Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

I recently returned home from a workshop in Charlotte, NC. I spent three days rehearsing my freshman year in college so I can (hopefully) pass a professional certification exam in the near future. We covered material I had hoped to never see again from chemistry, physics, and economics…things like "PV=NRT" and "F=MA" (If you know what those letters mean, I feel your pain).

While doing a basic mathematics refresher I was reminded of a phrase I hadn't heard since middle school – "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally." As most of you know, it's a mnemonic device designed to help you remember the order of operations when solving math problems – Parentheses, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add, and Subtract. It's critical that you follow that order or you'll end up with the wrong answer. Thinking back, I always felt like subtraction got the short end of the deal (and I realize thinking about things like that makes me a bit strange). Why was it always last? As if it was the least important part of the process.

In life, subtraction can be a painful thing. Yet, growing up requires a great deal of subtraction – progress always requires a bit of 'letting go.' Moving from school to work we reduce a great deal of our previous leisure. Then, if we become parents we let go of the rest of our leisure! We eliminate, or at least attempt to eliminate, vices, habits and attitudes as we mature. Relationships are ended for various reasons – some good, some bad. And, saddest of all, we experience the subtraction of loved ones from our lives in the passing of time. All these subtractions have a great impact on who we are and who we become.

So, too, with the 'Christian' life and the life of religion and faith in general. By the time we're adults our theology is an amazingly complex mass of refined, yet often conflicting, beliefs. Often these beliefs become fixed as we seek some sense of certainty in our less than certain lives. But, what about that subtraction bit? Is there any room for subtraction in our personal belief systems? After building such a fine calculation of faith, what could we – what would we – possibly let go?

Jesus was the master of subtraction. He was always subtracting burdensome and unnecessary rules as detailed in his many encounters with the Pharisees. From the sick and outcast he subtracted the social stigma that bound them to the lowest places in society. And he even subtracted undeserved honor and status from the rulers and elite who often came with their 'brilliant' questions. Jesus established a mission of subtraction – removing pain and injustice wherever he went.

I think much of this occurred because of Jesus' willingness to subtract from the orthodoxy and religious and cultural norms of the day. This stands out to me particularly in Matthew 5 in Jesus' repeated refrain, "You have heard that is was said…but I tell you…" How did Jesus arrive at such different conclusions about life and faith than so many of his contemporaries, including John the Baptist? I've often wondered if it was the outgrowth of a great subtraction from his own life – the death of a loved one, a personal experience of injustice or simply the incongruence of a 'certain' faith amidst clearly uncertain times.

Regardless, Jesus seems to have set about the process of 'subtraction' as an adult. He unraveled the calculations he'd been given – undoing the additions, multiplying what had been divided and dividing what had been multiplied, inverting the exponentials and finally, and most graciously, removing the parentheses of exclusion. Life was no longer a problem to be solved, but a community of people, places, cultures and beliefs that had value and worth in and of themselves.

I've been about a journey of subtraction myself the last few years. I believe far less than I did before…yet, I also believe so much more. Constants have been replaced with variables, and I'm growing more comfortable with leaving them unsolved. – D. Christian Nix, 4/6/2011