Myth of the Straight Line

The Myth of the Straight Line 

A Sermon by Kenneth P. Langer

This is the second in a series of four sermons about topics related to my book The Emergence of God: The Intersection of Science, Nature, and  Spirituality. Last week I talked about the myth of perfection. Today I want to speak about the myth of the straight line.

We humans love straight lines. We think they make our lives easier. How many times have you heard it said that “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” And “An object in motion tends to remain in motion along a straight line.” We expect lines to be able to predict where things will go. We expect them to help make things predictable. But, most lives are messy and often follow along arcs that could never have been seen or predicted early on. Our lives, like many other things, do not follow a straight line.

When I was in fifth grade I decided that I was going to be a psychologist because I wanted to understand and help people but when I went to visit a psychologist in my neighborhood and he told me that all he did was wake up in the middle of the night to answer phone calls, I changed my mind. Shortly after my parents gave me a trumpet, I decided that music was going to be my life. All through high school and college I knew I was going to be a band director but when I became a band director I quickly discovered that it was not for me. I went back to school and decided to teach college students. The first time I taught a freshman music  theory class and turned my back to write on the board I discovered to my surprise that not only were none of the students throwing things at me, when I turned back around they were still in their seats and listening to me. I knew this was the career for me but somehow I felt that something was missing. 

All through college when I was not practicing my horn or writing music I was studying religion but it took more than twenty years as a professor of music before I realized my heart had gone in a different direction from where I was. I wanted to study ministry and when I got the chance, I jumped on it. Now, here I am. Life rarely moves in clear and straight lines.

Last week I talked about a dangerous idea that is often used in children's stories which is that all you have to do is get married and then you will “live happily ever after.” There is a variation on that story that we tell our teenagers which says basically, if you go to college, choose a career, get a good job, buy a house, and raise a family, you will live happily ever after. This story makes it sound like our path in life is a clear straight line but rarely do our lives take such a direct route. And the reason for that is that there is no such thing as an absolute straight line. That is because lines are two-dimensional human constructs imposed on a three-dimensional world. Yet, they appear everywhere. 

Just look around you. The walls reach straight toward the ceiling which is flat and straight. The pews in front of you are straight and they are arranged in precise straight rows. The hymnals you sing from have straight lines on both the outside and the inside. As you look up at me here you see I am surrounded by straight lines. If you walk out of the building you are in, you can see more straight lines. There are lines painted on the road; there are buildings with linear designs built into the walls, the chimneys, the doorways, and the windows; there are long and tall poles, electrical cables, phone towers; and signs–a lot of geometrically shaped signs painted with all kinds of significant lines.

But, did you notice something about all those lines I just mentioned? They are all human-made objects.

The British architect William Kent once said that nature abhors a straight line. Nature, of course, doesn’t actually abhor anything but it is clear that straight lines are not natural. We may claim to see straight lines in nature such as when we look at the earth’s horizon or at the surface of a crystal but usually those things are part of an illusion. The horizon we see at the ocean or across a prairie sky is actually a very tiny part of a very large circle and though the molecules of a crystal like to line up together those lines are usually fractured and uneven and the molecules that make up that crystal have no straight lines themselves. Nature abounds in curves, spirals, and fractals but not straight lines and the reason for this fact is that curvilinear shapes allow for growth, expansion, and creativity while straight lines do not. 

Just behind me is a perfect example. We have a marvelous piece of art depicting a column surrounded by plants. The column, a human-made structure, is full of straight lines while the plants are full of curves and spirals. The flowers and vines appear to be growing while the column does not.

Lines are used to make clear and distinct separations. Lines make divisions. Lines imply direct cause and effect. Lines make it seem like things must be either “this” or “that” but nature doesn’t work that way. Everything is made up of spectrums of change. You can find many examples of things that seem to be in opposition but are really just the endpoints of a process of change. When exactly does day become night? When it’s completely dark? Is the night sky ever completely dark? When exactly does someone become old? My daughter says I am old but my friends at my favorite coffee shop say I am young. Where does the mind end and the body begin? Do you really think my mind cannot influence my body or that my body does not affect my mind? There are no clear lines between these things. How you define any of these polarities depends on their relationship to whatever you are comparing them with.

Lines create the appearance of separate but false dyads. Day and night, young and old, mind and body are just a few of the many things we try to divide but which are, in reality, just opposite poles of a long continuum. Here is another example: science and religion. 

There have been many heated battles between scientists and theologians claiming that each knows the truth but it is possible that the truth is both religious and scientific. Both have value and significance. Science can help us bring safe and nutritious food to our tables but it cannot add significance to that meal in the same way that a seder, the eucharist, the end of Ramadan, or a Sunday family dinner does. Science teaches us about life while religion teaches us how to live. Science and religion are not binary dyads separated by a clear straight line. They are more like two points that hold up either side of a cosmic hammock with lots of intertwining strings between them.

The straight line we impose in our thinking can cause us a lot of trouble because it creates division where separation might not actually exist. Lines can also create square boxes in which we can throw things and categorize them. Boxes can then be moved and stacked so that some things become higher or take on greater significance than others. Boxes create false classifications that may be convenient for labeling but which do not reflect reality. Consider all the packaged labels we add to such things as gender, sexuality, religious perspective, race, class, political affiliation, and I could go on. All of these things fall within a spectrum of possibilities yet we insist in locking people into one definitive end or another.

We know that gender identity exists on a spectrum with people who experience their own gender in a complex variety of ways and that those ways can be expressed in a complex variety of relationships. We also know that years of trying to force that spectrum of sexuality and gender into two distinct boxes has caused harm and suffering. The same can be said for race and class. The distinctions and labels made in each of these areas are designed to separate and prioritize one classification over another and in each case those hierarchical divisions are false.

The problem is that we like our little boxes and the lines that make their separation possible. They make thinking easy. All we have to do is throw something (or someone) into one of those boxes and be done with it. Aha! I can see that this person belongs in the purple box and I know that all purple people are mean, they never eat tuna fish sandwiches, and they all drive cars with square tires. 

We love our lines and our boxes because they make it possible to make quick judgments about people and things. Instead of taking the time to really know and understand someone we just look at the label pasted on the box before they are shipped away to their proper category. But when you pre-judge something you are engaging in prejudice and, at the same time, you are limiting yourself from the possibility of encountering a unique person and a novel experience.

All of the universe is a whole but within that whole everything is constantly becoming something else and everything contains a little bit of its opposite within it. Nothing is purely one thing. Classifications are false. Straight lines are an illusion. We are all wonderfully beautiful evolving squishy blobs of uniqueness swirling about in an even greater and more beautiful blob of creative wonder. We are each slithering through fascinating and challenging curvilinear pathways forward. I hope you enjoy the journey.

In the name of that which you hold in your heart to be sacred, may it be so.