There is a National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) where Mark Hamill, famous for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise of blockbuster films, visited—along with his bodyguard and Sarah Larson, a staff writer for The New Yorker, which led to my reading all about it when my latest (old-fashioned, paper, snail-mail-delivered) edition arrived today, four days before its publication date of June 30, 2025.
The executive director of MoMath is Cindy Lawrence, who informs visitors of the museum something that anyone who has ever been hooked on math already knows: “that math can be beautiful.” This notion was demonstrated visually in the movie, A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe (2001), a film depicting the life of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, John Nash. As he works through his equations, Nash sees a deluge of numbers appearing from above, then suddenly patterns form.
Math is beautiful when you see those patterns emerging, whether in Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, Calculus, or the other higher-order branches of mathematics that I never got to. The answers to all those equations and functions are simply beautiful patterns, floating down to settle into their perfectly assigned slots.
Not only is math beautiful, but it can also be spiritual. Pythagoras—whose name is attached to the famous theorem showing the relationship between the sides and the diagonal in a right triangle—is also known for founding a religious brotherhood in the 400s B.C. that connected mathematics to spiritual enlightenment, a numbers-based approach to discovering the harmonies of the universe.
This notion of mathematics as spiritual experience is presented in another modern biographical movie about a mathematician: the film is The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) and the mathematician is the brilliant Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), “who believed numbers and their relationships were not human constructs but divine revelations, offering insights into the universe’s mysteries” (Britannica online).
The idea that mathematics is both beautiful and spiritual is not surprising given what the Bible declares about the beauty and harmony of a universe that declares—that reveals—the power and awesomeness of its creator:
19 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (Psalm 19:1)
An example of this natural beauty is contained in the very first page of the Old Testament with the description of God’s creation of the universe:
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Genesis 1:1-4)
And there you have it: the invention of whole numbers, the counters. Just as the light is distinct from the dark, so is the first day distinct from the second, and third, and all the other integers all the way up to wherever we are on the axis to eternity.
It is this beauty and harmony of the universe that mathematics helps us to understand. Through the study of the world around us, we discover underlying God-given structures at work, structures expressed by the terms and figures in mathematics; sometimes, though, discoveries in mathematics open our eyes to previously unrealized structures in the world around us.
Mathematics is beautiful because it reflects and describes the beauty and order inherent in a universe created by a beautiful and orderly God.
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In this blog, I offer my thoughts and reflections on Bible passages, Christian doctrines, and the world around us—both present and past. Sometimes the posts will be casual and informal and sometimes they will get a little more “wonky” or academic as I apply my background in Biblical Studies and the Humanities to the topic at hand. Always, though, like a musical line floating above the main melody, there will be my Christian worldview. Sometimes, its presence will be obvious, while at other times its presence will be subtle, simply hovering above the conversation.
Grace and Peace,
Mike
p.s. Switching to a different genre, if you would like to listen to my most recent sermons, click here: https://www.nlfellowship.org/teachings/
I suggest that you also open the PowerPoint slides as you listen. These will give you the Bible verses and other illustrations that I present with my sermons.
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Christian Overtones 