Life is a journey of constant learning. Sometimes the big learning experiences come to us without warning, and sometimes we find ourselves entering consciously and deliberately into a big learning experience, whether it be an academic degree, a Bible study or actually reading the instructions for building a piece of furniture for once.
In these deliberate learning experiences we have expectations about what it is we are going to learn; there are, to varying extents, predictable learning outcomes. Yet even with these deliberate times of learning there are still surprises and unexpected revelations. In fact it is the inherent paradox of choosing to learn a particular subject skill or piece of information; if we knew exactly what we going to learn then we wouldn't need to learn it. This surprise element has certainly been true of some of the learning I have done in recent years. My theology and ministry studies have, perhaps surprisingly taken me deeper into the world of Mathematics than I have ever been - and even stranger than that, it is perhaps the maths more than the biblical studies, that have reminded me of the importance of story.
The area of mathematics I've been studying is a fairly young branch and has an important story of its own to tell about its journey through our world so far. Fractal geometry is an applied form of maths with many practical uses, but there are those who are put off by the idea of mathematics of any kind, let alone the complex, abstract world of fractals. So how about if we tell the story of fractals as if they were a real child; a kind of Pinocchio type story if you will.
Let's call this child 'Ben'. In Hebrew 'Ben' means 'son of' and this is useful for our story...
Ben was the child of Benoit B Mandelbrot, a wandering Mathematician. Ben was born in 1975 and grew up visiting places like geography, biology, geology, art, quantum mechanics and astrophysics. Ben's young adult life found him embarking on a remarkable film career starring in almost every film that used computer graphics to create believable landscapes and strange worlds from the imaginations of the writers and directors. Through him many new worlds were created - beginning with the Genesis project planet in Star Trek's 'the Wrath of Khan'. But even before Ben was born, the ideas that came to make him were conceived by Benoit in the world of economics out of ideas that went way back to the beginning of mathematics.
Sadly, Ben and his father were rejected by most of the economists, so they were forced to move elsewhere, into the world of computers. The economists were, and to a great extent still are, too tied up in their traditions to see the importance of what Ben had to say. Yet it was that move to computers that really allowed Ben to be born into this world as something we could see for ourselves, as Benoit produced the first real images of the 'Mandelbrot Set' using calculations that could never have been done by hand. Ben's message continues to be discovered in new places. Only recently has the world of theology begun to take much notice of him, but still he is misunderstood by many.
And in the tradition of all good (or not so good) children's talks in Church, that's a little bit like Jesus isn't it? It's like what now? Well, Ben is more than just an idea and more than just the iterations of that idea. Like Jesus, you can't have one side without the other. Like Jesus, Ben has always had to deal with the context in which he is working, and his value in the context is nothing without his underlying message. Like Ben, Jesus was understood by very few to begin with, but over the years the Church has spread to almost every part of the globe.
Let's be clear, Ben is not the source of salvation for humanity, but like the Christian message, Ben has been often misunderstood, yet equally helpful wherever his message has been understood. I note as I look at this story that Ben continues to be just as mobile now as he was when he was young, because he only packs as much as he needs for the journey; a simple equation - the right one for the right context.
That's one of the fundamental things about fractals; they are, as it were, big ideas travelling light. God is the biggest idea and Jesus is that idea travelling light, iterated into human form. Yet, contrary to how Jesus instructed his disciples, over the centuries the Church seems to have gained and carried with it a lot of baggage. This, I think, is the key story that The Church needs to learn from fractals.
You can read more about my theological journey into fractals here;
