Patterns and Fractals

As most of you who regularly read this know, I'm a full-time student now. One of my classes is Biology I.

This class has nearly killed me. But, I'm getting pretty close to an A, so I suppose death by Biology has its rewards. Hunk O Man is fond of saying "there's no one more motivated than a 50-year old college student."

This Bio class is a "hybrid," meaning simply this: you have to teach yourself. Most of it is offered online; we only meet once a month to take exams and hand in homework. If I didn't meet with a study group and do the labs, I'd be completely lost. This is not the kind of stuff you can always figure out on your own.

One of the assignments we regularly have is to go to the computer lab and either watch a DVD or a powerpoint presentation that addresses the current chapter. So yesterday, I decided to get all of them done for this particular set of chapters. And one was a DVD, about 30 minutes long, about cancer. We've learned all about cells -- now we're onto how the cells divide and grow, and why.

So I'm sitting in this tiny little room, alone, watching this DVD about cancer. There's a guy on it who's an expert, and who is also expert at putting everything into very plain language. He was talking about cancer cells, and how they work.

So he brought up some natural defenses we have in our bodies, called tumor-suppressor genes, which act like an emergency brake on the cancer cells. He also talked about how the cells in our body work together to accomplish a task, like building and maintaining a tissue, or organ. There's no central government telling them how to build, but each has DNA -- a copy of the blueprint -- and each one does their job.

Cancer cells, however, don't work according to the blueprint. They go off and do their own thing, running rampant in a chaotic way.

And something kind of ding went off in my mind --

Interesting thought: when sin came into the world, it may have been environmental. Adam and Eve were created sinless, and we know that sin is "passed down," i.e., we are born into sin, as Paul states. But what if sin was introduced into the world as something in our environment -- at a cellular or molecular level (or even smaller, probably) -- which got into us when we had to eat, or touch something? Once we did that, some cells broke off and did their own thing. We began to die, because death is the result of sin. We slowly break down and crumble back into the stuff of which we're made -- and maybe sooner if we get cancer.

Are you seeing the pattern here that I saw? God creates the world, then people mess it up. God creates our cells, then cancer screws them up. The bad stuff was always there, but it wasn't allowed in until we invited it, foolish folk that we all are.

In the end, it's all just the effects of sin, and going against God. But I love the way He reveals these little things everywhere. I like to play seek-and-find games on my computer. But it's even better when I'm playing them with God, and He shows me a pattern like this.

xoxox