Abraham and Ramanajan

By Bobby Neal Winters

About a year ago, I taught a Bible Study on the book of Genesis. I did a survey of some of my favorite stories from that book--from any book. One night after our meeting one of the participants asked a question.  It was so honest, so simple, and I had never thought to ask.

What was Abraham’s religion?

This is not an exact restating of the question, so I will ask for forgiveness, but I think in answering it fully I will answer the original question and probably more.

The short answer: He didn’t have one.

This might be a surprise.  You might expect Judaism as an answer.  If a Rabbi or a Jew who cares disagrees with me, I would yield.  Saying who is or is not a Jew is not my business.

But until that happens, let me continue. For most of what I have to say, it won’t matter.

Abraham didn’t have a place of worship.  He didn’t have a priest he could go to.  He didn’t have a holy book.  Heck, he was going to be a central character in the Bible, the holy book of Judaism and Christianity.

It was just him and God.  God would stop by and have a talk with him every once in a while.

That sounds great, right? Just you and God.

It sounds like a lot of people I’ve met: “It’s just me and God” or, alternately, “Just me and Jesus.”

I’m open-minded enough to give these people a listen.  The power of the Holy Spirit is strong.  God will deal with each person not on my terms but on His terms.

That having been said, to claim a one on one relationship with God is not something to be done lightly.

To say what I want to say now, let me put on my hat as math teacher. There was a time when there were no math teachers.  There was a time when there were just people and the numbers. Well, the numbers and the geometric diagrams.  People just wrestled with the math and figured it out for themselves.  After a while, people wrote things down so that it could be shared at a distance and through the passage of time.  If you have to figure out that XXV times XXV is DCXXV a few times, you write it down and pass it on.

People save this sort of stuff; they recopy it when it gets a bit ragged; then they pass it on when they die.  Not that they have much choice.  You don’t get to take anything with you, not even math books. Darn it.

As time passes, the practice of mathematics arises. You don’t have to figure it out all by yourself. You don’t even have to figure it out yourself with the aid of books.  You have people who’ve struggled through it before to help you learn it yourself.

You have God’s Gift of math teachers.

Do you want to learn math yourself, with just you and the numbers?

Well, you can.  It’s been done.  There was this gentleman from India by the name of Ramanajan who taught himself math on his own.

Well, sort of.

He had some teaching from others.  He had some books.  But, by and large, he taught himself to be a mathematician from nothing.  Like so many before him, he died at an early age. Like so many before him, he died from tuberculosis. (What is it with tuberculosis and geniuses?)  

Mathematicians are still going through his notebooks more than a century after his death and getting discoveries from them.

So, yeah, you can do it on your own.

But--and I want you to pay attention to this part--you know what Ramanajan did?  Even after having done it all on his own, this transcendental genius reached out to the mathematical community.

This was much to the benefit of the mathematical community to be sure, but--the other side of the coin--had he not he would have died in obscurity without anyone ever having heard of him.

One might consider the notion that our relationship with God and God’s Creation is like our struggle with numbers and geometry. You can struggle with it on your own; you can reach out and use the ancient collected writings as your guide; you can go to the bookstore (or the library--let’s not forget the library) for help in your struggle.

Or you can seek out the help of others who’ve been through the struggle themselves, those who are part of a practice that goes back thousands of years.

There you will meet people who--I hope--teach you that two plus two is four. It’s not three, and it’s darn sure not five. It’s four.

Good luck on your journey.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.