Let us, for a moment, imagine that you and I are riding in the back of an RV rolling down the highway, and I drop a rubber ball that returns to my hand – did that ball return back to the same location it left? Internal to the context of the RV, we experience the ball as having returned approximately to the same location. But external to the RV we know that because we’ve been moving – it has actually returned to a very different location. And if we scale this idea even wider, we realize that the earth is spinning, ever-changing our location in relationship to space. Now consider that not only does the earth spin, it also circles around the sun . . . and our whole solar system is traveling around the center of our galaxy. So where did that ball actually end up?
Within this thought experiment, we are catching a glimpse of how ontological scaling alters our understanding of the very nature of existence . . . where we find out that even a simple concept like “here and there”– isn’t as simple as we first thought. In this way, ontological scaling is a clear demonstration of the multiplicity of contextual layers within which everything we think we know is nested. It also places into stark contrast our temptation to squeeze our whole understanding of existence into our own limited frame of reference. Because when you begin to peel the ontological onion, you can never un-see your own existence apart from the nearly infinite layers of context with which you find yourself.
So far we have only pondered what it means to widen the ontological scale, but when we attenuate it we can observe compositional unity. For example, we experience a simple wooden chair as a unified whole – while we can simultaneously recognize that it is made up of various component parts. And if we look at the wood grain we can see even more layers of composition . . . and we haven’t even begun to unpack all of the atomic and subatomic aspects that combine to be the chair. And like this chair, everything we encounter as a unified whole also exists as a fractal composite – your home, your car, even your body . . . are made up of the parts that serve the whole.
In the same way that the physical plain operates on a fractal scale, so it is with the metaphysical – there is a hierarchy innate to the whole of reality. The wooden chair is a complete whole, and yet, it exists to serve the room it’s placed in, and that room serves the building where we find it, and that building serves the purpose for which it was built. So that at every level of reality, a hierarchy of purpose can be discovered. Everything exists as a whole, yet contributes to a higher purpose, serving a greater purpose. And this is why I tend to think ontologically about my Christian faith confessions.
The gospel is a beautiful narrative about the self-emptying sacrificial love of Christ, reconciling us to himself – but this story does not exist in a vacuum . . . the whole of creation plays a part in the telling. Even Jesus himself, said that the very rocks would cry out if we didn’t (Luke 19:40). For all things were created by him, through him, for him “. . . and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1: 17). So by design this is the higher purpose for which all things were intended to serve . . . making Jesus the culminating purpose of existence.
. . . and remember this is our Father’s world
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