Solving Life’s Problems (Mathematically)

Have you ever had days when you weren’t really sure what you’re going to do with your life . . .  or what you are going to do next month?  Well, I have too, recently.  This is a bit unusual for me because I’m used to at least looking like I have my life figured out and always having a five-year plan (even if it changes a little from year to year).  Sometimes I wish God had given us some kind of mathematical equation or formula in the Bible to tell us how to solve all the problems that come up in life.   Wouldn’t it be nice if God gave us formulas that work in every situation and with every person?

Imagine that: here’s the formula God gives for planning your life, so just fill in all the known quantities to solve for the unknown.  Put in your height for “y”, time period for “t”, I.Q. score for “q”, personality type for “p”, gender for “x” and you can figure out “L” for your life plan.  This “L” is a vector quantity, telling you in what direction and how far to go.   Unfortunately, real life is not as simple and straightforward as math (and yes, I know that math is often not perceived as simple or straightforward).

No, God doesn’t give us specific formulas to solve for all the “unknowns” in our lives.  Actually, I’m glad He doesn’t, because if He did give us specific formulas that work for everyone, I would be inclined to judge others by those formulas altogether too often.  Although God doesn’t give us formulas, He gives us principles to follow that can help us solve for our “unknowns”.  Life is really more like physics than algebra in that way.  In physics, we have some equations that work for everything, but most of the time you need to draw what we call a “free body diagram” of the situation.  You can then use that diagram to create formulas that can be used to solve for the unknown.

Take for example the situation of a girl standing still on a swing (see picture).  We can draw a free body diagram of the forces acting on the wooden seat of the swing.  As you can see in the diagram below, we have the weight of the girl pushing down on the seat and the forces of the two chains pulling up on the seat.  Using basic overall principles and the free body diagram, we can create mathematical equations to solve for the unknown.  In a similar way, God gives us basic principles that we can use to help us solve our current problem.   We may not be able to solve for every “unknown” in our lives right now, but God will guide us one step at a time by applying His basic principles to our individual situations.