pocket (probably a till slip) and I have already responded by grabbing it and have decided what to do with it.

Eyes dart sideways to where quickly accessed unseen memories have created an expectation for a dustbin to be, about a meter to my right.

My hand withdraws from its cosy enclave which it quickly informs my consciousness that it was enjoying and to which it wishes to return asap. With pin-point precision my wrist and fingers are controlled and maneuvered simultaneously, plugging in parameters of weight, shape, air resistance, velocity, distance and the strength of a select few of my muscles into an equation I could never hope to derive to any significant degree of real-life accuracy but which my brain has deduced without telling me by mere observation as I casually wrist-flick the paper into the dustbin.

My right foot rolls onto the floor to reduce the shock of impact and I take my next step, smiling and saying “thanks” to the guy for letting me through.  

If all the wonder of the stars, the Earth, the natural universe, of morality and mathematics don’t strike with awe and draw you to believe in a Creator, then surely the fact that you can think (rationally, if we try) about such things will. 

Truth, Morality and Meaninglessness (an intimidating title)

In reading Ravi Zacharias’ The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists I have become worried how an atheist in discussion with a Christian would respond if the Christian replied to his arguments like Zacharias responds to those of Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation. If I myself was the atheist I would jump on the hypocrisy wagon, the unreasonable wagon, the judgementality wagon, pretty much all the most comfortable atheistic wagons in reach and ride them into the sunset of supposed enlightenment.

 

I have stopped reading on page 57, so perhaps he clears up some of the problems I have with his book. From what I gather from Zacharias’ description of Harris’ book, it’s a book telling me I’m an idiot for being a Christian in thousand ways while making rash and incomplete declarations about the ‘truth’. Zacharias would understandably be upset by this, as am I who haven’t even read the book, but I find this anger comes through an unnecessary amount in his writing (and the preface).

 

The main argument against Harris’ at the beginning of the book is that his arguments are completely wrong, and illogical, and unnecessarily harsh against Christianity, and incorrect, and he “shouts” to cover up his lack of reason, and he is unrealistic in simplifying Christianity, and that even atheists are embarrassed by him because of his close-mindedness, and that he emotionally blackmails you, and that his logic is contradictory, and that he keeps repeating himself to make a stronger case. Hypocritical much?

 

Another argument that Zacharias made is one common to apologetics. Harris had made the point that a loving God surely doesn’t exist in a world where little girls get raped. Zacharias had responded by saying that the very existence of morals in Harris is indicative that he is more than a random collection of atoms, that morals transcended each individual’s set of beliefs and were therefore originated from a transcendent being. He does, however, mention both cannibalism and the holocaust in his discussion, saying that if atheist’s morals were simply a result of feelings, then cannibalism (or the holocaust) could easily be justified. Fair enough, but then, since cannibalism exists (or, at least, existed) and the holocaust happened, then surely there must have been some justification for it.* This point needs to be discussed far more thoroughly and completely to give it any weight.

 

The final argument that I have gotten to in my 57 pages is that an atheist’s life is meaningless. Atheists claim that religion is a vice to give us comfort in meaning, and that acceptance of God’s nonexistence brings enlightenment and freedom. Zacharias discusses why atheism’s enlightenment is a fraud, and doesn’t give life any meaning, and how even atheists admit that their lives are meaningless, but I found no argument defending religion in this matter. Zacharias argues that any naturalist (who sees himself as randomly grouped atoms, and probably bloody lucky) will end up living a depressing life full of emptiness, lack of purpose and lack of meaning. I don’t disagree with him, and he has his own testimony to back him up, which is powerful and undeniable. So therefore we should all be Christians. The end. This is ridiculous! Just because an atheist might lead a meaningless life doesn’t mean that he is living a false life. If a man came to Christ from fear of meaninglessness I would constantly fear for his faith, because when he hits his midlife crisis suddenly Christ will be of no value to him. Someone who wants purpose needs to seek truth, not purpose itself. If he seeks purpose, then he will follow all the steps (and many more) of wise Solomon in Ecclesiastes chapters 1 to 4 and might never find Christ. If he seeks truth he will save himself the effort and read Ecclesiastes chapters 1 to 4. When discussing Christianity with an atheist it should focus on seeking truth, explaining truth, discussing truth, not in pointing out how meaningless their existence is. “Umm, okaaay, well, er, nice chatting to you, I guess, I’m going to go have a guava to comfort my meaningless soul,” and he will eat that guava, and seek comfort for his meaningless soul in a hundred different ways before ever looking for it again in the Christ whose follower told him he was meaningless. If your life was meaningless, do you think you’d need reminders? Let God be the foundation of faith and the source of purpose; don’t let purpose be the foundation of faith and the source of god.

 

I have not given answers here, if you are either a Christian or an atheist looking for answers, I refer you to the works of CS Lewis or the videos of Alastair McGrath for solid and reasonable support of the Christian faith. I am merely challenging Christians to think more critically and dynamically about how to respond to atheists, especially on more controversial topics like evolution and homosexuality. Spend a bit of time in atheist’s shoes so that you can be better equipped for open discussion and to see the value of Christ and his splendour from a different angle.

 

* I have no good answer for this question. In CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity he discusses this in Book 1 chapter 2; however I find that even his arguments are flawed in this matter. His claim that the fact that we can compare Christian Morality to Nazi Morality and say that one is better than the other indicates that there is a Real Morality that we are comparing them to. The fact that we have room to improve a nation’s morals, points to a Real Morality that we can strive for. However, I do not think that it’s so easy to say one morality is better than another. I think that if I was a Nazi I would’ve claimed that Nazi Morality was better than Christian Morality, because I was enforcing natural selection by killing Jews and Russians and breeding Arians while Christian nations declared war on my country. Thus this “Real Morality” I am comparing to is actually relative and therefore non-existent. If I was striving for my nation’s morality to improve I could just be responding to the evolution of society and culture and trying to keep morality current. Could morality evolve from abstinence to condomisation simply because modern culture (and government planning) is pushing it in that direction?

Justice’s Scales: Tampered By Grace | 500 Words on Grace

I had the privilege of sharing my thoughts on Grace as part of the series ‘500 Words on Grace’. Check out the series at: https://havemyword.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/500-words-on-grace/ Also, do yourself a favour and check out Shae’s blog here: http://havemyword.wordpress.com/

You have my word

Mankind has a huge interest in fairness. If something is fair, it is beautiful; if something is unfair, it sucks. “But that’s not fair!” frequents our childhoods like “Life’s unfair!” frequents our adulthoods. And as you read this post titled Grace I’m sure you’re expecting me to tell you that life is actually fair if you look at it from such and such an angle.

Crap.

Life is unfair; now let me tell you why.

People say “How is it fair that good people can go to Hell?” or “Is it fair if someone who hasn’t heard about Jesus dies and doesn’t go to Heaven?” Well yes, actually it is fair. It’s not fair that Geppetto would sacrifice his own son’s life for Pinocchio’s, when Pinocchio is a horrible piece of disobedient puppet trash that should be shredded and tossed into a fire. It’s less fair that God sent Jesus…

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Bloody Flippen TV-Screen

I performed this piece recently at Spoken Sessions (clueless? check facebook and twitter ). You can find the video here.

 

Spirit creates and encapsulates time and space. An ocean containing the algae our minds call reality, only as real as reality-TV while the truth that sets you free remains unseen by the spiritually blind me who lives inside the TV.

TV and reality divided by a bloody flippen TV screen. A screen made strong by broken covenant, a screen broken by stronger covenant.

Pinocchio: TV-me, separated from the soul-body-spirit God-breathed real-boy me I was made to be by this bloody flippen TV-screen! I could just scream!

A screen made strong by broken covenant, a screen broken by stronger covenant. A body broken for that stronger covenant, and the screen torn from top to bottom.

Smear blood, it seeps deep, creeps deeper, doesn’t sleep, the blood dissolves, and there is hope: there are holes in that bloody flippen TV-screen. How much love that the screen is bloody?

Algae-reality-TV encapsulated by Spirit-sea which leaks into and in through the holes in different forms and moulds to review and renew who I am; Pinocchio or a man.

The ocean leaks in through words, drops through the holes of mouths. Dripping drops of reality through the screen to TV-me, drops that speak of the behind-the-scenes, behind-the-screen sneak peak at the Real Lives of Me. Words of truth.

But TV-me has lies and lines and catchy phrases from the script which the TV obeys unrelentingly- drops of sealant to seal the deal because he feels that the sea that creeps towards him is a deadly enemy and he fears Death. Even the death of a scripted TV-character.

His lines are said, the holes are sealed, but the ocean is bigger and the blood is stronger and so it dissolves new holes and the water bores in.

In through the memories of the prayers of Susan who prays silently, desperately, faithfully, on knees, reaching for what her near-blind eyes can see: water leaking through a blood-smeared cavity. She feels it clean those hands which seem to skip between obscene and serene in my dreams. Unclean, made clean, by water and blood that floods in from beyond the screen.

But cleaning ads- they are the worst, and the TV-show producer produces some plugs: drugs, thugs, fathers who don’t give hugs, to add to the production, and TV-me doesn’t see behind the special effects, 3-D and smoke machines to see that these plugs are plugging holes and preventing flow.

Holes formed in worship, sealed by denial. Holes bored by nature, sealed by blindness. Holes which should have and could have and would have been dug by the son- plugged by sin.

TV-me doesn’t see the point- the screen is cracked, the veil is torn, the ocean leaks out, seeks you out. The blood does not stop, the ocean chops, plugs are popped: old hand-holes, new hand holds, hope holds out and hear the blissful hiss of hysterical water-waves wash aside those things which keep you wanting to act; your props, your pride, yourself.

Dunked, vision rolled into a blur of light and finally TV-me begins to see. He is free to flee the TV-scripted death that we are all so used to seeing. TV-me believes in the blood and relieves in the Spirit flood. The Blood soaks, he croaks, he chokes.

Death.

And a breath of fresh water.

The actor, Pinocchio, is dead. I emerge from blood and water and Christ’s pain a new-born real boy covered by The Blood in the ocean of His Spirit and truth.

Tough Love

We have all heard the phrase “tough love” being thrown around. If you find it easy to give tough love then that’s awesome, and I hope that you do. Admonishment is sorely lacking in this world, almost as much as love itself. But at the moment I’m not concerned with being able to add the tough to my love, but being able to give love when it’s tough.

 Some people just grate my cheese the wrong way up. I’m not sure why, but some people are just very tough to love. The sound of their voice agitates me. The sound of their laughter (yes, laughter) makes me cringe inside. Their presence annoys me and is as undeniable as a mosquito that isn’t buzzing, but who must be somewhere nearby. I wrote about four of these people in particular to try to understand what it is that causes me to dislike them. It didn’t help. For obvious reasons those paragraphs aren’t welcome here.

One thing I did notice was that all these people have two things in common.

1) I love them very little. It’s not hate; just enough dislike to smother the love I have for people in general.

2) They all know I believe in Jesus.

 To love these people is tough love, but that’s what I must do. They never did anything in particular to deserve these feelings. I never did anything in particular to let them know my feelings. Regardless, all of them look to me as someone who has faith in a God who sent his one beloved son to die for them, for those that butchered Him. For me, who constantly justifies His death. That is tough love. And it lives in me.

 

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13

The Boy Who Tweeted Wolf

There’s no shortage of lovey-dovey tweeters or of lovey-dovey-tweet haters. The tweeters gonna tweet and the haters gonna hate, and the circle of life (in the Twitterverse) goes on. Then you get those like myself who don’t think Twitter is the place for pet names and virtual smooches but who also don’t think Twitter is the place to hate on cyber-romantics.

 Both fill your feed with crap you don’t care about.

 Let me quickly say that although I do think it is mostly crap, I am not saying that my Twitter account spouts endless supplies of wisdom, humour and meaningfull anti-crap. In fact, there’s a high probability that you followed my twitter link to this very post, and are now reading words like ‘cyber-romantic’ and ‘anti-crap’ and thinking about what crap you read when you follow links posted on my Twitter account. If this is true, and you are still reading, you should stop.

 …

 I take it you didn’t stop. Cool. 🙂  So here’s what I think, Twitter is a social media. Social and personal, apart from being spelt differently, have different meanings. “What?” you ask, eyes popping and mouth dropping. Yes, seriously. Twitter is not there for you to organise dates, have conversations or tell your special someone how much you love their smile. Twitter can be used to organise public events, tell those who care to follow you about what you are up to, or to publicly encourage friends where others can also appreciate them; with a comment or a retweet or with their own thoughts, because hopefully they still have those. Twitter is about sharing opinions and what is going on in your life, not your every emotion, feeling or moment.

 “But my opinion is that I love so-and-so, and I want to share that on Twitter.”

 I’m glad for you, but this is the problem as I see it. If I get tweeted by a cyber-bromantic who said something along the lines of “I flippen love this guy. What a bro!” when I’ve seen the same tweet by the same tweeter but with a different @______ then I will get nothing from that tweet except a tag and some Klout points. Say it to my face if you want to love me, and I will feel loved. If I have been virtually loved a million times real love will lose its potency.

 It’s like the childrens story about the boy who cried wolf. The boy shouted “Wolf!” as a prank on the village and the men came running ready to protect the sheep from the wolf, but the kid was pulling their legs (metaphorically, of course). They were undoubtedly upset, and went home. It happened again: more leg pulling. The third time it happened the men never came, thinking the boy was just pranking them again (and their legs were probably tired after being pulled twice and all the running). I guess you could say the wolf went home with shepard pie.

 When we tweet our love and hate we are a like that boy. When we first tweet something we no-doubt mean it, encouragement or love or whatever. But then we keep doing it, until all the sincerity and meaning behind what is being said is washed away. Then when we have something serious to say our credibility is compromised. We shout from the rooftops until no one cares what is said inside.

 

 

Rudely Interupted

On Tuesday I tweeted a CS Lewis quote I had seen in a library. It had nothing to do with Christianity or Christ, but the next day when a friend (let’s call him Y) tweeted that people tweet more CS Lewis quotes than Jesus quotes and that perhaps they were placing more significance to what Lewis has to say than what Jesus has to say, I got a little offended.

It was Wednesday, and I was driving.

“I feel a little offended” I said to myself.
“Why?” Conviction rudely interupted.
“Well I tweeted a CS Lewis quote, and now Y’s implying that I add some sort of significance to CS Lewis over Jesus. That’s ridiculous. I mean CS Lewis was a Christian and through him many people have grown in Christ. Y’s just trying to stir a pot. Probably not even my pot, my quote had nothing to do with Christianity.”
“Hmmm?” wondered Conviction.
“Don’t ‘Hmmm?’ me. Am I wrong?” I retorted. (I’m not a fan of being rudely interupted).
“You’re irritated about this?”
“Clearly.”
“You know you wouldn’t be angry unless something was up. It’s not the sort of statement you’d usually disagree with. In fact, it would be just the sort of thing you’d tweet. Besides, Y is a good oke, and he isn’t prone to nonsense.”
“Oh, well, yeah… so is there something up?”
“You tell me?”
“Isn’t it your job to tell me?”
“Yes, but isn’t this more entertaining.”
“… I suppose. So this doesn’t apply to this current tweet. Maybe all the other times I’ve retweeted CS Lewis quotes?”
“Go on.”
“Do I retweet more CS Lewis quotes than Jesus quotes?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I suppose I follow a @CSLewis on Twitter, and I don’t really follow a @Jesus, but that doesn’t mean I add more significance to Lewis than Jesus, I mean, that’s crazy right?”
“Is it?”
“Gah! Are you at least being entertained?”
“Definitely. So is it?”
“Yes, I gave my life to Jesus, not Lewis.”
“Let me ask you this, when you go on Twitter, and you see all those retweeted Christianese cliches and verses, many of which are Jesus quotes, and then you see a CS Lewis quote, which one do you read more intently?”
“Ummm… is there an option C?”
“Yes, friends tweets not related to Christ at all.”
“Ummm… is there an option D?”
“Nope.”
“Ummm…” [by this stage my um’s had attracted a small swarm of bumble bees, which followed my car down the road]
“Well?”
“I suppose if I had to put them in order of interest when I read them I’d have to say C-B-A.”
“So who or what is your priority when you read tweets?” and then he stopped talking.

Next day I read a blog post, about high school dramas and being headgirl and stuff that I’ve never normally bother about (I had no real hopes or beliefs that I would ever be a house prefect, let alone headboy). The post had some moral fibre, and there was a good dose of wisdom, but it was while reading the the high-school-drama-series section that I was rudely interupted. It was the last place I would expect to bump into Conviction.

“Hi”, he rudely interupted.
“Oh… what are you doing here?” I replied, “Shouldn’t you show up in the last paragraph, which is probably going to be deep and wise and poetic?”
“Thought I’d suprise you” he smirked, pleased with his own sneakiness. [Conviction is very sneaky- he has won the stalk-the-lantern world championships five times. The sixth time the lantern got convicted and decided not to pitch.]
“We had a date yesterday, do we really need another one so soon?” I asked.
“Seems so, I’ve been meaning to see you about this since Sunday.”
“Sunday?” I considered to myself, “Church on Sunday: I was selling boerewors rolls. What did you want to speak to me about? And why here and now? Shouldn’t we reschedule for Bible time or worship or something?”
“Why do you want to reschedule, didn’t you give your whole life to me?”
“Seriously? Fine, play that card! Yes, yes I did.”
“Good, I wanted to meet you here because this post sort of reminds you of X doesn’t it.”
[I start getting defensive as I see where this is going] “Perhaps a little.”
“You failed him on his maths test when marking on Sunday (which he deserved) and then you were happy about it. Why?”
“His test was terrible, a mathematical atrocity.”
“You marked many mathematical atrocities on Sunday, and you were dissapointed when you failed them. So what’s different about X?”
“I didn’t like him in high school.”
“Why?”
“He always sucked-up to the teachers and tried to inspire us with lame speeches about pride and effort and passion for your school.”
“Why?”
“Everyone always knew he was the ultimate prefect suck-up. Spent his whole high school career trying to impress people who would make him a prefect. Only no-one voted for him, because no one likes a suck-up, and as some sort of sick joke.”
“How did he react?”
“He was depro.”
“Did you laugh about him behind his back about the fact that one of his dreams was crushed?”
“…Maybe.”
[glare]
“…Yes, but haven’t we already talked about this? Why again now?”
“You’re happy that you could give him a 2/10, do you want him to fail? Do you find happiness in the thought that you now have some sort of superiority to him just because you mark his maths tests? Clearly my message never sunk in the first million times!”
“Umm, uh, sorry, er, what message?”
“Love your neighbour as yourself” he finished, and stopped talking.

He always does that. There you are, minding your own business when he rudely interupts you, messes with your brain, get’s you to admit sin (missing the mark- in these cases I never broke some laws in Leviticus, but I never lived my salvation in a very big way) and then sits back and watches. Like when your dad watches you cook. His presence is undeniable and a bit irritating, it prevents you from doing your own thing, but you also make sure that you don’t screw anything up, and if you are going to put soya sauce on a salad instead of balsamic vinegar (may or may not have happened) then he will stop you.

I don’t know if Y will read this and realise that his tweet impacted me, and I don’t particularly care. I don’t even know for certain if the person whose test I marked even is the X from high school. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet X again. I’m not going to change the way I mark Xs tests.

This I will do:
-I will follow @jesusquotes1 on twitter and I will purposefully read those tweets with intention of having those words written on my heart.
-I will dwell more on what Jesus says and less on Jesus’ followers say, so that when He speaks to me through his followers I’ll be able to discern that it’s Him using a person, and not merely a person trying to help.
-If I meet X I’ll greet him with a smile and a “Hey bro, how are you doing?” and I’ll stick around to listen to his answer. If he does fail another test (which, if his first test is anything to go by, seems likely) I won’t dunk myself in my own pride and think how much better at that-one-subject I am, but will instead correct and gently rebuke the errors in his test.
-I will love him.
-I will love Him.
-I will become more like Jesus, little by little, step by step, and rude interuption by rude interuption.

Number Glory

Maths sucks.

It’s a very general statement, but I believe most people have said it more than once in their lives. When I was a wee lad in primary school and most of high school, I fell in to this category. Maths was something I could do, but it was tedious and I approached it like I approached Afrikaans- as long as I could pass and say “I don’t speak this language, try English” I was happy. Another similarity between my maths and my Afrikaans is that I share my lowest marks with those subjects. 49% for term 1 maths in grade 8 and for term 1 Afrikaans in matric.

I learned to love maths. Unfortunately, it took me longer to realise that Afrikaans aint all that bad (listening to some solid, respectable and passionate Afrikaans profanity at a Sharks-Bulls game may have contributed to this realisation), and that’s where the similarities end.

I had managed to get into ad-maths in grade 8 even though I never really enjoyed it. The first recollection of enjoying maths was at Bush School in grade 9 where we were taught word problems, and I loved the struggle of figuring out how all the little details would fit together. In grade 10 I went to America where I did matric level maths. They gave us graphing calculators which did all the work for you, so I managed to top the class with a lazy 97%, but I did at least learn a lot more about the graphs of functions and how to use them to avoid calculations- basically cheat- a skill I am grateful for in university. Then came grade 11 back in SA, where, being in ad-maths and all, I was dumped with grade 11 and matric maths at once. Real matric maths. Once again, maths sucked. It was so much work. But I slogged on, and hit matric, where we started to do basic university-level maths in our ad-maths class. That’s when things got real. For the first time I was exposed to the thought processes and logic that happen behind the scenes of all those symbols and equations. It was incredible. When it was time to apply for university I had to choose between maths, music and history.

I signed up for BSc. Applied Mathematics. Since then, God has blown my mind through maths. Mostly through the numbers which have been dubbed “The Maths Big 5”. Even if you have no idea what I’m talking about (because I am not the best explainer in the world), just nod your head, act smart and give God some glory for my ramblings.

1: We all know what 1 is. A whole- singular and complete.

0: Zero means “empty”, and the concept of nothing being represented as a number by itself took surprisingly long to be implemented. The first time 0 was used as a number (as opposed to simply an origin, a starting point or for separation between giving and taking) was by the Indians in the 9th century AD.

Pi: This is a well-known non-rational number. It has no exact value, because it just keeps going. It is, to our knowledge, infinite. Eternal. It is defined as the circumference of ANY circle divided by the diameter. What are the chances that pi, which is derived from something as simple as a circle’s circumference and its width, has infinitely many decimal places without any repetitions or patterns. Stop, right now, and actually think about what that means.

Here is a web site that has pi up to 200 million digits: http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery . That’s 200MB of number. A whole lot of pi (mmm, delicious) and in those 200 000 000 digits, it hasn’t started repeating itself and does not follow any known pattern. That’s crazy talk!

e: The number e is called the natural number. This is because the logarithm and exponents of e appear repeatedly in nature, specifically growth and decay of natural entities like bacteria or humans. One of the fascinating things about e is the number of ways it can be defined. The most common way is

e=lim (1+1/n)^n as n->infinity

Alternatively, also taking the limit of the sequence as n->infinity

e=1/1 + 1/(1*1) + 1/(1*1*2) + 1/(1*1*2*3) + 1/(1*1*2*3*4) + 1/(1*1*2*3*4*5) + … + 1/n!

=1/0! + 1/1! + 1/2! + 1/3! + 1/4! + … + 1/n!

Alternatively, again taking the limit

e=2 + 1/(1+1/(2+2/(3+3/(4+..))))

Since all the definitions are limits e is not an exact number (just like with pi). The longer you calculate the more accurate you will be, but never exact. It is also infinite, eternal. So why does it show up in all these different definitions (and there are other ways)? Because it really is an entirely natural number. It is core to the structure of numbers, of nature, of everything. When God spoke the universe into being he may well have started with e. The infinity of e and pi are one of God’s many ways of reminding us that he is far bigger than we could dare hope or imagine, even in something like maths.

i: It is loosely defined as the square root of (-1). In high school you would’ve been told that the square root of a negative number gives no solution, or, if you had a correct teacher, that it has no real solution. Well, they were right about the no real solution part, but it does have a non-real or complex solution(s), involving i in some way. i is called the imaginary number. It was imagined because mathematics required it to exist. You can’t see it, picture it, point at i somethings- it is entirely imaginary, non-real. Perhaps it is spiritual. We know that all the real numbers that me and you see in our day-to-day, non-imaginary lives exist on one line in an entire plane, called the complex plane, where all numbers (real and non-real) exist. All numbers each have a real part and an imaginary part, but we can only see the numbers whose imaginary parts are equal to zero. I like to believe that while our mathematics requires us to invent the number i, spirits who live in the spiritual realm treat i like any other number. That they can see and understand what i somethings look like. That while our senses are restricted to the real axis that spirits have access to the whole plane.

And then BAM! KAPOWEE! The maths Big 5 unite like the Power Rangers into one super duper equation.

e^(i*Pi)+1=0

[insert loud gasp of disbelief]

e (the natural number) to the power of i (an imaginary number) multiplied by pi (circumference/diameter) and plus one is equal to zero.

[insert another gasp, followed by applause and a smart looking elderly gentleman with spectacles nodding wisely]

The two most simple, understood and important numbers known to man. Two infinite numbers who’s exact values are unknown- one that comes from any circle, and one from any number of limits which also happens to appear everywhere in nature. An imaginary number that you can’t possibly quantify, and this little equation brings these seemingly unrelated numbers (certainly derived in separate ways) all together. With an equal sign!!! Are you freaking kidding me!?! Look how excited I’m getting, I’m using triple exclamations!!! If this isn’t God’s way of showing His perfect and mind-meltingly magnificent design, control and sense of humour in belittling us then I don’t know what is.

Maths rocks, and you can call me a dork-nerd or whatever for saying so.

Miraculous indeed.