Musing 33

I’ve loved math since I was a little kid. While I was never super talented at it beyond the arithmetic needed in day to day life (though it is a skill I am always looking to improve), it is something that has long fascinated me.

Math seems to be the language that undergirds creation. While Scripture gives us the story of creation and its purpose, it is math that tells us the how of creation, whether it be in explaining how God holds the stars together with general relativity, or why certain shapes just appeal to us more with the golden ratio, math is involved in every aspect of life if we just look for it.

In many ways it’s a demonstration of the infinite wisdom of God in His well ordering of creation, despite creation being subjected to sin for now. To echo wise words (probably badly) God’s wisdom is deep enough that the least educated can marvel at the beauty of creation and the most educated lifelong learner always has more to dig into.

And yet, we so often treat math as this arcane thing and treat it lightly.

From a secular perspective, it makes sense. After all, creation is purposeless, so why bother understanding it at a deeper level? Sure, people may give a shallow “well, I can use it to do good”, which just begs the question “what gives grounding to call something good?” and the atheist has no lasting answer for that.

But what about for those who acknowledge that creation is purposeful? That I think usually comes from how we handle difficult things – we avoid them. And then because we avoid it, we never grow our skill with it, not realizing the benefits of growing in discipline from the experience. Combine that with math being something difficult to conceptualize and relate to daily life at times, and we see little reason for perseverance. And this sets aside all the difficulties associated with teaching math specifically!

There is great value in trying difficult things. It often is a means by which God teaches us humility. I know as a programmer who’s frequently had to tackle difficult things with the motto “do it till it becomes easy”. it is so easy to let it become routine and to miss the humility we have an opportunity to learn. But we should take every effort to learn the graces that make us more like Jesus. If math helps teach humility, let it.