I was watching an episode of NOVA the other night and caught a piece on the Gurung tribe of Nepal – speaking of beautiful jungles!  The Gurung people, twice a year, trek out into the scenic countryside to locate the hives of the Himalayan honeybee, and in aboriginal form, collect its golden wealth. The hives are always located under the overhang of precarious cliffs, and the Gurung have to belay over the precipice on hand-made rope ladders to get to them.  They are not in any other way tethered and trust these rickety ladders and their fellow tribesmen who are securing them from above with their very lives. As they climb down the ladders and reach the hives, they are in the midst of tens of thousands of honeybees determined to guard their home and labor.  Sans protective bee suits, the men on the ladders use primitive barbs attached to ropes and guided by a pole to stabilize the hive so that when it’s cut, it won’t plummet to the ground only to have its contents explode on impact, but instead can be gently lowered.  The cutting tool is also on a long pole furthering the need for good balance but affording a little distance from the hive’s defenders.  Each hive filled with honey weighs about 50 pounds, and on a successful mission, the Gurung will return to the village with hundreds of pounds of waxy hive filled with honey.  

In spite of the cinematography and characterization of the Gurung people, my favorite part of the story was a footnote that had to do with the hive itself.  Scientists have done in-depth studies of why the compartments of a hive are hexagonal when any shape with tessellation properties would work. Why not a square or a triangle? The answer is because the hexagon is the perfect shape for the task – it allows for maximum surface area and holding capacity for the honey while allowing the worker bee to put forth the least amount of energy in constructing it. The scheme is optimal, and scientists cannot come up with a better way to design a hive in spite of their computer generated models and advanced degrees!  For me, the more I study math and science, the more it proves God and never disproves him.  I have always been intrigued by the Fibonacci spiral – the mathematical laws and the patterns that show up in nature – the sunflower, the pine cone, a sea shell. The golden ratio, pi, base ten – I could never believe the universe was accidental and not by design of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God, although, admittedly, I don’t always understand why things happen the way they do.  

I reconcile it with three primary beliefs.  First, God does not view death as we do.  It is not an act of finality; it is simply a portal to another world.  Second, evil is not the cause of God but the absence of God. By allowing mankind to have free will, we ushered in sin, death and destruction.  God could disallow it, but he’d be limiting free will.  For whatever reason, it is clear that God has created us in His image and our ability to choose God or to not choose Him is paramount. Third, justice does not come in this life.  Often the wicked are rewarded and the innocent slaughtered here.  Justice will come in another realm.  

I am not naïve or have blind, unfounded faith.  On the contrary, my belief in God was hard fought – studying physics, astronomy, math, and other sciences; paying attention to nature and human nature; and reconciling the Word to the world.  It’s my vanity, to be a student. 

Recently, a verse in the Bible that I had read dozens of times without incident suddenly leapt out and grabbed hold of my brain and made me pay attention.  To put it in context, God had approached Abram, prior to changing his name to Abraham, to promise him a son and establish a covenant with him. God told an old man with a barren wife that their offspring would be as numerous as the stars, and in response the scripture records, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”  The epiphany came this time: Abram was not righteous because he kept God’s commandments or because he lived according to Mosaic law; Abram was righteous simply because he believed what the Lord spoke to him.   Suddenly I saw the obvious, the plainly written but never before registered truth:  faith alone makes us righteous.  And while God did not approach me with a vision of the future, he provided a coded world of patterns and symbols and mathematical and physical laws that proclaim His existence.  They are the signature of a universe by design and an omniscient designer in whom I believe.  Among many things, it is the Himalayan honeybee’s hexagon and the Golden Ratio of a Northern Moon Snail shell that scream of my God, my creator, and that increase my faith, therefore, my righteousness.