c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. He lives in Durham, N.C.)

UNDATED _ Labor Day weekend brought two boys home from college and unusual topics to our dinner table conversation.

We talked about mathematics. Our middle son is gazing into the infinite realm of calculus. Our oldest son is looking in the opposite direction at the finite world of discrete numbers.

We talked about the derivation of Pi, and humankind’s fascination with this truly random number, which has now been carried out to several million digits and has yet to reveal a pattern.

Such talk led inexorably to questions about God. For what does the human mind seek to comprehend more than the nature of God?

We focused on the tension between those who would make God small and manageable _ capable of being defined through certain laws and certain remembered fragments, capable of being claimed with such specificity that one can name the hour of first belief _ and those for whom God is beyond boundaries, beyond definitions, larger than we can possibly imagine, existing in that realm where human language cannot go except through the faltering steps of analogy and story.

I was delighted to hear my boys asking deep and disturbing questions. Despite spending most of their lives in the Bible Belt, where formulas for God are often preferred to questions and where public discourse over Scripture seems to focus on inane debates like creationism vs. evolution, and despite growing up in churches where bickering and meanness were as likely to occur as grace, my boys still believe, still probe and still respect the inchoate word questions about God produce.

I found myself quoting Scripture to talk about the world beyond Scripture. In explaining why I believe in a God who cannot be made small and manageable, I tried to walk a line between lofty theory, which says too little and seems too aloof, and that brand of evangelical fervor which says too much and stirs too eagerly the human passions to be right and to judge.

I turned to that incident when Peter asked Jesus to name a boundary and his master refused, pushing Peter instead to the edge of the infinite.

In the hands of the self-righteous, the Law of Moses had become a narrow horizon of small rules and rigid definitions. Follow the rules, they said, and you will be right with God. Honor the tribe’s norms and share in its hatreds, and you will have eternal life.

In that context, Peter’s question made sense. How many times must I forgive my brother, as many as seven times? Name the boundary, and we will obey.

Jesus’ answer was shocking, then and now. Not seven times, he said, but”seventy times seven.”In other words, there is no boundary to forgiveness. The call to compassion is boundless. God is boundless.

God cannot be defined by this number or that number. God cannot be defined by this name or that name, by this tribe’s theology or that tribe’s, by this set of rules or that set of rules or no rules at all.

One cannot observe a finite set of laws and then stop. Rather, the rich young man must give away everything.

One cannot chart a course and then view success as a sign of blessing. Rather, one must die to self.

One cannot perfect the rituals of faith and consider it a good life’s work. Rather, one must enter the chaos, trusting not in any works of one’s own hand but in God alone.

Like the predatory banks which lure college students into credit-card debt, the purveyors of simple answers are always with us. They offer a potion more tempting than drugs. Like the banks, they are clever and relentless. To the student _ or adult _ who grows weary of standing at the edge of chaos and cries out, Just tell me what to do! they have ready formulas, couched in the language of faux fellowship.

Tonight’s dinner conversation, then, is more than intellectual satisfaction. It is a sign that my boys are still resisting the lure of easy answers. I am proud of them. It isn’t easy to keep asking questions when those around you are basking in answers.

DEA END EHRICH