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Archives: February 2010
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Archives: February 2010
A different way of looking
By Jon Dean
I am a geek. There, I’ve said it. Wow, that actually felt quite good. Maybe because its true; I spent a whole 4 years studying a degree in maths and economics. And to top it all I enjoyed it. Yes. I find numbers interesting, I actually quite like spreadsheets and I find that graphs (especially the 3D ones) can be fun.
Even statistics aren’t that bad, especially when they are to do with my other passion, football. For example, from 2003 to 2004 Arsenal Football Club managed a record 49 games unbeaten, including through a whole season, which is something that hasn’t been done since 1889! Over those 49 games they scored an average of 2.3 goals per game and conceded an average of 0.7 per game. Now they are facts that make me happy.
Recently, I was reading quite a geeky book (something that us geeks do) and I came across another interesting fact. And when I came across this fact, I had to tell someone about it. So here it is.
There is an experiment that physicists (even more geeky than mathematicians) carried out with electrons, which are basically very small things which make up atoms, which are also very small. So its small. Now an electron can either act as a wave, or as a particle (a bit like water can also be ice or steam) and these physicists were trying to work out what made it act as a wave and what made it act as a particle.
And here’s the cool bit. When they started to record what was going on, the electrons behaved in a different way from when they hadn’t been recording them! Its almost as if the electrons knew what was going on!
Even in that tightly controlled environment, as soon as the scientists started looking at what was happening, they were affecting what was happening.
And I think we can learn a lesson here. Have we ever thought that the way we look at someone, or a group or situation around us might actually affect that person, or that group, or that situation?
Sometimes I can be so quick to judge a person, or a group, or a situation, and I’m completely unaware that my judgement might actually influence those I am judging.
And that can be for good or for bad.
I think Jesus was pretty good at this one though. There was a time when he was walking into town, and there was a little guy called Zacchaeus who wanted to see him. He was a tax collector. They didn’t really like tax collectors back then. And because he was not the tallest guy around he climbed a tree to get a better view.
Now, if I had walked into the town centre in Watford (where I live) and above the crowds had been a small senior traffic warden (as tax collectors are a bit harder to come by), I’m fairly sure that my first reaction would be, “Walk faster. Head down. Ignore the weird guy in the tree.”
But Jesus did the opposite! He stopped, looked up, and said, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” What was he thinking? Didn’t he know about how to treat short men that climb trees?
Many people know the story: Jesus goes to Zacchaeus’s house, and Zac ends up giving back half of all he has to the poor and to all the people that he has cheated four times more. Which in itself is amazing.
But there is a little sentence in the middle which I think most of us miss. After Jesus tells Zac to come down, we read, “So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.”
I wonder if there is something in that small sentence. When Jesus chose to treat Zac with some respect, when he chose to look beyond what everyone else saw, something began to change in Zac. He welcomed him gladly.
This was something Jesus did time and time again. The people that everyone else had dismissed - the leper, the prostitute, the thief, the madman and many more - Jesus treated them with value. He chose to look at them through the lenses of love.
And when he did, something seemed to shift in them. So often their lives were changed for good.
I also wonder what would happen if we chose to follow this path too. If we, instead of dismissing the guy at school as 'weird', or the girl that lives down the street as 'scary', or that one at church that is just 'boring', we choose to look at these people through the lenses of love.
I wonder what would happen.
Now that would be an interesting experiment.
About the author
Jon is 26 and works for Soul Survivor. He spends his time either in other countries or on Skype to people in those countries (because he is our International Coordinator).
He currently sports a stubble like beard after receiving a beard trimmer for Christmas. He also likes Arsenal.
Soul Survivor is a Christian charity that puts on events for young people. Our registered charity no. is 1080720. We are also a company limited by guarantee in England & Wales. Our company registered number is 03991111, which is nice. Thanks for caring.
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