Each of Us Is A Unique Image Of God
By Deacon Alex
We Christians believe that our God is the Creator of the known universe whose grandeur is captured by sophisticated telescopes sent into the outer space. While cosmologists are debating whether the known universe is infinite or not, we insist that, the Grand Designer and Creator of this known universe must be infinite. However, have you ever been amazed by the fact that humanity is able to handle the idea of infinity? Ignorance of the concept of infinity led to heresies against the Blessed Trinity that the Church refuted in the fourth century. Interested readers may visit this webpage to understand more.
- Since we were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) and God is infinite, so are we! Why? From the webpage mentioned above, we see that by removing members / attributes / characteristics from an infinite being, the resulting entity is still infinite.
- God is an awesome mystery. So are we! If somebody boasts that he is able to read you like a book, he has not finished reading you yet because if you were a book, there would be infinite number of pages to read!
- We should respect even the least of Jesus’ brethren (Matthew 25:40) because no matter how poor, miserable, ignorant, irritating, cunning, unlovable and wicked a person is, he is an infinite mystery, an image of God like us. Obviously, some good things are missing in them. So are we! If we possess charismas given by God, he does too! Theirs are probably different from ours. That is why each one of us is a UNIQUE but INCOMPLETE image of God.
How can we work together? In previous generations, people believed in the advantages of elitism. Let the professional be leaders to do the task! This was true even in the Church. The clergy knew best. They were shepherds and we laity should obey and follow. Six decades ago, St. Pope John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council to modernize the Catholic Church. To paraphrase, he says, “Let’s open the window to allow the Holy Spirit in to renew us.” More than two thousand bishops and theologians came together to deliberate. Through these elites, we heard the voice of the Holy Spirit. Six decades later, Pope Francis calls upon the whole Church to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit from the grass-root as well. We need to hear what the Holy Spirit tells us through the laity because they are the People of God! The Church enters the Age of Synodality!
It is a tiny but crucial step forward and agrees with the teachings of St. Paul. When he taught against sexual immorality, he says, “Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you…?” (1 Corinthians 6:18-19a, 2nd Reading, Second Ordinary Sunday, Year B) Therefore, not just the elites, the bishops and theologians are temples of the Holy Spirit. All of us are! If the Holy Spirit spoke through the bishops and theologians six decades ago, what prevents the Holy Spirit from speaking through us today? St. Paul continues to teach his famous theology of the Mystical Body of Christ and affirms that each one of us receives unique charism, meaning spiritual gifts/talents from God to build up the Church. “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone” (12:4-6). Lastly, St. Paul exhorts us to be humble in this manner, “Not to think of himself more highly than one ought to think, but to think soberly, each according to the measure of faith that God has apportioned” (Romans 12:3).
Beloved brethren! Be humble. Never think too highly of yourselves. Respect the charismas of the others. Recognize and acknowledge the diversity of charismas among our partners, co-workers and parishioners. Let us work together for the good of all, especially the needy. May we enrich the life of each other through Synodality in the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Picture Credit: medium.com
*** For the braver souls ***
To begin with, we will be surprised by the conclusions we draw from reasoning with infinities because they are counter-intuitive. Let us begin with the simplest and most familiar infinity, the collection or set of positive integers.
What is missing in E? There is no positive odd integers in E. We may think of the set of positive odd integers as the difference of removing all positive even integers from positive integers. Let us call this operation Remove_Even() and the resulting set O.
In theological jargon, the Blessed Trinity is a mystery. It is beyond our intelligence to fathom and it can be counter-intuitive! Hopefully those warm-up exercises above may equip us to understand why the heresies in the fourth century are wrong. Those heresies deny that the Christian God is a Trinity.
Arianism was another heresy that denies Trinity. It made use of the time-dimension to prove that the Son is not God. They argued as follow:
Consider the operation of collecting the first element of all these sets of fractions to build a new set. What is it? It is the set of fractions between zero and one. There are infinite number of fractions between zero and one. Similarly, there are infinite number of fractions between one and two etc. Together, they form the set of positive rational numbers. Infinity is truly mindboggling!
Using our imagination, we can create many such simple infinities in our heads, each with a different property at the pleasure of our whims, such as the set of negative integers, of multiples of thirty one, square numbers and of prime numbers etc. Each of these sets is infinite and different from the rest! All these infinities belong to
There are infinite number of positive integers. Allow me to show you why. Let us call the operation of adding one to a positive integer plus_one() and write it in mathematical form. Given a positive integer, say x, we have:
plus_one(x) = x + 1; which is also a positive integer.
There is no end to this addition process. Therefore, we have proven that:
Obviously, E and O have the same size. But can we say that E is smaller than P? Sorry, mathematicians say NO because by the rule of “one-one-correspondence”, if you take a member in P, I will also be able to take a member in E to cancel you out, without end. Therefore, P is NOT bigger than E. This is a mathematical truth though it sounds counter intuitive. We can only accept this truth and get used to it!
Now consider the set of positive integers we have created. Let us call it P.
P = [1, 2, 3, …]
For each member in P, we may create a new object by multiplying it by two and put it into a new collection. Let’s call this operation Double().
Double(P) = [2, 4, 6, …]
In doing so, we have created a new set of even integers. Let us call it E.
E = [2, 4, 6, …]
Obviously, there are infinite members in E because they come from the infinite members in P! Similarly, we may Triple(P), Quintuple(P) and Septuple(P) etc. to create new sets of integers and each such set has infinite members, though each member is separated further and further apart!
Perhaps you have not noticed. We have proven that
Remove_Even(P) = [1, 3, 5, …] = O
In other words, the set of odd positive integers is the subtraction of even integers from the set of positive integers. Put it in another way, the P is the sum of O and E, i.e.
O = P – E; E = P – O; P = O + E
We have proven that
In 1970’s, the Jehovah Witnesses presented a mathematical argument. They argued that 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 is obviously wrong. Only adding three fractions can yield a one such as ⅓ + ⅓ + ⅓ = 1. But God cannot be a fraction because “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4). This proves that God is not a Trinity!
The Jehovah Witnesses were wrong because the Christian God is infinite and we have proven that one infinity + one infinity + one infinity = ONE infinity! As of this writing, I am not sure whether they have given up this naïve argument!
Given that the eternal Father begot the Son there must be a period of time in which the Son did not exist. In other words, the Son is not eternal and therefore the Son is not God. Without the Son, God is not a Trinity!
Alas! Eternity is an infinite entity. As we have proven above, even if you remove a portion of an infinity, it is still an infinity! The eternal Father begot the eternal Son!
What about the last arithmetical operation, viz. division on positive integers?
Let us consider the trivial case of division by one. It yields an infinite set identical with P itself.
Let us consider the next positive integer 2. It yields an infinite set of halves and positive integers.
Let us consider the next positive integer 3. It yields an infinite set of thirds and positive integers etc.
All these sets of fractions have infinite members like P because we make them from P!
From result 3) above, namely that adding infinite number of infinite sets will produce another infinite set; with all the sets of halves, thirds, fourth’s and fifth’s etc. together, we have created the set of positive fractions, or positive rational numbers in mathematical jargon.
God is bigger than all these infinities we can handle! Amen!
God bless!
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