The more we think we know, the less we understand

The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today.

Michael Commane

It’s probably a bad habit and certainly not a good idea with the the kilowatt hour of electricity costing 39.59 cent, but I tend to leave the radio on all night. In those moments moving from being awake to falling asleep I have vague memories of what I might have heard.

On one such  recent  occasion I heard the announcer on BBC Radio 4 bid farewell to his listeners with the two words -  oíche mhaith.  Yes, that was the British Broadcasting Corporation wishing good night in Irish to its listeners. 

Later that night I heard someone talk about the workings of the brain. At one stage I thought I remembered hearing that there are 86 billion neurons in the brain. Some days later listening on the RTÉ Radio Player to Benedictine monk Mark Patrick Hederman talking about God and resurrection I was reminded of what I had heard on the radio in my semi-awake state. I checked in Google and yes there are 86 billion neurons in the brain. 

And Google further told me that neurons are information messengers They use electrical impulses and chemical signals to transmit information between different areas of the brain, and between the brain and the rest of the nervous system.

Like much else in this world, it’s beyond my understanding. In his interview with Brendan O’Connor Fr Hederman said that it would take a person 32 years to count to a billion. Mysteries accumulate. The more we think we know, the less we understand. 

So, when it comes to saying anything about God, I for one am always nervous when I hear people speak with certainty about matters which go beyond what Christ has taught us.

  

In tomorrow’s Gospel (Luke 20: 27 -38) the Sadducees try to trick Jesus with silly questions asking him what the resurrection is about. 

Jesus in his reply quotes how Moses implied that the dead rise again. And then, in what must come as something  of a puzzle to the Sadducees Jesus says: “Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.” (verse 38) What must they have made of that for a reply?

When it comes to saying a word about resurrection or indeed God, we are entering extremely difficult territory. I have no trouble saying that I am asking more often and more fervently what is life all about, is there a God, is there resurrection? In his interview with Brendan O’Connor Fr Hederman said: “Nobody knows what happens when you leave this planet. Resurrection means that your personal identity is raised to a trans-physical reality.” Hederman sees the resurrection as making the best of ourselves.

Elsewhere in the interview he quotes Hopkins as saying that hell means being with your own sweating self for all eternity.

In the Creed, our profession of faith, we pray that we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the  world to come. Christians believe in eternal life. When you pause  to consider  this, it  is an extraordinary thing to say. Yet  when we look at the pictures coming out of Ukraine of broken and dead bodies, ruined cities, and starving children across Africa, many are inclined to say how can a merciful God allow such horror to happen. 

But can’t one also say that in the face of indescribable horror and suffering that there must be more to our lives than all this suffering and pain. Our inhumanity to each other … do we consider our common human responsibility for the suffering?

 

In our cocooned lives, we might feel invincible, certain and secure, everything to do with our lives hangs by a thread. Sit down and talk with a person who has been told they have been diagnosed with cancer, or a person who has lost a limb in an accident you are forced to realise how fragile we all are. 

Christians believe there is more to us than the bedlam of this corporeal world and someway, somehow life continues beyond the grave. Wishful thinking? No, not so. 

It’s a matter of Christian  belief, part of the mystery of our faith that there’s more to us than the apparent finality of the grave and our bodily decay.

I’m back thinking of those 86 billion neurons. How did they happen to come about, even if I’ve lost a handful or more a long the way?