Fear Math

I have been helping out with my sons’ math homework here. It is fun to relive my glory days in math and engineering classes. I must say that some of these new learning methods seem odd and I am tempted to just have them use my memorized, tried and true formulas (the area of the triangle is 1/2 base* height already!) instead of graphing things and counting graph paper squares.

I have also been contemplating my fears on this trip. There are many new ones that crop up in places like this. I have reviewed my attempts and methods to manage my fear in the past - some were just laughable, like the “NO FEAR” that I scribbled in big letters on the inside of my baseball glove.

Getting back to the math connection, I often counsel people about risk to benefit ratios when discussing surgical operations and I think my mind just works in this mathematical numerator / denominator sort of way. I have been mulling a new equation and the best answer to this multiple choice question:

a) Fear / Love > 1

b) Fear / Love = 1

c) Fear / Love < 1

d) Fear / Love = 0

I guess there are various examples where each choice can be true. Choice A - when your fear of rejection is greater than love, you decide not to ask the girl out or you chicken out of telling someone the truth when they need to hear it. Choice B - a state of paralysis when you just keep thinking about demonstrating love but that desire is not greater than the fear or risk, and so action is not taken. Choice C -  when love overcomes fear and you step out, you rescue the person from the burning building or you help the help the person who you fear might take advantage of you.

Just yesterday I asked my son what Psalm 57:10 means when it says “your steadfast love is great to the heavens” and he said - “it means God’s love is infinite.” Hey, maybe my math teaching is going okay.

When love (the denominator) approaches infinity, Choice D is true. 

This was actually my original thought of a fear / love equation. I have made it through my time in this less than “safe” part of the world with this one verse in my heart from a great passage, 1 John 4:

“there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…” 

I keep telling myself the powerful truth in Choice D.  Fear / God's Love = 0.

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Say, in less abstract math - this sign sits right outside of our duplex. Marked by a prior Indiana team, as the crow flies, Indianapolis is 8980 km away. While our route is not exactly a straight line, that is a  [8980 / 1.61 (km/mile) = 5580 miles] journey that we’ll embark on later this week!

And, for more applied math, please check out this link, published on the BBC News website this morning. I'll look forward to sharing my up close look and perspective on this reality with anyone who is interested.

Five billion people 'have no access to safe surgery'

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32452249