“Yes,” replied the girl, pleased to have been asked for her opinion. She was one of the two girls who had come with us to the seminar house. “I do agree with you. I can’t believe that our life on earth has no meaning. Or if it hasn’t, scientifically speaking, I think we have to put meaning into it, to make it meaningful for ourselves and others. When Hiroshi sees himself as a tiny speck in the vast universe, or his life as a brief moment in unending time, no wonder he can’t find any meaning in it! For meaning belongs not to space and time, which are just the conditions of material being, but to the mind, which is spiritual.”
“That reminds me,” chimed in her friend Chieko, “of our modern computers. Many of them nowadays don’t take up so much space, yet they contain a vast store of information. Not only do they contain that store, but they come out with it at once on being asked a question about it. That’s wonderful! And our human brain is rather like a computer. It stores up so much information out of our past experience and reading, though it isn’t always so prompt in answering questions, especially in an examination. Our memory may be more defective, but our intellect is more creative than any computer. Our brain may be small, but it is so complicated. It’s a little world in itself.”
“Then,” I added, “if you say the brain is a little world, and if we are conscious of our meaning within the universe, may we not conclude that there is meaning in that universe? After all, in the long process of evolution we human beings have somehow come to exist on this little earth of ours, as though points and centres of a vast circumference. So may not the meaning of which we are conscious in our minds, be a reflection of the greater meaning in the universe as a whole? Otherwise, if the universe had no meaning, it’s hard to see how such tiny beings as we are, with some meaning in our minds, could ever have emerged in the course of evolution.”
“But don’t some scientists say,” objected Hiroshi, “that if an eternal monkey were sitting at an eternal typewriter, perpetually typing on the keys, he’d sooner or later come out with one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, if not the whole collection of his plays? Surely, anything can happen by chance. And if anything can happen by chance, then this world with all the human beings in it may have happened by chance. Or if not by chance, how do you prove it?”
“I doubt very much,” I replied, “if any monkey merely by banging on a typewriter could ever come out with a single sentence of Shakespeare’s, let alone a whole sonnet. However long he banged, even if it were for an eternity, he’d never produce anything but nonsense. For nonsense is the typical product of chance, just as meaning is the product of intelligence. Sometimes when I sit at a piano and try to play something, imagining myself to be the world’s greatest pianist, I can’t produce anything but discords. The more I try, the more convinced I become that, short of going through the painful process of learning the piano properly, I’ll never come out with the simplest sonata of Mozart. There just is no proportion between the wildest efforts of chance and the controlled products of intelligence.”
“In that case,” concluded Iwao, “mustn’t we say that, if there’s meaning in the universe, there’s also an intelligent being who put that meaning there? I mean, if there’s meaning in our minds, which shows that we are intelligent beings, then the presence of meaning in the whole universe must point to the presence of some immensely intelligent being within or above the universe, mustn’t it? In this way, mayn’t our minds be compared to mirrors of the outside world? If our eyes reflect the outer forms of things, our minds reflect the inner meanings behind those forms. Then we can reflect on those meanings and put them together.”
“Certainly,” I agreed, “you may well draw such a conclusion. The assertion of mere chance only confuses our minds, just as the suggestion of mere size astounds us. But the conclusion from meaning to intelligent being satisfies our minds. Then, if we raise our minds from the meaning of which we are conscious within ourselves to that which we find in the world outside us, we find that we are looking from our limited intelligence to the unlimited intelligence of a supreme being. So who do you think he is? And what do you think he’s got to do with us? What do you think, Nobuo? You haven’t said a word all this time.”
“Well,” answered the taciturn Nobuo. “I’m not quite sure. I suppose the supreme being would be God, wouldn’t he? If we human beings have emerged out of the long process of evolution, as the scientists tell us so confidently, even if we are a very small part of the whole universe, then we must be a part, and an important part, of God’s meaning, mustn’t we?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s as if the universe in its slow rotating movement is gradually coming to a point or focus of meaning. And we, with our minds, are part of that meaning. That’s why Hamlet calls the gift of reason ‘godlike’. It somehow reflects in a limited manner the unlimited reason of God. This is why at the beginning of the Bible we read that God created man and woman in his own image and likeness. It’s because we have this gift of reason in us, more than any other beings we know of in this world. So it isn’t too much to conclude that we must be special objects of what is called divine providence.”
“What do you mean by providence?” asked Hiroshi, as I paused. “And how is it connected with intelligence?”
“Literally,” I answered, “providence means looking forward into the future, not just with the eyes, for the eyes can only see what’s present, but with the mind. With our mind we can consider not only what is actually around us, but also what may possibly happen to us. We can also make plans, which have to be realized in the course of time. So when we think of ourselves, small though we are, in relation to the greatness of God, we may come to see ourselves as a part – even, as Nobuo says, an important part – of his creative plan, which is in turn part of his providence.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Mariko. “There’s something wonderfully providential in the way everything comes to birth. Living things appear on earth one by one, not because of some mechanical fate or numerical chance, but by some power of love which runs through the universe. Everywhere there is love. Even in material objects, there is a kind of love in the law of gravity or attraction by which one thing is drawn to another. Then the more fully they are endowed with life and consciousness, as we see in animals, the more deeply we may discern in them a creative love prompting them to produce offspring and to care for them till they are old enough to care for themselves.”
“There indeed,” I remarked approvingly, “you’ve laid your finger on the deep principle governing the whole universe, which Dante calls in his Divine Comedy, “the love that moves the sun and the other stars”. Yes, it is love that makes the world go round. Even in the partly blind, instinctive loves of plants and animals for their offspring we may find a reflection of the deeply sympathetic love of the Creator for all his creatures. It is without doubt this infinite love of his that leads him to provide for each one according to its nature, and so too for us human beings. He also provides for us, I might add, by showing us how to provide for ourselves.”
“Isn’t that,” asked Chieko, “why God is also called Father? Because he provides for his creatures in the same way as a father provides for his children. Thinking of these two qualities, love and providence, it seems to me that love belongs more to a mother, and providence to a father. So if they are both perfectly present in God, may we not think of him as both father and mother?”
“Yes, I think we may,” I assured her. “When we call God ‘Our Father in heaven’, we surely don’t mean to deny that he is our mother, too. Rather, I would say that the former title includes the latter. As you say, in God we may find both fatherly providence and motherly