Wait until high school to worry about imaginary numbers
It was a beautiful, sunny day on the playground and little Billy was excited. Today had been a good day. His class was learning how to add numbers. Billy was thrilled to finally begin to understand those symbols at the grocery store and count his Legos. He felt very grown-up, indeed.
But when Billy returned back to the classroom from recess, his countenance had changed. He was quiet, even sullen as class resumed. As the teacher started explaining how to add three numbers together, he finally blurted out “I don’t trust anything you’re telling me. This math stuff is just a bunch of hogwash!”
The teacher politely asked Billy if he had a question about what she was teaching. “I sure do— lots of them! Were you just never planning on telling us these numbers that look so nice could turn evil and be negative? What kind of nonsense is that!” The teacher was taken aback and started to stammer out an answer, but before she got four words in, Billy steamrolled ahead with his tirade:
“And then I heard you can take these numbers you’ve been showing us and then just carve them up into fractions and decimals? And then you shrink some of them down and make them exponents? And then you math people even come up with imaginary numbers and start using them with your real numbers and you think that’s just okay? And then you start throwing letters in there and pretending they’re numbers, too— but secret numbers no one else is allowed to know? And where did a lot of this math come from? A guy named Archimedes. And he was a slave-owner who designed weapons for a tyrannical empire? How long were you going to keep that a secret, huh? Because if that’s what math is, I’m not interested!”
If you were the teacher, how would you handle that situation?
Your first instinct might be to explain the issues he brought up. After all, even if it’s skewed and missing context, most of what he’s said is technically true. And if he were a high school or college student looking to understand these concepts, that would be the right approach. But little Billy is not intellectually prepared to understand any of that.
May I suggest that the first step is to recognize that Billy’s concerns are not “naturally occurring” concerns. It’s obvious that he has been approached by someone with the express intent of sowing seeds of distrust for his teacher and derailing his learning. The first step is to confront that fact, and then when he is aware of his deception and in the right attitude to learn, you can give him the beginnings of an answer if he still needs them.
We see that pattern in scripture from the Lord Himself. Adam and Eve had a “little Billy” moment after they partook of the fruit in the Garden. God found them hiding. I wonder if there was perhaps a hurt in Adam’s explanation: “I beheld that I was naked, and I hid myself.” As if to say, “I thought I knew what was going on. I trusted You. But now I come to find out I’ve been naked this whole time? Why didn’t You tell me?”
That’s not a naturally occurring concern, and the Lord calls Adam’s attention to it by asking Adam a question to which God already knew the answer: “Who told thee thou wast naked?” In other words, the Lord invites Adam to consider the source of that concern. “Did it come from the Lord or one of My true messengers? No? Was it from someone who encouraged you obey to Me? Or to break My commandments? That should tell you, Adam, how you ought to treat that information you’ve received.” It was only after addressing that evil source and dismissing him that the Lord addressed the concern Satan raised— nakedness— by clothing Adam and Eve in coats of skins.
Fast forward several thousand years, and the now-embodied Jehovah is standing before Pilate. Pilate asks Him, “Art thou the King of the Jews?” From the standpoint of Rome, Jesus has done nothing political, nothing revolutionary— in fact, every time He has touched on the occupation of Rome, His words have been rather conciliatory. Pilate’s question was not a naturally occurring question either. Like Adam and Eve, Pilate had been manipulated by a deceptive force— Jewish leaders planting the concern of a revolutionary threat. Before He answers, Jesus invites Pilate to consider the source of that concern. “Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?” Pilate knew the answer: “He knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.” Only then did the Lord address Pilate’s concern, saying, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
Following the example our Lord set for us, when we or those we minister to encounter concerns about the Gospel or Church history, our first task is not to answer the concern, but to consider the source.
You might wonder, “What does it matter the source of information as long as the information is factually true? Are you saying we should only consider one side of a story?” No, but the source does matter when determining how to contextualize, believe, and act on the raised concern. As Pres. Packer famously said, “Some things that are true are not very useful.” This is why Pres. Nelson warned us: “In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils… There is no end to the adversary’s deceptions. Please be prepared. Never take [spiritual] counsel from those who do not believe.”
Evil-disposed critics of the Restored Gospel distort facts, intentionally strip context, and set absurd “all or nothing” standards just like happened in the example of little Billy. It’s funny to imagine a 6-year-old wringing his hands over the complexities of imaginary numbers or morally struggling to separate Archimedes’s discoveries from his cultural context. Yet when critics pull the same tricks with the complexities of polygamy or the moral struggle to separate some early Church leaders’ inspired teachings from their racial cultural context. Taking such malevolent spiritual counsel is as fruitful for us in our early stage in our eternal journey as obsessing and fretting over exponents and imaginary numbers is for little Billy in his elemtntary math class.
There is wisdom in the “shelf” metaphor. All Gospel concerns have answers. But we may need to wait until spiritual calculus class to understand them. Demanding answers right now is “looking beyond the mark—” it’s “both arrogant and unproductive.” Instead, we can rightly acknowledge them and admit “I know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.” And we wait on the Lord and our own understanding to grow.
Once we or those we minister to are ready to address that question humbly and with real intent, the “eye of our understanding will be opened.” We may not find the answer in this life, but we can find many possible answers— enough to satisfy us that there is space for an answer to that concern that once seemed irreconcilable with faith.
