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

Why We Shouldn’t Throw Away Fairy Tales

One of the things I most look forward to as a father will be the opportunity to read stories to my son. Morgan and I have already started the habit of rocking him to sleep while reading books and I am excited for when he’s old enough to really engage with the stories.

For some reason, there’s something about stories that resonates so much with me and maybe that’s the case for you as well. I’m not ashamed to say I’m the type of guy who gets teary-eyed at the end of movies like Up, Wreck-It Ralph, and Toy Story 3. How can you not shed a tear when Carl gives Russell the Ellie badge, when Ralph is sacrificing himself into Diet Coke Mountain, or when Woody, Buzz, Jessie and their friends are all about to be melted in the incinerator and they are locked arm-in-arm facing it together?

These stories don’t have to be animated films though to create these deep feelings. Maybe war films like Saving Private Ryan conjure up similar emotions as you witness their camaraderie and sacrifice. While they aren’t usually my cup of tea, romantic films like The Notebook get people welling with emotion as they see the deep love Allie and Noah share. Or maybe you were feeling emotional when half of our favorite heros from the Marvel Cinematic Universe vanished into dust before our eyes in Avengers: Infinity War. Hopefully no one needed a spoiler alert on that last one!

Maybe the stories that most resonate with you are from literature. I remember the shock when reading Harry Potter and the scenes when Dumbledore and Snape died. As with any great piece of fictional writing, these were characters I had come to know and identify with and to read of their deaths was to in some way experience that myself.

These experiences drive us go to the movies and read books. These stories seem to point to certain values or ideals that resonate with so many of us. Even when we can’t articulate into words what exactly in the story resonates with us, their impact is felt. In a way, these fictional stories, although they are not necessarily true historically, abstract out themes and concepts that are incredibly true to our real-life experiences as human beings.

What’s interesting is that lately there seems to have been more dialogue about Disney’s princess stories. Now I’m not going to argue that the Disney version of these older stories are the epitome of fairy tales, but I do think that they are the ones we collectively are the most familiar with.

Keira Knightley, an actress probably most commonly known for her role in the Pirates of the Caribbean, recently said on Ellen that the movies Cinderella and The Little Mermaid are banned in her house because of their depiction of women. Her comments sparked some discussion with people voicing both support and opposition to her thoughts. I don’t think she’s alone in holding these opinions.

Even a scene in Ralph Breaks the Internet, featuring the Disney princesses, which I will admit I found to be humorous (and still do), poked fun at the past princess stories that Disney had created and as stated in news headlines “spoofed the Disney Princess Industrial Complex” and was a “moment that mattered.” A scene like this would not have happened if Disney did not realize this was a widely shared sentiment.

As funny and creative as that scene is, the question remains… Is what this scene portrays about these older stories true? These movies have been mostly acclaimed since they were released. The question is then what changed recently? Are we better people today that we can look back on these stories and see them for what they really are? Or do we have a different and maybe inaccurate perspective on what these stories were really meant to convey?

Take Sleeping Beauty for instance. This is a story that could very easily be construed as “a woman is in trouble and needs a big strong man to save her.” There is the obvious plot line of being willing to fight for true love, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing to teach. However, I think Sleeping Beauty contains a strong lesson on parenting.

Aurora’s (Sleeping Beauty) parents, did not invite Maleficent to Sleeping Beauty’s christening. In essence, her parents were unwilling to allow anything that could be potentially dangerous into her life, which I think we all know, whether or not we want to admit it, is impossible to do.

They were then confronted by Maleficent and issued a curse that on her 16th birthday she would die from pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel. Her parents then decided that in order to protect their daughter, they would burn every spinning wheel in the kingdom and send her away to live with the three fairies. They decided to keep her secluded from all spinning wheels, which I think is a metaphor for all potential things that they believed could cause her harm. Interestingly though, they couldn’t keep her from pricking her finger on the spinning wheel as Maleficent still found her way to Aurora.

There is so much more to this story that could be extracted. We could learn from the isolation of Maleficent contrasted with the family and community of all the other characters. Or we could compare Prince Phillip’s courage to the fear of Aurora’s father. Or how about the importance of strong female supporting characters (which is present in a lot of these fairy tales) around Aurora and the importance that mentorship has in a young person’s life.

In Beauty and the Beast, Belle is responsible for redeeming the Beast and is by far the most admirable of all the characters. Gaston, represents the epitome of the self-aggrandizing jerk that I hope we all agree no man should be emulating. Ariel, Pocahontas, and Mulan all represent incredibly strong and courageous women in their stories. Cinderella is a great demonstration of good things coming to those who are diligent with their responsibilities and that is a great lesson for men and women of all ages.

Disney adapted these fairy tales that had been passed down for several centuries across cultures. There are reasons these stories were shared for so long and that Disney was willing to adapt them into films. You can compare it to evolution and survival of the fittest. These stories that have been handed down to us have been maintained because they speak to some of the deepest virtues and values that we have come to embrace as a culture better than other stories that have been told. Yes, they may be imperfect stories, and worthy of critique, but I think we need to be careful about thinking we are so different or (even worse) better, than our ancestors and that they cannot through their stories speak into our lives.

For the same reason that not every movie and story made today will be remembered 100 years from now, not all stories of old have been passed down by our ancestors to us. There’s a reason Lion King will be remembered and not The Emoji Movie or why books like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter will last instead of The Twilight series.
I’m not saying we can’t joke about these movies. I just think we need to carefully watch what we joke about, because it very easily and quickly be adopted as “truth.”

It feels like there has been a growing disdain or casual indifference to most of what we inherit. It’s almost like we’ve become so preoccupied with the mistakes of our ancestors that we are now in the process of trying to clean the slate of their influences in our lives, which often manifests as the throwing away of everything that they created, valued, and passed down to us, including their stories. We view these older stories as antiquated, irrelevant, or (even worse) oppressive in the themes they portray.

However, I think there is a real danger in this interpretation of these stories and as a result the dismissing of them. Reducing each of these stories down to the plot line of “a woman is in trouble and needs a big strong man to save her” or fill in the blanks “_ is oppressed and needs the oppressor __ to save them” is stripping these stories of their real value and intended message.

I’m not saying there’s never been oppression, nor am I saying that these stories are perfect in the stories that they tell. However, I think we will be giving up on some of the best stories we have to learn from and discrediting the significance of what our ancestors learned if we just throw them away. I believe that the degree to which we decide to give critical thought to the themes of these stories is the degree to which we will draw benefit from them. Yes, we can still criticize these stories, but to discard them could be like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And if that’s the precedence we set, why should we expect our descendants to want to hear any of the stories we tell?

C.S. Lewis once said, “But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.“

I hope we can continue to give these stories a chance to teach us and consider why they have been deemed valuable for so long. I think they have so much to teach not just my son, but me as well because they have been shared with so many people across time and have resonated with so many. I don’t want to be a parent, like Aurora’s father, that in an effort to shield my son from all of the potential malevolence in the world keeps him from living his life. Similarly , I think it’s much better to engage with these stories and be able to learn through the process, then to not even give them a chance.

Let’s be careful about what we decide to throw out  because our ancestors are worth listening to and we may be getting rid of the very best they were trying to share with us.