It seems impossible at times—to be anything other than a
statistic. The world is working on that, you know? making you a statistic, that
is. It is one of our most ambitious goals—to conquer our biochemical makeup
down to every last atom, to manipulate it, to completely pars the human
existence and experience—to make ourselves nothing while somehow claiming to be
everything, even the creators of meaning.
We take “beautiful pictures,” collections of various
combinations of red green and blue (RGB) displayed on our screens. But when we
look at them do we see more than pixels? We interpret those images based on a
context in our memories, things we have learned like the smell of an ocean
breeze, the piercing cold frost in winter, and the feeling of a warm kiss. But
science says even that can all be reduced to numbers. All of your memories,
emotions, chemical combinations, decision making algorithms, according to a
scientistic world view, can be laid out as numbers—reducing us all to data. But
data by itself is meaningless. Having more numbers does not help the situation.
Coding the RGB pixels on your screen to the data stored in your memory and
trying to make meaning is ultimately as futile as the attempt to make five,
six, and seven achieve meaning without a context. Context cannot arise from a
finite thing; it is the finite that is evaluated against the eternal. In other
words, if we are finite, then any meaning we achieve can only be in relation to
a thing outside of us, and that thing must itself be infinite, not just
infinite but eternal, the I Am.
Again, if we can be reduced to numbers then our only hope
for meaning is outside of us; yet hope itself—meaningless. But if we cannot be
reduced to numbers, if there is something more within us, eternity, then we
begin to take on the likeness of God. In His likeness we love. In the image of
Him we create. And by His being we have meaning.
It is not uncommon for us all to live in contradiction.
As Chesterton observed, we must all embrace both the known and the
mysterious to keep our sanity, but the contradiction this world is living does
not bring sanity. It brings sickness. It is a great contradiction; for if even
the reflection of the eternal is in us, then we are not just numbers. If we
exist there is a story, and that story is set in a context, and that context,
the great and ultimate context, is not and cannot be just another set of data.
John 18:38 "What is truth?" retorted Pilate.
With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, "I find
no basis for a charge against him.
John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the
truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This
is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"
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