Fractal Fallenness

Fractals have been on my mind lately. A fractal, according to Merriam-Webster, is “any of various extremely irregular curves or shapes for which any suitably chosen part is similar in shape to a given larger or smaller part when magnified or reduced to the same size.”

That’s a fairly obscure and technical definition. An example helps. One of the better-known fractals is the Sierpiński triangle, which is created by taking an equilateral triangle and then repeatedly dividing it into smaller triangles:

Because this application of triangles can be done at smaller and smaller levels, you can zoom in or out as much as you want - even infinitely. It’s a rather mesmerizing (or at least dizzying) effect.

Fractals aren’t just a mathematical curiosity, though. For example, they show up in nature, “in such places as broccoli, snowflakes, feet of geckos, frost crystals, … lightning bolts,” and the circulatory system (Wikipedia). Tree branches are one example: the trunk splits into boughs, which split into smaller branches, and so on down to twigs, with (often) a similar branching pattern each step of the way.

Ukraine has been on my mind lately. News stories regularly try to sum up the current state of suffering: As of Tuesday morning, 401 civilians confirmed dead and 801 confirmed injured, with the actual casualties likely much higher. More than 2 million refugees. But that’s just the big picture. Like a fractal, you can zoom in to see more and more detail, and more and more suffering. A wedding with military fatigues and rocket-propelled grenades. Reports of a girl, trapped in rubble, dying of dehydration. Photos of farewells at train stations as the war separates families. A man digging through the rubble of his house after his wife and daughter were killed.

Or you can follow a different branch of the fractal tree to look at Russia: 140 million people in an economy that’s cratered under crippling sanctions, a government that may be about to default on its debts, thousands of Russian soldiers killed, under a regime so repressive that merely calling what’s happening in Ukraine an “invasion” can be punishable by up to three years in prison. All for a war that none of them had any real say in.

Let’s zoom out a step. Here’s a map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as of this week, courtesy of The Washington Post.

Ukraine’s population is (was) 43 million people. Plenty of those 43 million people live outside of the red areas.

I don’t know how the demographics break down - how many of the casualties and refugees are from different parts of the country - but, given that Putin’s aim appears to be to take all of Ukraine, it’s easy to fear that things could get much worse.

Let’s zoom out again. Here’s Moldova.

It’s another former member of the Soviet Union, just south of Ukraine, small and (like Ukraine) relatively poor. Moldovans worry that their country will be invaded next, especially after Belorusian dictator and Russian ally Alexander Lukashenko showed a map that appeared to indicate planned troop movements into Moldova. Moldova has its own separatist region, Transnistria, similar to Ukraine’s separatist, Russian-friendly regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Transnistria is tiny (500,000 people), completely outside of Moldovan control, and backwater:

It’s a place of Lenin statues, hammer-and-sickle flags and once-grand Soviet architecture in decay… Unrecognized by the United Nations, it has a currency, the ruble, that is virtually worthless outside its borders. International bank cards don’t work at Transnistrian ATMs. Salaries are low. For all of Russia’s influence, the biggest power in Transnistria is a monopolistic company, Sheriff, that operates with scant oversight and controls everything from the gas stations to the supermarkets to the soccer club.

Anywhere along the fractal, it seems, we can see more loss, more fear, more scars from the past. And that’s just from looking at current events in and around Ukraine. We can follow the branches back through history, to look at the Russian poverty and malaise after the collapse of the Soviet Union that fueled Putin’s rise to power, or the history of autocracy, imperialism, and politicized religion that Putin has inherited. Or we can zoom out further and follow the fractal’s boughs to the civil war in Ethiopia between Tigray and the central government, with “ethnically motivated killings, sexual violence on a massive scale, looting, and mass displacement to unequipped neighbor states and countries”; or the civil war in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia, using US-provided weaponry, is waging a brutal war against Houthi rebels that’s killed over 100,000 people and started a famine that’s killed 85,000 more.

And, of course, if you follow the branches and boughs back far enough, you come to the Fall, to humanity’s rebellion against God that started in Eden and ripples throughout history and throughout the world.

What’s a Christian to do? Or, to be more direct, what is God doing? Our typical answer is that Jesus’ death and resurrection means we can escape all of this and go to Heaven. And that’s true, good, and wonderful, but it’s only part of the story. After all, it would seem strange if God saw this infinite fractal of pain, loss, and death and gave only a single, unitary response. Instead, I believe, God’s redemption and its outworking are similarly fractal, being rooted in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection but branching out into every aspect of our existence:

• God at work in the thousands of blessings of everyday life - good meals and sunrises and jokes with friends and a sound night’s sleep
• God at work in the arcs of our individual lives, guiding us as we live and work and learn and grow
• God at work in the local church, where we share in the love and support of our brothers and sisters as we worship and serve
• God at work in society, as believers and non-believers alike work under God’s common grace to treat poverty and illness, address injustice, and otherwise ameliorate the effects of the Fall
• God at work through his Word, speaking to us today just as he spoke to its human authors, and speaking to us through the millions of lesser words of Christian preachers, speakers, authors, singers, songwriters, theologians, and journalists who use their gifts to build us up
• God at work even in our hardships, as our hardships help us to develop endurance, character, and hope (Rom 5:4); provide an opportunity to show our faith and gentleness (1 Pe 3:13-16); and inspire others (as Ukrainians’ courage is inspiring many around the world)
• God at work throughout history, as his church spreads the gospel “throughout the whole inhabited earth as a testimony to all the nations” (Mt 24:14)
• God at work through Jesus, who exactly reveals God to us, and whom we can know and relate to as surely as the disciples who walked on earth with him 2,000 years ago
• God at work through the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, where the Fall is not merely escaped but destroyed, where “he will live among us, and we will be his people, and God himself will be with us, and he will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain” (Rev. 21:3-4, paraphrased)

Peace on Earth

A friend of mine left church early yesterday so that he could make it to his family’s Christmas celebration. Now, I know that there are a wide variety of Christmas traditions, but late February doesn’t seem to work for any of them - too late for Epiphany, way too early for Christmas in July, etc. He explained, however, that this was simply when his family could get together. I’ve done the same in the past, thanks to having family scattered from North Carolina to Michigan; I think our record was a family Christmas get-together in April.

Despite the calendar mismatch, the mention of Christmas put me in the mind of Christmas songs. Not the traditional, happy carols like “Joy to the World” and “O Come All Ye Faithful” (although I do love those). Nor the modern, intricate instrumentals of Trans-Siberian Orchestra or Mannheim Steamroller (although I do love those, too). Instead, I was thinking of the not-so-happy songs, like U2’s “Peace on Earth”:

They’re reading names out over the radio All the folks, the rest of us, won’t get to know Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda Their lives are bigger than any big idea

Jesus can you take the time To throw a drowning man a line Peace on Earth To tell the ones who hear no sound Whose sons are living in the ground Peace on Earth Jesus in the song you wrote The words are sticking in my throat Peace on Earth Hear it every Christmas time But hope and history won’t rhyme So what’s it worth? This peace on Earth

Sean, Julia, Gareth, Ann, and Breda were victims of the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland on August 15, 1998.

Or “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”:

I heard the bells on Christmas day Their old familiar carols play; In music sweet the tones repeat, “There’s peace on earth, good will to men.”

And in despair I bowed my head: “There is no peace on earth,” I said, “For hate is strong, and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem upon which this song was based in 1863, during the height of the American Civil War. His wife had died in a fire two years earlier, and he had received word that his son, who had joined the Union Army without his blessing, had been severely injured in battle.

And this seems like a downer - inappropriate Christmas songs for an inappropriate Christmas season - but there’s a lot to be down about right now.

An unprovoked war rages in Ukraine, leaving hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes, and it’s just starting.

Economic hardship is bearing down on 140 million Russians, most of whom have little or no involvement in the war.

India remains conspicuously neutral, because of their own past conflicts and history with the West.

Civil war in Ethiopia continues, with thousands dead and 2.5 million displaced, with a fraction of the attention that the war in Ukraine has received. (Because people aren’t concerned about it threatening surrounding countries? Because they don’t look like us? I don’t know.)

There is much evil in the world.

And that’s to say nothing of the smaller, personal tragedies hitting those around me: A beloved church elder and businessman dies suddenly from Covid. A young couple’s marriage falls into pieces. A family deals with the fallout of their daughter’s molestation. Another man battles cancer while weighed down by depression, a history of health problems, and bad medical advice. A family copes with the revelation that their newborn has a fatal genetic disease. All of these pale in size and scope to wars in Ukraine or Ethiopia, but that makes them scarcely less painful to those affected.

Sometimes downer songs are an appropriate response - to mourn those lost, to acknowledge if we’re drowning or bowing our heads in despair, to feel the gulf between Christian hope and humanity’s history. In Biblical terms, to lament. Because these Christmas songs also remind us that lament isn’t the end. Longfellow’s carol continues:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor does He sleep, The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then ringing singing on its way The world revolved from night to day A voice, a chime, a chant sublime Of peace on earth good will to men.

Christ has come! God is with us. And he has promised to make all things right, to defeat evil and death, to wipe away every tear, to remove mourning and crying and pain (Rev. 21:3-4).

And, even when we can’t hear the Christmas bells’ promise - when, like U2, the words stick in our throat and we’re left wondering what it’s worth - the act of bringing these laments to God is itself a statement of faith in God. Because we know that Immanuel, God with us, means that Christ has experienced the same hurts that we have, that he has taken the world’s evil upon himself, that he is with us even in the midst of our despair.