Should we continue running programs that only serve a small number of kids? This question inevitably comes up in our growth obsessed era. I visited one such small program this week and came away with fresh perspective.
No, there weren't hundreds of kids there. But the 20 kids that were present had a place at church to call their own. They had leaders who were building into their lives. They had a great spot to bring their unchurched friends. They were learning about following Jesus.
The leader of the program also gets discouraged by the number thing. I was trying to offer her some words of encouragement, telling her that I saw wonderful things happening for the kids who were there. I found myself saying, "God's math is different than ours!" And it's true! Just look at some of these examples from the Bible...
He created the world in just 6 days.
He populated the entire earth with just 1 man and 1 woman.
He destroyed the earth with a flood and started over with Noah, his family and an arkful of animals.
He promised Abraham a nation, but didn't give him an heir until he was 100 years old - then he asked him to give his son up at Moriah.
He offered to spare Sodom and Gomorrah is only 10 righteous people were found.
He allowed the Hebrews to multiply rapidly despite cruelty and oppression in Egypt.
He told Gideon that his army was too large to defeat the Midianites. Twice he reduced the size of the army for his own glory.
He used the tiny mustard seed to illustrate the kingdom of heaven.
He fed 5000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes.
He values the 1 lost sheep even he has 99 others.
He said the poor widow gave more than all the others..
Yes, God's math is different than ours. He doesn't see things the way we do. He doesn't value large attendance, big budgets, and growth the way our culture does. And thank goodness for that!
Let's keep our eyes on what's important - helping kids, whether there are 20 or 200 or 2000, choose to follow Jesus each day of their lives.
6 comments:
Thanks for the math lesson, oh so true and oh so important. My struggle is with the thought, "He doesn't value... the way our culture does." What is my culture? America or the Church, Evangelicalism. Do I (& our church) live a way that shows a difference? Do I value what God values?
Thanks for the challenge.
Hey thanks for visiting my blog!
To your post, I am glad to see this kind of thing posted. So often these kinds posts tend to ring "chain email", but in this case it rings true. Numbers, metrics, and the like only give one side to the story. If you have big numbers and unchanged lives the metrics lose all value. Transformation is first. I'd like to have more kids than I do, but before I look to chalk up another adherent I need to make sure my purpose change young lives into the image of Christ and not to stroke my petty ego.
Great reminder!
Great examples! There are big numbers in scripture, too but I agree that God's math is different than ours.
A few years back, a very small church where we were was faced with whether or not to have Sunday School for two kids and my thinking was that if God cares for the sparrow, how much more two children? (The other option would have been to design a very kid-friendly service.) The problem is finding someone willing to invest the time, energy and resources on "just" two.
Often problems are merely symptoms . The actual problem runs much deeper - underlying ideas that we take for granted or issues that few are willing to grapple with and change.
You don't know me, but we have a common friend named Michael "Mihai" Lundell. I found your blog via a comment you left on his. If you want to know why I choose to respond to this entry in this way, you can either take a look at my blog or ask Mihai; I suspect his response will be more amusing.
"God's Mathematics: A Response"
As a physicist, I use mathematics often in my work. The models physicists construct of the Creation, from its largest to its smallest scales, are mathematical. These models are very effective at describing and predicting our Universe. As a Christian physicist, I believe that mathematical ability is part of the image of God that he gave to us.
If mathematics were given to us by God, ours should be the same as his. I cannot imagine how even God could make 2 + 2 = 5 without changing the meaning of any of the symbols involved. All of the statements you make below are true, but I do not think any of them actually prove that "God's math is different than ours!"
This is important to me in part because science is my vocation and mathematics play an vital role in science. Also, I know that mathematics provide profoundly important tools for understanding our world and making good decisions. I worry that the the mindset that says "God's math is different than ours" might use that phrase to reject without consideration the important and accurate advice of mathematicians and scientists like me. Let me now address, using the points of your blog entry, why I believe his math is the same as ours.
He created the world in just 6 days.
Regardless of whether one subscribes to a Young-Earth interpretation of Genesis 1, God's creation of the world is a demonstration of his almighty power, not a refutation of human mathematics. As I mentioned above, the world he created seems to operate according to mathematical laws that humans like me have been able to discover and understand.
He populated the entire earth with just 1 man and 1 woman.
"Our" math can explain this quite easily. Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve had two sons (Cain and Seth) who survived to have children of their own. Let us assume they also had two daughters who survived to bear children; let us also assume that each producing couple between the Fall and the Flood had an average of four children who bore more children. Given the lifespans recorded in Genesis, I hope you will agree that this is a conservative assumption.
If each couple has four children, that means that each new generation will be twice as large as the previous one. This is called exponential growth. Doubling 4 gives 8, then 16, then 32, then 64, then 128, then 256, then 512, then 1024. The tenth generation (counting Adam and Eve as #1) will more than 1000 people. Ten generations later, we will have 1024 x 1024 = 1,048,576. Another ten generations will bring 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1.07 billion
If we say that each generation is 25 years long, we have populated the planet with more than a billion people in 750 years! Of course, the harsh realities of life unusually keep populations from growing exponentially for so long. However, I think I have shown that no non-human mathematics would be needed to explain populating a world from one couple. We only need healthy sex drives, normal fertility rates, and widespread willingness to commit lots of incest for the first few generations.
He destroyed the earth with a flood and started over with Noah, his family and an arkful of animals.
The previous explanation applies here as well. I would ask you to bear in mind exponential growth when you hear calls for Christians or Westerners to increase their birthrates.
He promised Abraham a nation, but didn't give him an heir until he was 100 years old - then he asked him to give his son up at Moriah.
I think this demonstrates Abrahams trust and God's almighty power over human biology rather than anything different about his mathematics.
He offered to spare Sodom and Gomorrah is only 10 righteous people were found.
An earlier comment on this post implied that God's "metrics" are different than ours. He certainly values people and things in very different ways than we do, but this shows that his values, rather than his mathematics, are different than ours. I don't think God would disagree with any human mathematician about the fraction of Sodom's population that would be represented by 10 people. You are saying that he would disagree about their worth.
He allowed the Hebrews to multiply rapidly despite cruelty and oppression in Egypt.
More exponential growth.
He told Gideon that his army was too large to defeat the Midianites. Twice he reduced the size of the army for his own glory.
I do not think God would disagree with human mathematics regarding the relative sizes of the two armies. Like the mustard seed, loaves, and fish below, this demonstrates his power to use small things for great ends. His mathematics and ours agree that these things are small, but his power more than compensates for their smallness.
He used the tiny mustard seed to illustrate the kingdom of heaven.
See Gideon.
He fed 5000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes.
See Gideon.
He values the 1 lost sheep even he has 99 others.
See Sodom and Gomorrah above.
He said the poor widow gave more than all the others.
Jesus used "human" mathematics to explain this. He said of the rich donors, "all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had" (Luke 21:4). In other words, Jesus is measuring her gift as a fraction of her income rather than an absolute amount. This is a common "human" mathematical concept; it is the same way your income taxes are assessed.
Luke - Thanks for your comment. I think it holds the record for longest comment on this blog! I think you missed my point though - I am really not trying to make a mathematical case but a theological one. By using these amazing number stories, we see that God is more powerful than humans can imagine and that He values life and each indvidual in a way that humans do not. As a follower of Jesus and as one who ministers to kids in His name, I need to take on those values. I need to remember that God can do huge things with the smallest of gifts. I need to rely on His power and His "math" rather than my own human efforts.
And one more thing: God reminds us not to despise small beginnings.
WP
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