(Disclaimer: this jumble of words is not fun to read; but writing it all out helped me process something that I've been thinking on for a while now. On the slight chance you've been questioning the same things, hope this brings relief.)
A little while ago I was sitting on the couch about to dive into some med-chem notes on serotonin when I first paused to listen to Charlie Hall's song "Mystery". I love this song. But as the song crescendoed with the final chorus, my overly critical mind cut through the joy I was feeling and begin to question it. Why was my heart seemingly swelling with the music? Was it because it was rejoicing with the truth of the lyrics ("Christ has died and Christ is risen and Christ will come again") or was it because the song employed violins which registered in my brain as emotional and therefore caused increase release of some neurotransmitter or endorphin to cause vasodilation in my chest and result in the sensation that my heart was swelling with joy? How much was it a "real" experience and how much was it an emotional high induced by the chemicals in my body? How much of the human experience can be explained rationally and how much is it mystical? Such has been my struggle with science/reason vs faith.
In my frustration, I turned to an article written by David Crowder on how the future of worship can be predicted by the Pythagorean theorem. I won't even begin to try to go into that, but he pointed out some things that were interesting to me. We have relied on science/numbers to give things meaning and definition. We use numbers to organize music into notes and beats and octaves and forths and fifths.
We use numbers to explain beauty; like Fibonacci (0,1,1,2,3,5,8…) whose numbers explained the way a flower unfurls its petals as it blooms, or the spiral of a sea shell. Pythagoras used numbers like 3,4,and 5 to explain the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle. We use numbers to bring order to the chaos around us…to limit the unlimited.
As I sat contemplating this, it hit me: Why can’t it be both? Why do science and faith have to be mutually exclusive? Why can’t the knowledge of science, numbers, other units of measurements we’ve created to explain and assign meaning to things – why can’t all these things be used not to reduce God, or explain away spiritual mysticism, but instead, serve as incredible reminders that while science and reason are wonderful, they fall so, so short of fully comprehending the Divine. Our every attempt to create order out of the chaos of the universe, or “limit” the “unlimited”, just serve as even greater reminders that we cannot fathom His beauty. Love. And most of all, grace.
Pythagoras found his system limited in trying to find the hypotenuse length of a right triangle with two equal sides of 3. This isn't an equation that works out nicely like the 3,4,5 combo. The length of the hypotenuse is apparently 3 root 2 but the point is this solution can't be explained/defined in rational numbers. Crowder says, "This is not something that they (Pythagoras and friends) created, this is not something that they can change, this just is. And without irrational numbers he's not going to reconcile things." All of the most capable scientific/mathematic/psychological explanations will eventually reach its limits if attempting to concretely contain/define the holy, limitless, uncreated God of the universe. Every system must leave room for the abstract.
Even now, the excitement that courses through me at the truth of this realization could be explained by neurotransmitters and brain activity and such, but any explanation excluding the Spirit, excluding the Divine, excluding any allusion to things and emotions and communions beyond our comprehension, would not do justice to what’s happening in my heart as its filled to bursting with joy. I can rejoice because science does not have to be abandoned, but can be appreciated all the more in light of what it could never perfectly/wholly explain.
"And what was said to the rose to make it unfold, was said to me here in my chest, so be quiet now. And rest."
