Fractals, Suffering, and Hope

There’s a concept in mathematics known as fractals. Without getting too far into the weeds with a definition, fractals are self-repeating patterns. Imagine a picture of hundreds of triangles within triangles. Zoom in one aspect of the triangle, and you find the same pattern as the larger picture; the repeating pattern allows you to zoom in infinitely and never find the end to the pattern.

There are mathematical equations that, when graphed, produce these repeating patterns. Often the mathematical equations producing fractal graphs are represented in nature. Picture a fern leaf. The entire leaf is made up of what look to be smaller leaves. Those smaller leaves are made up of still smaller leaves. Barnsley’s Fern formula mathematically recreates the phenomenon.

Romanesco broccoli, a variant of cauliflower that looks like it was pulled from an overly pixelated computer screen, is the ultimate natural fractal. Its cone-shaped florets fit the Fibonacci or golden spiral pattern perfectly. Break off a floret from the main head and you end up with a mini-version of the broccoli. You can continue to break off smaller and smaller pieces to get smaller and smaller versions of the broccoli because the pattern repeats over and over again. Salt flats, branching trees, mountain ranges, and some shells contain such naturally occurring repeating patterns.

What if suffering is a fractal experience of every human being?^[1] I’ve told our story of suffering from the center, first-person narrative. Within our story of suffering and joy is the story of a young mother filled with grief as she made the heart-shattering decision to give her daughter in adoption.^[2] She must tell her story of suffering and joy. Her story will likely contain tears, anger, and frustration, just as they were present in our story. I don’t know if she has faith, but if she does, my guess is that at some point she will cry out to God from her wilderness. My hope in prayer is that, whether she has faith or not, God will be near her and that he will in some way redeem her and see to her flourishing. Within her story there will be others whose stories of suffering and joy will need to be told. And on, and on, and on it goes. Suffering is the common human experience.

Herein lies the learning: Our pain is an expression of a deeper, more real pain. Each of us has a story of the tohu va-vohu being more than we can handle. For some it is personal, for others it is the story of a people oppressed by others. The circumstances of our suffering are all different, but they are all concrete. We suffer because we are hurt by people with names and faces; we suffer because our actual loved ones die too soon; we suffer because our humanity is not dignified because of the color of our skin. Our suffering is not theoretical. It is real. And so is our pain.

But underneath the unique plot points of our story is the human condition. We may wish to change the details of our life. We may wish that our loved one didn’t tragically die. Or that we didn’t have to move back in with our parents because we lost our job and the bank foreclosed on our house. We may dream of a life where we never befriended that person so they never had the opportunity to betray us. It doesn’t matter if we were able to change the events or substitute the characters of our life. The general plot would remain the same: we would still suffer. This is the human condition in which we all participate. As Catholic priest and theologian Henri Nouwen said, “Your pain is the concrete way in which you participate in the pain of humanity.”^[3]

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “We men and women are all on the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.”^[4]

This is the condition God took on in the incarnation. The suffering of Jesus was the suffering of all humanity.^[5]

God, in Jesus, entered into the fractal story of this broken world. Mary and Martha are grieving because their brother Lazarus has died. Jesus joins them in weeping, then raises Lazarus from the dead. Zacchaeus has been ostracized by his community and suffers under the weight of his choice to collect taxes on behalf of Rome, and Jesus restores Zacchaeus’ joy to him by taking upon himself the ridicule of the religious leaders for dining with sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors. The disciples on the road to Emmaus despair over the death of Jesus, but Jesus breaks bread in their house and reveals his presence to them. The gospel narratives are filled with stories of Jesus meeting people in their hell and moving them closer to heaven.

Our Christian, hopeful joy exists because of the suffering of another.

^[1] I’m indebted to Eleanor Stump’s thinking on the fractal nature of suffering. In her book, Wandering in the Darkness (pp. 220-222), she goes into much greater detail than I could here.

^[2] I refuse to say “gave up for adoption.” Mothers and fathers do not “give up” on their children when they enter the adoption process. The reason they take on the grief and pain of placing their child with another family is that they haven’t given up on that child; they have all the hope, all the dreams, all the expectations every parent does. Theirs are simply a set of circumstances that make it difficult or impossible to be the on who parents their child.

^[3] Henri J. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love, (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 103.

^[4] G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Volume 28 (The Illustrated London News, 1908-1910).

^[5] Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love, 104.

Nate Pyle is husband to Sarah and dad to Luke, Evelyn, and Wesley. He serves as pastor of Christ’s Community Church in Fishers, Indiana. Pyle is the author of Man Enough: How Jesus Redefines Manhood and blogs regularly at natepyle.com. His work has been featured at sojourners.com, The Huffington Post, Christ and Pop Culture, and various other publications. Look for @natepyle79 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.