I grew up with a version of Christianity that focused primarily on my salvation. It was all about my forgiveness, my transformation, my destiny, and my eternal reward. It was about my ticket to heaven rather than damnation to Hell. It was a theology of buckets. These buckets accumulated forgiveness, grace, blessings, honor, and love. They stored up and held tightly to the treasures of heaven that I was promised. To examine this theology of buckets more closely, we need to briefly look into the world of fractals . . .
Fractals are all around us. They are in us. We are in them. Nature is ordered by fractals. They are complex geometric patterns that exhibit self-similarity, patterns which repeat over and over with ever-decreasing size and ever-increasing detail. Fractals are the essence of the cosmos.
Fractals are present in governments, businesses, economics, societies, ecology, science, anatomy, and mathematics. Some are visible in nature, such as the progression from forests to trees to limbs to branches to twigs to leaves to veins to compounds, etc. Others are subtle, such as societal structures containing relationships that contain relationships that contain relationships. The strangest point to be made is this: there is nothing in existence that is not a part of the fractal.
One example from nature is found in orbits. From an electron spinning and orbiting the nucleus of an atom, to the moon spinning and orbiting around our planet, our planet spinning and orbiting around the Sun, the Sun spinning through our galaxy, our galaxy spinning around a sector of the universe, to the universe itself spinning within 4-D space-time: everything spins. The orbit theme permeates the cosmos.
From waterways to animal vascular systems, from ancestral trees to literal trees, from seed patterns in sunflowers to reproductive patterns in rabbits, from seconds to millennia, fractals are expressed throughout the cosmos. A most fanciful example is found in Romanesco Broccoli. The patterns in fractals never end . . .
I do not know how else to say it, my friend, but there are no buckets on the fractal. There are no endpoints on the fractal. You will not find them in scripture. You will not find them in the cosmos. They do not exist. Examining any fractal in detail does not lead to endpoints with a storehouse of goods, but to more detail that leads to more detail that leads to . . .
There are no buckets on the fractal; there is only conduit. Scripture tells us that being a part of the fractal means propagating the fractal. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit . . .”[1] What comes before us must come after us. It must pass through us! We must be conduit to be alive on the fractal. Let me put it more bluntly: we cannot receive anything that does not flow through us to the rest of the fractal.
Various analogies in scripture substantiate this principle. The tree analogy is perhaps the best. Branches will not survive if they do not receive sap from the trunk. But unless the sap also flows through the branches to the rest of the tree, not only will the tree fail to produce fruit, but that branch, too, will die. No wonder Jesus talked about cutting off branches that do not bear fruit, or should I say, that do not let the sap flow.
Jesus said, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”[2] In other words, “A large sap flow in must equal a large sap flow out.”
Let me word it more concisely and bluntly. To be forgiven, we must forgive. We can receive forgiveness only as it flows through us to those around us. There are no forgiveness-accumulating buckets.
To receive grace, it must flow through us to others. We can receive grace only as it flows through us. There are no grace-accumulating buckets.
If we judge others, we will receive the same sap. We will receive judgment as it flows through us. There are no buckets before us to stop the flow on to us.
There are no buckets on the fractal: only conduit.
As such, forgiveness is not static. It cannot be held. It is like a dynamic current. Either we are a part of the forgiveness fractal or we are not. David Augsburger says in Dissident Discipleship, “The prayer our Lord prayed from the cross[3] confirms that he lived as though—as well as taught that—forgiving and being forgiven are inextricably interwoven.”[4] This applies to the whole fractal!
Nations will be forgiven only as they forgive other nations. Religions will be forgiven only as they forgive other religions. Races will be forgiven only as they forgive other races. Individuals will be forgiven only as they forgive other individuals. Remember the Lord’s Prayer: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”[5] It happens simultaneously.
The fractal is not about earning mercy, grace, forgiveness, and love. It is simply about letting them flow. We are conduit.
-Sam Augsburger
Slices of God: Strange, Dimensional, and Fractal Perspectives on God and the Cosmos
[1] John 15:5.
[2] Luke 12:48.
[3] Luke 23:34.
[4] Augsburger, Dissident Discipleship: A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor, 18.
[5] Matthew 6:12.
