God's Math

Being a homeschooling parent, I attempt to teach my children the importance of proper arithmatic. 1 + 1 = 2, and so forth. There is a particular answer to a particular problem, that is the beauty of math.

Here is where God's sense of humor comes in. He made the whole organized world, including mathematics which can be understood by men. And then he goes and throws the whole system out. Or as least shows us that there is some greater power than the study of numbers that add up in the way we are used to.

Here's an example. In a normal math story problem you may have an equation like this:

There were 5 loafs of bread and 2 fish and 5000 hungry men. Assuming each loaf feeds 10 men and each fish feeds 10 men (generous assumptions) how many men go hungry?
Answer : 4930 men go hungry

But God's math changes the entire story! His story doesn't end with hungry men, it ends with baskets of bread left over. That is not mathematically possible. It says every man ate until he was satisfied. That means (if you leave out women and children) each man ate 1/2500 of a fish and 1/1000 of a loaf of bread, in fact, less than that because baskets were left over. This is becoming a complex story problem. I'm not sure I can figure out the answer, I think the answer is : 0 hungry men with a remainder of 12. How is that possible?

That's God kind of math. He takes a problem about division and turns it into a multiplication story! I was encouraged today to remember God's math and factor that into my decision making process.



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