Hi, I’m Chase and I’m Afraid of Math

“The needs of the soul can for the most part be listed in pairs of opposites which balance and complete one another.”
—Simone Weil

This semester marks the first time I have taken math in four years. Normally that prospect would terrify me, especially considering I was no all-star at calculus in high school. Instead, I have come to view this change with relative hope and excitement (relative, of course).

Superficially, this is a moment for the liberal arts to shine. I, the medieval-studies student who hasn’t held a pencil in years, am taking on something that will widen and deepen my experience. I think that’s true.

Ultimately, mathematics will help me think more analytically. It is also true that such work will be hard, but that difficulty is itself part of the liberal arts and of the expansion of any muscle from the bicep to the brain.

This is not, however, just about the liberal arts, though I love them. It’s about sacrifice and the recognition that happiness and fun are not the only goods worthy of achievement. Truth be told, I am taking mathematics for both my own edification and because it is a requirement for a particular honor I’d like to receive. Perhaps that is vain, or at least self-serving, but it requires that I sit for 150 minutes a week in a room filled with freshmen, which as a senior is somewhat taboo. And while that is certainly not hanging on a cross or laying down one’s life to stand against the Nazis, it is a microcosmic example of what we human beings can accomplish.

For example, there was recently a controversy surrounding Joel Osteen and his wife. Truth be told, I know precious little about them, but my understanding is that they were criticized for teaching happiness and prosperity as the fruits of the gospel. The gospel is a lot of things, but it is, at least in some sense, about the beauty and power of sacrifice. Whether that sacrifice be walking ten miles with a man, giving all of one’s possessions away, or bearing one’s cross, it is not simply joy that emerges as a response to the Christian faith.

Human life, then, brings both bountiful joy and unbearable sorrow. But it is sacrifice that stands at the heart of that opposition. We may give up something as simple as time by taking a math class or we may go out and change the world, but those things will fulfill us in a way that has little to do with toothy smiles and rosy-cheeked grins.