Guest Column: Undefined

Keith Tucker

BY KEITH TUCKER

Special to The Enterprise

Human beings are, by nature, inquisitive creatures. Why else would we spend $10 billion on a telescope to peer off into the sky to look into the past or dig a big ditch over in France and smash electrons into each other?

But we have trouble when the source of our inquiries is undefined. God is undefined. A prison sentence of 1 to 5 is defined, but indeterminate. As such, it gives incentive to act better. When you try to divide by 0, that is undefined. There is no possible solution, known or unknown. We can handle the unknown if it appears that with effort, the problem can be solved.

Our brains simply don't respond well to problems without any possible answers, no matter the effort. This is not saying we cannot have a relationship with God. The very opposite is true. It is saying that God is an undefined entity, and we will never be able to grasp the entirety of what that means. Perhaps this very issue is why, as a whole, the Protestant faith religion is drifting away from a formal Sunday go-to-church existence. Perhaps our Creator put this particular circumstance into the maze of human traits to ensure that those who choose to believe do so in spite of our inability to deal with the undefined.

What is that old saying? Sometimes we succeed in spite of ourselves.

Editor’s note: Keith Tucker is a Greenfield resident and owner of The Marble Shop.