Counting is a seductive abstraction
Huh!? What could be more concrete than counting a pile of – for example - dollar coins? The dollars are concrete, but are the numbers? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … they do seem concrete, but when did you last chat with number 341? Or number 14? Or even number 5? I have never met anyone who has, though I know of some Christian mystics who say they have actually experienced various numbers as creatures.
On the other hand I have read articles by a late and famous Princeton University mathematician, Nelson, who even a few decades ago was not sure that the numbers we use in counting were based on watertight axioms. Even we ignoramuses can possibly glimpse these deceptive depths. Counting adds “one” to the previous number and repeats the addition. We assume the “one” added is exactly the same each time. But actually it is based on deep assumptions about exactly what equal means and even about time and sequences and what repetitions mean. For example, we assume in counting that time only runs one way. That’s our everyday life. But is that true right throughout the universe, or does time stop in some places, (like happens at lightspeed) or does it even run backwards? One well-known physicist today argues time running backwards happens in a kind of mirror universe of our present one but created at the Big Bang.
Counting is good enough for us most of the time, except that few human counts of anything are better than 0.1% - one part in 1000. We get tired and make mistakes. Machines do much better, except that they are based on the numbers themselves for their working parts!
We have made counting a base to our lives. Every year I have to count my income and tell the tax people how many dollars I have gained. I am expected to be very precise!
Economics is all about the numbers of dollars or countable objects. We tend to make this one of our most valuable systems in a country’s life. Counting as an ultimate truth? How is that different from making it a God? This can become like a cruel jail. Jesus said “you will not get out until you pay the last penny.’ That can be our fate if we embrace Mammon, the power of money, or counting. Is it a coincidence that the profession with the greatest percentage of atheists is Economics, but the profession with the lowest percentage of atheists is Mathematics?
According to the Gospels, the hairs of our head are all numbered – better precision than I can count! But when the extraordinary enters our lives the counting is transcended. Five flat loaves of pita bread and 2 fish can become hundreds and a feast. And under these circumstances I am not too surprised that 1+1+1 could equal either 1 or 3, or that I can count on God.