Have you ever met that person who seemed to know everything? And by “seemed to know everything” I mean, they acted like a know-it-all? And you wanted to harm them regularly and endlessly?
Perhaps you see them coming and you roll your eyes as you groan quietly because you know what is coming. They will engage you in a conversation, and no matter what you say, they will claim to know more, or claim that you are incorrect, or both, and proceed to dazzle you with information that not only is suspect, but in many cases you are 100% certain is actually incorrect.
Ya. You know exactly who I’m talking about. You probably immediately had someone come to mind the moment you began reading that description.
It is entirely possible that this describes me as a younger person. Or now. Probably both. But much more so when I was young.
You can’t prove otherwise. Umm…
I remember one time when I was pretty young, I think 8 or 9, I was over at my grandparents house while my parents were away doing something that didn’t involve me. And I, as all children, made sure I had all my prized possessions with me to ensure my time there was not full of the boring.
One item in particular that I had with me was a car magazine. I didn’t read a ton of books at that point, but I read car magazines in the same manner as an alcoholic consumes, well, you know. They were my favorite things. Cars, and anything that talked about cars.
The issue I had was Car and Driver’s “Complete Automotive Lineup” edition. What that means is, it contained in it all the cars offered by all the car companies relevant to America, with brief outlines of what they were and a statistics portion detailing all the goodies you want to know.
As far as I was concerned it was, in fact, the greatest thing ever printed on paper. Or anything else for that matter. I wasn’t restricted to just learning about a couple cars at a time, I could learn about all the cars being sold that year.
It was glorious.
I read that magazine non-stop. I poored through it. Breathed it in. I memorized every page. Every car, every contour, every specification. I could tell you everything about every car in that magazine.
As I sat at grandma’s table reading through the magazine, again, grandpa came home from work and saw me flipping through it. He came over and looked at one particular page containing a Cadillac Eldorado and said, “Wow, those Coupe Deville’s sure are nice.”
I said, “No grandpa, that is an Eldorado.”
He said, “No, I’m pretty sure that’s a Coupe Deville.”
I said, “It’s an Eldorado. I know it is.”
He said, “I’m sorry, I’m quite positive that it is a Coupe Deville.”
Believe it or not, this went on till we were both angry and he finally just walked away.
But I didn’t care. I knew I was correct. I knew everything in this magazine. To prove it to myself I looked back at the magazine and scanned down to the car and read it’s name.
Cadillac Coupe Deville.
I was confused. How could it be a Coupe Deville? I had memorized everything here. I knew what a Coupe Deville looked like and what an Eldorado looked like. How could I have gotten this wrong?
Of course, it had never occurred to me during that entire argument to look at the actual name of the vehicle. I was so self assured of my knowledge it had never crossed my mind to double check.
I thought I knew.
While I am sure none of you have ever taken it that far, I’m sure you have experienced that moment of befuddlement when you realized something you were so sure of wasn’t what you thought at all. It happens to everyone eventually. Over time we begin to realize that we really don’t know all that much at all. As we mature, we accept that it’s best to double and triple check our facts before we stick our heads too far into the noose.
When it comes to the fact in life, and often even of life, we know that there isn’t too much that we can truly know for certain. At least, not in the details.
But I want to share something that I believe you can know without even a hint of doubt. It is illustrated quite well in the lesson of the seed.
However, to tell that story, I have to tell you a different one first.
How many of you have ever heard of “physics”? Yes, yes. I’m kidding. Of course you all know what that is.
There is a pretty knew theory in physics called The Amplituhedron Theory. I’m not going to bore you with all the details. You can look it up and read all about it. It is changing the way physicists look at the universe in a number of fundamental ways. One of those ways is how we view time and space.
If you are a physics geek I both applaud you and then ask your patience with me and forgiveness as I proceed to butcher the idea here.
Up until now, physics has maintained that time and space are fundamental components of reality. However, with the discovery of a new geometric math model for doing calculations, they are beginning to believe that time and space are NOT fundamental components of reality. They are not the CAUSE of anything. They are more akin to an EFFECT. They are dependent upon other factors. And depending upon those factors, may not be what we think they are.
This is a big deal. Time isn’t what we think it is.
The calculations are so good, they have been able to simplify their math from multiple pages full of equations down to a single sentence.
And they work. More importantly, they work better.
This is huge in the world of physics.
What does this have to do with the seed? Let me try to pull this together for you.
Have you ever taken a small seed, let’s say an apple seed, and really thought about what it is? Inside that seed contains everything needed to grow an entire tree full of seed containing apples. The entire blueprint for that tree is inside that seed. All you need is water and dirt. The tree is just waiting to come out. All of it’s energy and potential is all there inside that tiny seed.
For those of you who are Bible readers, you have probably read the verse about “having the faith of a mustard seed, and you could make the mountains jump into the ocean.” If you haven’t read the Bible, there is a verse that says this. Now, you don’t have to believe in the Bible to get the point I’m working toward. But if you do, maybe this will be fun. Or you will disagree. In which case, I’m sure I’m right always about everything and shut up. (I think we covered my know-it-all tendencies earlier. Please forgive me.)
Normally this verse gets interpreted with the idea that all you need is faith the size of the a mustard seed (or apple seed?) and you could do crazy impossible things. But I would like to suggest that is not what Jesus meant. If you are a Greek scholar, you will note that there is nothing in the original text that implies size. Neither does the English. We just assume so because we assume we understand the greater context.
Let’s go back to time. Even though physics is just now beginning to suggest that time isn’t what we think it is, the ancient spiritual disciplines have been saying that for millennia. That time isn’t what we think it is. That time is an illusion and that the reality is something else. Now, we can argue if they are really meaning the same thing. It isn’t my point.
The entire life of that tree is written inside that seed. It “knows” what it is. The Greek word for “faith” also implies “knowing”. That seed “knows” what it is. From a certain temporal, or perhaps extra-temporal, perspective (one could argue that Jesus speaking as God would have this perspective, should you believe in Jesus),one would know that the seed does NOT know that it is going to become a tree.
The seed “knows” that it already is the tree.
There is no “doubt” in that seed. The period of growth is irrelevant. The seed IS the tree. And, if you prescribe to the idea that all time is actually one moment, then it become literally true. But I’m not pushing that one way or the other. It’s again, not the point.
Whether you believe in a creator and design or whether you believe in reactive evolution, humans are so much more than we see ourselves as. You are so much more than you see yourself as. You can be so much more. The potential of what a human is capable of is profound and mind boggling. The things that science is learning every day about the capability and potential of the human being is breathtaking in it’s wondrousness.
But the truth isn’t in knowing what you could become. That is not the lesson of the seed.
We need to know that we already are.
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