I attended a religious discussion this past weekend about if and how the Episcopal Church might separate from the Anglican Church (read more about this issue).One guy got up and said, "Well, two plus two used to equal four. Now we're saying two plus two equals six. I don't understand how the Bible used to say one thing and now we're saying that it says something else."
Amazing how one can never escape being told how you don't fit in, even at church.
Since governance was really the focus of the discussion, I didn't continue his angle of the conversation. But if I had bothered to help him see the errors of his way, I would have done so by replying,
Yes. Two plus two equals four and that is all that a first grader needs to know. If we told her that E=MC squared, she'd think we were crazy.
"What do you say?!!!!," she'd scream. "Numbers are added to numbers. Letters are used to spell things, not add, dummy."
And for her first-grade mind she'd be right. At that age, she would only need to know that two plus two equals four. But later, in high school, she'd learn algebra and geometry and all kinds of amazing "new" facts. From a first-grade perspective, they'd seem like blatant contradictions. With a more mature mind, the connections could be made.
At the church gathering, I wouldn't have added, "So grow up, stupid."
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