Open in New Tab Here

Humble Pi

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

– John 1:1-3

Scripture tells us that all things in the universe were created by, and depend upon, the “Word” who we know to be Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity. As you likely know, the Greek word used for “Word” in John 1:1-3 is Logos and it has a rich meaning beyond the English sense of “word.” In fact, our word logic derives its origin from the same Greek root. Logic clearly has a deep meaning to us that includes philosophical concepts of reasoning, truth, argumentation, and extends even to our description of mathematics. God has built the universe to run on rules of logic, upheld by the Logos.

As a scientist, it is tremendously exciting to catch a glimpse of something truly new (to you) and especially so if it is further revealed that you have barely scratched the surface of this new knowledge. It is as if you have opened a door to an open, flower-filled field of beauty with unknown and magnificent vistas ahead!

Have you ever had a similar excitement when Scripture gives you some sort of new glimpse of the nature of God Himself? If so, you have cracked open the door to a world of beauty and amazement in God—an unsearchable, unending world of perfection. Scripture in several places calls God “unsearchable” in His infinite complexity (Job 5:9, Job 36:26, Ps. 145:5, Isa. 40:28, Rom. 11:33, and Eph. 3:8). Heaven will be magnificent because we will fellowship in communion with the one true God as He unfolds new facets of his perfection for eternity. Each day will be filled with new revelations, and will never be threatened by the daily magnificence coming to an end, nor us ever fully experiencing it all.

So, let’s crack the door open a bit using some mathematics. Ponder with me the geometry of a simple circle. The “simple” ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is the humble constant π (pi). Pi is called an irrational number because it cannot be expressed as a ratio (thus, ir-ratio-nal). The digits of every irrational number are non-terminating (infinite) and non-repeating (that is, no repeating pattern). So, although practically we always round off the number to a few decimal places for any physical usage or calculation, to actually properly convert between diameter and circumference of any circle you truly need an infinite number of digits of pi. All the digits of any irrational number cannot be written on any finite piece of paper. And, because the pattern never repeats, if you have enough patience and computing power, you can find any possible string of digits somewhere in the digits of pi!

So, be amazed that even in our humble pi, there exists an infinite reservoir of complexity, all available for inquiry and amazement using our God given tools of logic… Heaven will be fantastic!

Pastor Aaron

P.S. Converting the digits of pi to hexadecimal and then mapping them (modulo 26) onto the English alphabet and searching the resulting characters, I found the text “berean” near digit 443 million.