The 4-bit faith of a Christian geek
Inspired by *Larry Wall's awesome explanation (Question 7) of the basis of his Christian faith, I began wondering about how to put my own into words. Being a technologist/geek, Larry's explanation had great appeal. I will attempt to extrapolate and incorporate his 2-qubit metaphor into my own 4-bit nybble.
* Larry Wall - the creator and spirit behind the **Perl programming language
** Perl - Practical Extraction and Reporting Language, Partially Eclectic Rubbish Lister, a.k.a. "duct tape" of the Internet
I like Larry's distilling of one's faith in God into two items (taken from the book of Hebrews):
1) God exists, and
2) God is good to people who really look for Him.
As Larry states, this is so simple that a child can understand, and so deep that a philosopher can't. He goes onto describe these two bits of information as quantum bits (qubits). I'll not delve into the quantum, but stay in the binary.
The belief that God exists is the foremost necessity in Christianity (and Judaism), thus the MSB or Most Significant Bit. In binary, this can be represented as:
10
The second item, God is good to those who seek Him, is the second most element of faith since it covers the plan of salvation God has made (Christ died for us as a way for us to reach God, etc.). In binary, this is:
11
This is equivalent to the decimal value 3. Trinity anyone? ***(God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit?) Three days from death until resurrection?
*** If the trinity were expressed as a binary value, we get 111. This is the decimal 7 - a number thought to be one of perfection. 7 churches of Asia, etc.
Now that the basis of faith is laid, what then shall we do? How to put that faith into action? For that I refer to the two commandments expressed by Jesus in Matthew chapter 22.
3) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
4) Love your neighbor as yourself.
He says that "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
From these two simple commandments come many implications, most of which are expounded in the rest of the New Testament and early church writings.
Now, to keep the first two elements of faith as the most significant, we have to shift them left by two bits. That leaves us with the binary:
1100
This is the number 12, another significant number: 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples, 12 gates of heaven, thought of as the number of completeness...
When we flip the two faith-in-action bits on, we get:
1111
This is the number 15. In hebrew, numbers are written by the alphabet (e.g. 1 is the hebrew letter "alef", 2 is the "bet", etc..) If the number 15 were written in hebrew as 10+5, it would be Yod-Heh, which is a name of God, something that the Hebrews did not write lightly, so much so that they write 15 as 9+6, Tet-Vav.
Thus, my faith in God, described by a 4-bit value which turns out to be a name of God Himself... Maybe He is a programmer after all!
Told you I was a Christian and a Geek :)
* Larry Wall - the creator and spirit behind the **Perl programming language
** Perl - Practical Extraction and Reporting Language, Partially Eclectic Rubbish Lister, a.k.a. "duct tape" of the Internet
I like Larry's distilling of one's faith in God into two items (taken from the book of Hebrews):
1) God exists, and
2) God is good to people who really look for Him.
As Larry states, this is so simple that a child can understand, and so deep that a philosopher can't. He goes onto describe these two bits of information as quantum bits (qubits). I'll not delve into the quantum, but stay in the binary.
The belief that God exists is the foremost necessity in Christianity (and Judaism), thus the MSB or Most Significant Bit. In binary, this can be represented as:
10
The second item, God is good to those who seek Him, is the second most element of faith since it covers the plan of salvation God has made (Christ died for us as a way for us to reach God, etc.). In binary, this is:
11
This is equivalent to the decimal value 3. Trinity anyone? ***(God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit?) Three days from death until resurrection?
*** If the trinity were expressed as a binary value, we get 111. This is the decimal 7 - a number thought to be one of perfection. 7 churches of Asia, etc.
Now that the basis of faith is laid, what then shall we do? How to put that faith into action? For that I refer to the two commandments expressed by Jesus in Matthew chapter 22.
3) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
4) Love your neighbor as yourself.
He says that "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
From these two simple commandments come many implications, most of which are expounded in the rest of the New Testament and early church writings.
Now, to keep the first two elements of faith as the most significant, we have to shift them left by two bits. That leaves us with the binary:
1100
This is the number 12, another significant number: 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples, 12 gates of heaven, thought of as the number of completeness...
When we flip the two faith-in-action bits on, we get:
1111
This is the number 15. In hebrew, numbers are written by the alphabet (e.g. 1 is the hebrew letter "alef", 2 is the "bet", etc..) If the number 15 were written in hebrew as 10+5, it would be Yod-Heh, which is a name of God, something that the Hebrews did not write lightly, so much so that they write 15 as 9+6, Tet-Vav.
Thus, my faith in God, described by a 4-bit value which turns out to be a name of God Himself... Maybe He is a programmer after all!
Told you I was a Christian and a Geek :)