On orthogonality.

Fun fact: there’s a human protein called noggin. If you have too much of it during embryonic development, you develop a huge head.

Medical school feels like racing Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen. Every day I wake up and there’s so many things I can do in the name of progress: research, teaching, studying, cooking, shadowing, networking, etc. There are endless resources I can ply to reach every possible end I could want. But at the end of the day, no matter how many ticks I’ve checked on my list, I still feel like I’m in the same place. And there’s this insidious suspicion that in order to get ahead of anyone else, I should run twice as quickly.

When I was a middle-schooler (read: cringe city), my dad would take me to the World Gym a few blocks away. He would rotate through the weights and elliptical. I would play around with the treadmill settings, sometimes seeing how quickly I could run on the raspy ribbon until I remembered that I sucked at running. My favorite ploy was to jam the button to increase the speed until max, and when I just couldn’t sprint anymore, I’d grab the two side-rails and hoist myself up as the ground ground on senselessly under me. I felt like a plane taking off. In reality, I probably just looked like some dumb kid hiking up the World Gym’s utility bill.

I think the escape to the churning gyre under me right now is, like it was at the World Gym, a matter of adjusting my axis. If I continue running on the x-y plane, I’ll never run out of things to do. Only God is orthogonal to the visible realm, and as second Corinthians tells us, the unseen things are eternal.

The history of the people of God must look like (ironically) a phylogenetic tree. Since Babel, humanity has been doomed to division, whether over food or language or behavior or belief. Even the first century church needed reproof against divisions and factions. But degradation is inevitable without the constant renewing of the Spirit. Otherwise, why would Paul exhort the saints in Colossians 3:10 to put on the new man, which is being renewed? If it’s new, why would it need to be renewed? Because the only new thing is God Himself. If you join yourself with God for a thousand years, you’ll be new for a thousand years. But the second you leave God, you grow old. And entropy, that ancient leviathan, rears its head once more.

Then churches rive, each tattered segment bearing the flag of their leader, clutching their choice axiomata. And where do the members of the church, members of the one Body of Christ, go? If no one is staying one, how can one keep the oneness of the Spirit, the uniting bond of peace (Eph 4)? Is the only choice the lesser of two evils, to steer as best as one can towards salt and light, life and peace?

Ephesians 6:12 warns us that there are principalities and powers in the world diametrically opposed to the will of the Father. I’m not talking about dark magic and paranormal activity — what’s the point of just creeping out a few folks? — no, I’m talking about subtle twistings of the truth (2 Pet 3:16), a system of error that tosses believers about like babes on waves (the only biblical surfer babes; Eph 4:14), myths and genealogies that produce questionings (1 Tim 1:4), false teachers (Jude 4–13), seeds of doubt and division (Prov 6:19). The aim of the devil is to bedevil God’s ends and his (Satan’s) end. The most crucial part of his attack is against the church, against its oneness, and against its newness (Matt 16:18, 23).

So on it goes. Degradation and fission and restoration. Capitulation, apostasy, recapitulation. To the retrospective eye, it’s not hard to trace the course of the church, the line of truths recovered one by one like a pearl strand through the centuries. But if it were to happen today, where we are, with the people who led us to God, if rupture were to separate well-loved faces, how would we be able to discern true north? What anchor have we? Discussing this, a friend brought up that in this case, our love for the fellow members of the church may cloud our judgment. Unlike in most other situations, the feeling of the Body, scattered and divided as it will be, cannot be an adequate safeguard against straying. The mingled spirit, the sense of life and peace, may also be subjectively interpreted. What is left? Only the firm foundation of the Word of God, cut straight (2 Tim 2:15), piercing to the divide of soul and spirit (Heb 4:12). It can’t just be a shallow truth, either, of facts and doctrines. It must be a truth experienced, a truth burned into one’s being, a truth full-fleshed and irrefutable. The truth must be our possession, not someone else’s borrowed family heirlooms (Matt 13:52).

After the storm has rolled in, the window of opportunity for memorizing the constellations has closed. The only time we have to engrave the stars into our mind’s eye is today. It’s only in times of relative peace that one can truly prepare for war, and a warfare there is — not between people, but between the forces of the air. So in these times of plenty, while the Milky Way still bands the sky, our warfare begins in two directions, with equal desperation. On the one hand, we must remain grafted into God (Rom 11), which preserves the church from degradation. That’s a moment-by-moment warfare. On the other hand, we must press on to apprehend the truth. That’s a day-by-day, year-by-year, decade-by-decade struggle.

Proverbs 23:23 says, Buy truth, and do not sell it; / Buy wisdom and instruction and understanding. The rolling centuries have afforded a rich inheritance to the church, but how much have we paid the price for to buy? Matthew 25 warns us to buy oil. In Revelation, the stakes rise: God tells us to buy gold refined by fire. Now, as the church is maturing, as the Bible is opened up, as the world situation girds itself for the pangs of birth, now more than ever is it imperative that the truth be purchased at any price. If we mean business to cooperate with God, we must mean business with our pursuit of the truth. As Romans 13:12 says, The night is far advanced, and the day has drawn near. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the weapons of light.