My husband loves prime numbers. 13 is not unlucky in our house. It’s a thing of beauty. As it happens, he married a woman born on a prime number and all of his kids and grandkids were born on prime numbers. Throw in his mother and mother-in-law and we’ve got him surrounded by primes. Unfortunately, his birthday is not prime.
I set out to prove to him that his birthday, though not prime, is truly a wonderful number. In the process, I think I’ve proved that every number is wonderful, with the astounding corollary that every person is wonderful. Wow! (Perhaps even Milo would be impressed now that he’s passed through the Phantom Tollbooth and back).
How do I prove this?
Prime numbers are rare, as numbers go, though there are an infinite number of them. But, ta-da!! All numbers can be reduced to prime numbers!
I discovered this doing the KenKen puzzles in The Seattle Times. (Backstory – my sister-in-law heard me raving about the glorious logic of Sudoku and asked a seemingly innocent question, “Are there other math puzzles in your paper?” And so I became addicted to KenKen.)
In the KenKen puzzles, the only numbers allowed in the puzzle boxes are 1, 2, 3, 4 for the easy puzzle or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 for the hard puzzle. (Yes, I know, 4 and 6 are not prime, but bear with me.) So if the answer to a KenKen puzzle box is 96X or 120X and you’ve got 4 boxes to fill, what do you do? Turns out, almost every non-prime number can be reduced to 4 factors – 1, itself, and some others. So, how to fill the boxes?
I start by factoring.
There’s an answer 96X in the hard puzzle. It can be factored into 4 and 24. 4 could go in a box but 24 is too big. 24 can be factored into 4 and 6, both of which can go in boxes! However, depending on where the boxes are placed and what their neighbors are, those factors may not work.
So, I go down to the lowest possible factors. 4 can be factored into 2 X 2 and 6 can be factored into 2 X 3. So at the bottom of the newspaper, I scribble 1 X 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 X 3 – all the factors in 96. Nothing scary about 2s and 3s, right? From here, I’ve got lots more fun work to insert the right numbers in the boxes, but the point is, I’ve reduced 96 to all prime numbers! Woohoo! I might not cotton to 96 at first, but by the time it’s factored into 2s and 3s (and don’t forget 1s), it’s primey-wimey and downright lovable!
And by extension, every number is primey-wimey and downright lovable!
Now let’s make the leap to people. I’m convinced that God designed the entire material world not only to delight and provide for the human race, but also to serve as an analogy for spiritual truths. God commands us to love our neighbors and our enemies and others. I’m pretty sure every person in the world is included there. What can prime numbers teach us about how can we love everybody???
Just as all numbers can be factored down to prime numbers, so can our neighbors and enemies be factored down to prime characteristics.
Take my husband, who is as different from me as night is from day, but can be factored down into primes. My husband is made in the image of God, he breathes air and drinks water, he eats food and uses his senses to interact with God’s glorious creation, he sleeps and wakes, he responds to love and dislikes being insulted, and he lives in one place at a time. He’s visible and has a beating heart, He was born as a baby and his days on earth are numbered. He’s aging and one day will die. All primes! So, though we be different in many ways, we are both composed of primes. Everything I just said about him, is true of me, and likely of you, too.
Let’s extrapolate to people living in countries on the other side of the globe, who don’t share our particular language or culture or seemingly anything. The fact is, pick a person anywhere, say, in Niger, and you’ll find that he or she is composed of the very same primes as my husband and I. And there are likely an infinite number (functionally anyway) of prime characteristics of people. Wow! We’re so alike, and comprised of these wonderful prime characteristics. What’s not to love?
The Christian apostle, Paul, makes some prime statements in his letters and speeches. Here’s a prime example:
“The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with human hands; neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things; and He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist.” (Acts 17:24-28a NASB)
Made from one, Paul says. “One” is the primest prime of all!!! I believe, with Paul, that humankind shares these prime characteristics:
God gives us life, breath and all things
We are made from one or one blood
We live in nations on the face of the earth (most of us)
We have times, boundaries and habitations
Seeking the God who made us is a prime directive
God is not far from us
In God, we live and move and exist
With all these primes in common, with God very much interested in our lives for good, surely we can learn to love our neighbors and give God pleasure in creating us?
Whatever is Good 