The sparrow

"Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.”

        What is a sparrow?

        It is a collection of atoms and molecules, a collection that grew out of much smaller collections (sperm and egg) in parent sparrows.

        An infinitely aware God, which is what we say that God is, would know not only when the sparrow falls to the ground, but would know the location of every atom and molecule in a single sparrow’s body, both its location now and where that atom or molecule came from, and where it will go when it departs from the sparrow. Almost none of those atoms and molecules would have stayed in the sparrow throughout the sparrow’s lifetime—the atoms and molecules are continually coming and going.

        So what is the sparrow?

        The sparrow is certainly a physical object that can be seen and touched. That relates the sparrow to organisms outside the sparrow. Those organisms could include other sparrows, other animals that the sparrow eats and that eat sparrows, and human beings who observe the sparrow.

        One way to look at a single sparrow is to say a particular sparrow is the history or story of how a particular set of atoms and molecules combined for a brief period of time (the lifetime of the sparrow) to result in the physical object that relates to all the beings in its lifeworld.

        From a course in ancient philosophy I recall that Aristotle would say that the sparrow is a combination of matter (the “stuff” from which everything in the world is made) and form (the pattern which the stuff takes to make a particular individual object).

        What Aristotle called the “form” I call “the story.”

        The word “form” suggests a pattern that is fixed in time and basically unchanged. The word “story suggests a “diachronic” pattern which is always changing and always unique.

        The sparrow is the story of one unique set of atoms and molecules coming and going to form an observable animal for the brief period of the animal’s lifetime.

        If God is truly infinite, God knows the story of every atom and molecule in the universe, and the stories of the various ways those atoms and molecules can clump together to form stars and planets and rocks, trees, animals, and human  beings.

 

The human being

        The particular set of atoms and molecules that make up a human being  is unique in that it results in the mysterious experience we call “consciousness.” It results in other unique experiences, such as a sense of freedom, of love and other emotions.

        Each human being has a story beyond the story of its atoms and molecules. Each human does things and experiences things in ways so unique that authors can write thousand page novels about one human person.

        From my standpoint as a Christian, each human’s story can include moments of praise and worship of the God responsible for that human’s life and for everything else in that human’s lifeworld.

        The ability to freely and consciously honor God makes each human and the human species in general unique in the natural world. It gives each human being a dignity and value that is not shared by anything else in creation.

        We are part of the sparrow world, but we are more than the sparrow. God knows each of us, and we can know God. God loves each of us, and we can love God.