Posted on by bak5187

6 7: Two Ways of Living in the World

“Hey Dad! Hey Dad! 6 7!”

Accompanied by a juggling hand motion, Tristan was showing off the new meme he had learned at school.

For those adults who are completely unaware of what I’m referring to, kids just say the numbers “6 7” and typically laugh to themselves.

This phrase has gone viral among kids largely because it baffles the adults around them. “What does it mean?” “Is it something inappropriate?” “Why do they think this is so funny?” “It doesn’t make any sense!”

Fortunately, coworkers had forewarned me of this new fad that their older kids had been doing. We all knew it wasn’t anything nefarious. My coworkers were just perplexed by it.

What apparently started from a rap song and became widespread via an NBA player on social media had now spread far and wide. And I naively thought it would stay to the older grades.

Our son was recently gifted a car with the number 67 on it. Immediately Tristan remarks, “Dad, look it’s 6-7!”

The temperature hits 67 degrees on the thermostat. He collects 67 rings in his new Sonic game. Football score pops up and in all cases… you guessed it… “6 7.”

Does Tristan know the origin of this? Not at all. And the same can be said for probably 90% of the kids playing around with this. For them it’s the intrigue of it. It’s playful. It’s an inside joke. It’s nonsensical. And the frustration it causes for some parents and other adults in their lives is what makes it that much more appealing to them.

It got me thinking though how coincidental it is that the two numbers in this little joke happen to be two of the most interesting, and in some ways intriguing, numbers in the Bible. 6 and 7.

The Biblical Meanings of Numbers

There are many numbers in the Bible that seem to communicate more than just their numerical value. 3, 12, and 40 are a few of them.

3, a number of divinity or completion. Jesus rose on the third day. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days. The Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Even the repetition of a word three times in ancient Hebrew and Greek languages meant something was the absolute form of the word. Consider the phrase Holy, Holy, Holy (Isaiah 6:3), which essentially means “the holiest” in our language today.

12, which refers to God’s people on earth. The 12 tribes of Israel. The 12 disciples. The 144,000 people referred to in Revelation (12 x 12 x 1,000). The 12 gates of the new Jerusalem.

And 40, a number that corresponds with trials and periods of refinement. The 40 days and nights of the flood. 40 years in the wilderness after the Exodus. Jesus’ 40 days of fasting. 40 days of Lent. 40 days from Jesus’ resurrection to his ascension.

Does ascribing symbolic or theological meaning to these numbers mean that they didn’t “literally” occur in that manner? Not at all. But I do think understanding the deeper underlying pattern of these numbers enriches how we interpret these passages.

So What About 6 and 7?

7 is used more widely. The number of days of creation. The number of trips around Jericho before the walls fell. The Sabbath day. Sabbatical years (every 7th). The year of Jubilee (after 49 years or 7 x 7). The seven feasts of Israel. And the seven churches and angels referred to in Revelation.

It can be seen as a number of divine perfection or completion. It shows up consistently throughout the Bible and its symbolism is more widely understood.

But 6… is probably most known for the number 666, the mark of the beast from Revelation. But it also makes some other interesting appearances throughout the Bible.

Goliath’s height is six cubits and a span and had a spearhead weight of 600 shekels. Nebuchadnezzar’s statue is 60 cubits high and 6 cubits wide in Babylon. Even King Solomon is referred to as receiving 666 talents of gold yearly.

The number 6 feels like it has a mystery to it that rivals today’s “6 7”. Is it just coincidental that all of these references to 6 would just occur without some connective meaning? Is it possible that there was some deeper truth God was trying to convey to us? A common thread that ties all of these references together?

There are a range of interpretations on the meaning of 666 and the number 6 more broadly. One theory posited is that the number was meant to signify the Roman Emperor Nero. The Hebrew letters also had numerical values associated with them. Add those up for the name Nero Caesar in Hebrew and you get 666. It could have been a coded way of referring to the emperor while being subjected to oppression.

But another theory that I personally find more convincing allows us to see the significance of 6 more broadly than just ascribing it to one man or empire. One that draws out the consistent pattern for all those aforementioned references.

I think the key is found in the purpose of the sixth day of Creation, when man was created and our responsibilities were given. And maybe the best way to illustrate this is by considering a circle.

Remnants and Remainders

As we approach Pi Day (3/14) in a couple of months, which just so happens to be Tristan’s birthday too, math nerds celebrate this incredible phenomenon with circles. That the constant pi (π) used to calculate the circumference from a circle’s radius is constant and yet cannot be reduced to a definable fraction.

Most people in their childhood memorized the constant pi (π) to two decimal places – 3.14. Some strived to memorize many more decimal places than that. But no one can come close to memorizing the number of decimal places computers have calculated this value to.

By the end of last year computers had measured to 314 trillion decimal places. And yet, no repeating pattern has been found that would allow us to state a definitive number. Amazing!

For routine calculations we simplify this number, trimming off the extra decimal places to make it “close enough” for our purposes.

Funny enough the circumference of a circle is pretty close to 6 times the radius (2πr). The actual length however is 6 times the radius plus some remainder or remnant that we can’t calculate exactly and almost certainly never will.

Similarly, 6 in the Bible seems to correspond with man’s own dominion and that which we can control. It is calculable, predictable, rational, and replicable.

6 times the radius may get us close to the correct answer but we would still be discarding or ignoring the remnants and remainders needed to arrive at the actual answer.

This pattern extends beyond geometry too. Throughout many cultures and eras, man’s tendency to veer towards total control comes at the cost of those remnants and remainders that aren’t easily understood or are inconvenient.

Man’s dominion can turn into domination or totalitarianism. That was the error of Nero of Rome. The error of King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. The error of Goliath and the Amalekites. And even of King Solomon during the later chapters of his reign in Israel. We don’t have to think long to come up with modern versions of this exact impulse for control.

God called us to rule over the world and subdue it. But that was all to be done within the context of God’s ultimate rule over everything. The use of 6 in Biblical storytelling seems to emphasize the absence of Day 7, the day of God’s rest or, in other words, the day the God actually establishes his reign over his created cosmos.

666 (6 repeated three times) is the manifestation of the worst of man’s pride and the authoritarian actions that result. That is something we should all be on guard for in our hearts. The dismissal of the remnant and remainder. The exclusion of God, who can also be found in the margins, in the inexplicable, the irrational, and even the playful.

So whenever I hear “6 7” it reminds me to be intentional about leaving room for those things that can’t be measured or forced by our own efforts. Love, play, rest, and even relationships with inconvenient people because God has set an example in all of these.

And first and foremost making room for a god who calls us to lean not on our own strength and understanding, but on His. Even when it doesn’t completely make sense.

And maybe a similar humility spills over into how we parent.

“6 7”

Posted on by bak5187

Voldemort and the Pharisees – Mirrors to Ourselves

The Mirror of Erised scenes in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone have always captivated me. Not only for what they reveal about Harry, but for what they reveal about us.

With mirrors we can see ourselves visually. But the Mirror of Erised, which plays an integral role in the first book of the series, shows the person their deepest desire. For Ron Weasley, he saw himself as Quidditch Captain and holding the house cup. But for Harry, he saw himself reunited with his parents who were killed when he was an infant.

It’s not too surprising that an orphaned boy would wish for a fix to these absent relationships. In contrast Ron’s deepest desires seem so trivial. But they paint a picture of the wide spectrum of human experience, pain and want. This mirror reflects back an even rawer depiction of who we truly are.

The Mirror of Erised

When Dumbledore found that Harry had discovered the mirror and was spending much time staring into it, he said, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

Quite a fitting quote from a man who the reader later finds out also suffered significant losses within his own family.

But the scene that I find most compelling surrounding this mirror is the one towards the end of the book when Dumbledore explains how Harry, and not Voldemort, was able to retrieve the Sorcerer’s Stone from it.

“Only one who wanted to find the Stone — find it, but not use it — would be able to get it, otherwise they’d just see themselves making gold or drinking Elixir of Life. But not Harry. Harry, who wanted to find the Stone to stop Voldemort from getting it — who wanted it, but not for himself — was able to get it out of the mirror.”

The Sorcerer’s Stone could provide the ability to prevent aging, via the Elixir of Life and could turn any metal to gold. The stone symbolized the human hunger for immortality and wealth. Setting aside the irrationality of how the magic works, the central premise of this story appears to be getting us to question the unchecked pursuit of wealth and power. The dangers of desiring or longing for control.

This same longing for control, the desire to master life through our own effort, shows up not only in fantasy stories but in the Bible as well.

This dynamic, while not nearly as explicit, seems to undergird much of the Gospels. Very often a stark contrast is drawn between the Pharisees and Jesus, and rightly so, for Jesus is often both directly and implicitly challenging them. Jesus levies his sharpest critiques toward the Pharisees more than any other demographic, even the Roman centurions. I think it’s for this reason that many Christians today, also tend to use the term Pharisee in a derogatory and accusatory manner.

But is it possible that by making the Pharisees out to be solely antagonists and so alien from ourselves, we rob these stories of their power? It would be like only seeing the elements of Harry in ourselves and not seeing how we also might have traces of Voldemort’s motives within ourselves, which is a scary proposition.

Similarly, the Pharisees might be the group that many Christians most closely resemble, and I don’t mean that in a condescending manner. I believe the Pharisees can serve as an excellent mirror to understanding much of ourselves.

The Pharisees lived in difficult circumstances. Under Roman occupation, the Jewish people were a shell of their former selves. It had been several centuries since the last prophet from the Old Testament, Malachi, had prophesied and it felt as though God had turned his face from them and was silent despite their suffering. They had already gone through the exile to Babylon, rebuilt the temple, but now they were hardly in control of their own destinies. It would be understandable if they felt God had forsaken them. Outwardly it certainly appeared that way.

Instead of giving up, they doubled down on trying to live in perfect obedience to God’s laws, seemingly in hope that their righteousness would lead to God’s favor. That favor, one could imagine, would look very different than the circumstances they found themselves within.

In much the same way, we can dwell on our own failings and think that is the cause of God’s seeming disfavor. But this type of thinking often spirals into treating God like a vending machine who will give us what we want if we simply put the figurative quarter in by acting rightly. That if we get our house in order, our circumstances would be guaranteed to improve.

Dumbledore warned that people dwell on these deepest desires and forget to live. In many ways, the Pharisees’ desire for better circumstances by influencing God’s hand via their “perfect” behavior, missed the point altogether.

Life, wealth, autonomy, and the realization of dreams in and of themselves are not bad things. They are good things but cannot be the ultimate thing.

As Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” He is addressing our anxieties, worries, and stress about worldly things. Jesus too found himself living under Roman oppression, and was ultimately killed by it. And yet, he said to aim higher, seek God’s kingdom, not in a bartering way to obtain his gifts, but out of selflessness and then, and only then, can you truly live, often despite the outward appearance of life’s circumstances.

If you’re like me, I like to exhaust the limits of my abilities before relinquishing control. It’s hard for me to do that. And I often find myself trying to appease God to be deserving of his favor. But that’s more like the way of the Pharisees, and dare I say Voldemort, still trying to exert control albeit in a more covert way.

No amount of time spent in front of that mirror would have ever brought Harry’s parents back. The mirror can reflect our deepest longings, which are often a void left from our deepest wounds and scars. And we can spend much of our lives dwelling on those, to no avail, and missing the point of life in the process.

Jesus offered a different way. He said suffering and pain was inevitable. But he invited all of us into relationship with him and to have life abundantly. That abundance isn’t often found in money, extended lifetimes, or even necessarily the righting of past wrongs. I would say it’s not even primarily about living forever in heaven, as some Christians often reduce it to.

No, it’s something fuller. Something richer. At its core, that abundance is an abundance of relationships, something that is made starkly evident in the Harry Potter books, and I think is quite evident in the Gospels.

Perhaps real life begins when we step away from the mirror and our attempts to control how our deepest longings will manifest themselves and instead seek first relationship with God and with one another.