F=ma, the Inverse-Square Law, and Other Sound Principles that Don’t Seem to Hold Up (Part 2)

OK think of the biggest thing possible again. In part 1 we thought about a sky scraper a mountain and a planet, which are all big, but what if we don’t stick to stuff this time but thought about ideas. Justin Beiber isn’t a big dude but he is a big deal (Though I was just informed that he’s not as big anymore because he cut his hair). Nanotechnology is the opposite of big but it is a big time emerging field impacting area from the medicine that heals us to the clothes we wear.  In a way, ideas are massive like stuff and principles like F=ma can be applied. 

We’ve seen this over and over on the political scene in the last several months. There have been several contenders in the republican primaries that have been accelerated to the front very quickly. This quick rise was facilitated by huge inputs of energy. However the rise of these people, or ideas, was deceptive because their thrust forward was made easier by their insignificant mass. The seemingly robust candidates were under massed which made them easy to stop when opposing forces came against them.

There are however ideas that are not easily diverted. I recently heard a missionary describe Japanese culture and the unyielding nature of the ideas embedded within it.  This description came from a man whose mission was to reach the hearts and minds of a people who, by his own description, are impenetrable to change. The question that arose for me was how do you move an immovable object?

His talk reminded me of a classic conundrum: What happens if an immovable object meets an unstoppable force?  Here the immovable object is the Japanese people and Jesus reminds us as he did his disciples in Matthew 19:26 that… “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

The unstoppable force is God.

A contributor on Askville.amazon.com described the paradox in this way.

 There would be an endless transfer of energy.

The correct set-up would be "What would happen if an immovable object were confronted with an unstoppable force." We will have to further define out unstoppable force as having infinite momentum (right?) and the immovable object having infinite inertia (right.) Therefore, our unstoppable force would have an infinite energy (measure this in joules/calories/whatever) and the unstoppable force would be able to absorb infinite energy.

An endless transfer of energy. An endless transfer of energy! This reality, derived from a paradox, was evident in the way Japan infuses the mission with energy and the way ministry is impacting Japan.  

More to come on this endless transfer of energy and more principles that don’t seem to hold up in future posts.