Flatland

When I was a teenager our high school had a special assembly for which we had to read a book ahead of time. It was the book Flatland by the Rev. Dr. Edwin Abbott. The assembly included a special guest speaker who gave a riveting lecture, using the book as a springboard, on geometry and the possibility of the fourth dimension. No small task given his audience. More than most things in high school that lecture, and its possibilities, have stayed with me over the years. This week I reread the book Flatland.

It is a little fable from 1884 which has been used for years to instruct children about mathematical concepts. It is also an amusing satire on English Victorian society. But its true genius is its ability to help us imagine a world beyond this one as well as explain our inability of describing it using language. 

The story takes place in a world called Flatland, which has only two dimensions. It is told from the perspective of a square. Over the course of the book the square visits “Lineland,” a world of one dimension, and “Pointland,” a world of no dimensions. He discovers he cannot get the Beings in these dimensions to believe in or even conceive of the two dimensions in which he lives. Then the Square is visited himself by a sphere from “Spaceland,” and is taken out of Flatland and brought to this world of three dimensions. The Square is flabbergasted at the difference. When he returns to Flatland, he tries to explain to his fellow citizens about this new dimension, this place that is beyond their world, but bigger, with entirely new ways of being. He cannot put it into words. For instance, in trying to describe “depth,” a concept unheard of in Flatland, the best he can come up with is the phrase “Upward, not Northward.” While technically correct, it doesn’t explain the reality of three dimensions at all.

This brilliant, humorous, unassuming book challenges us to imagine worlds beyond ours. And at only 82 pages, I highly recommend it.

It reminds me of the stories of people who have had near-death experiences, or those who have had mystical experiences, or those who have been overwhelmed with an experience of the Divine in church or elsewhere. How do you put such a thing into words? There is no language, because all language falls woefully short. Language can point to God, but it cannot capture God.

I think the parables of Jesus were Christ’s attempt to come as close as he could to describing the Reign of God using limited human language. The parables are not simple fables, as many believe, but instead are complex stories that are meant to be shocking and weird. This oddness allows them to be read on many different levels. God’s reality is too magnificent to be explained by mere words. Parables, stories that point to the truth of the glory of God, stories that leave space and unanswered questions for the complex reality of God to shine through, are ultimately more accurate than a simple black and white fable.

I am reminded of the wonderful poem by Emily Dickinson entitled, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” 

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —