One of my goals with Fractal Faith is to give you real-world examples. It’s too easy to get lost in the abstract theology. Let’s make it real.

With that in mind, see the video below. It’s The Pit applied to your very life. Fractally, of course.

If you want the calendar template you see in the video, I’m sharing it with all Fractal Faith subscribers. Send me a message here on Substack and I’ll get you the link.

I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me.

The Big Bang happens at midnight on January 1st. Earth appears in September. Human beings don’t show up until December 31st at 11:54 pm.

Practically the whole year passes before we arrive.

That poster rewired how I think about time. A century feels enormous, but on the Cosmic Calendar, all of recorded human history fits inside the year’s last few seconds.

Suddenly, the phrase “a long time” took on a different meaning. Are we talking about a long time waiting for the airplane? Or a long time between Earth and humans appearing?

It depends on the context, of course. But here’s the strange thing… regardless of the actual number, whether it’s one thousand seconds or one thousand centuries, you see the same patterns.

And it doesn’t only apply to time. Almost everywhere you look, the same rules apply at every scale. The same pattern that shows up at one size shows up at every size.

River systems.

Trees.

Families.

Careers.

The life of Christ.

My first article claimed that Christianity works less like a religion and more like an explanation of reality. It was the fractal nature of reality that really gave me that "aha” moment.

Seeing reality as fractal may unlock it for you, too.

If the word “fractal” confuses you, don’t worry, it’s not that scary. I encourage you to make it an everyday term, because it will change how you see and think.

A fractal is a repeating pattern at different scales. By scale, think of size. There are smaller scales and larger scales. Russian dolls are a great example. The same pattern—the doll—repeats at different sizes.

The best way to see fractals is to look at examples. Check out the pictures on this Fractal Thinking post I wrote a few years back. See enough fractals, and they’ll click.

You’ve likely seen side-by-side images like the one below. Is it a river system, or a human body’s nervous system?

_{“Neuron” by Bob Jacobs, Colorado College — CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)}

That’s kind of a wild question, isn’t it?

The Mississippi delta is 200 miles long, while the average height of a human is 5 feet 8 inches. Shouldn’t it be obvious which one is which? The size difference is enormous.

That’s the astonishing fact of fractals—they make scale irrelevant. Why does this matter? Because the same rules apply at every scale.

It could be mathematical rules. Let’s say we figured out a mathematical pattern to the human nervous system. Perhaps the nerves branch at certain intervals and angles.

Without fractal thinking, still blinded by the scale gap, like the gap between a human body and a river system, we might never think to apply the same rules.

But when we think fractally, and we make a discovery at one scale, we immediately recognize that our “aha” moment applies to other scales. The hydrologist who discovers a mathematical pattern in a tiny backyard creek may immediately realize it explains the behavior of the entire Mississippi River.

How this Applies to Christianity

Fractal thinking matters for Christianity because when we can see the same pattern at different scales, we begin to see God in everyday moments, even the small ones. God can be intimidating if we think of him only as big, cosmic, and removed from our day-to-day. But the fractal thinker sees no such separation.

Take Jesus Christ. In the Christian worldview, he was not some ordinary guy. He was God himself: fully God and fully human. And he did not first appear in the first century, but was there since the beginning of the universe.

Look at this Bible verse from the Gospel of John:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

John 1:1-3, 14

Focus on this line: through him all things were made.

Do you see how this is a much larger claim about Jesus than the average person understands? I attended Catholic school as a child and never learned this about Jesus. He was not just a moral teacher. The entire universe was created through him.

In other words, Christianity explains the underlying structure of the universe.

Back to fractals. The universe was created through Jesus Christ, and Christ left a fingerprint. Every created thing carries it. Look closely enough at anything… a tree, a sparrow, your crappy Tuesday afternoon… and you’re looking at a piece of Christ.

Christians have a word for that fingerprint: logos, lowercase. And a word for Christ himself, the one behind every fingerprint: Logos, uppercase.

Saint Maximus the Confessor, a 7th-century theologian, built an entire doctrine around the logoi . Every created thing has a divine principle embedded in it, each logos a particular expression of the one Logos, Christ.

“To contemplate any creature deeply is to contemplate an aspect of the Logos... would he not know that the one Logos is many logoi?”

— St. Maximus the Confessor

One Logos, many logoi.
One Russian doll, many dolls inside.
Fractals.

How Fractals Show up in The Pit

Go back to our river example. Let’s imagine the largest version of that fractal is the Mississippi river and the smallest is the backyard creek. If reality was created through Christ and if reality is fractal, we might expect a similar structure.

What is the largest pattern of reality? It’s the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Remember that Cosmic Calendar poster on my wall? Jesus is born at 11:59:55 pm, which is five seconds before the calendar runs out. And yet John’s Gospel opens by telling us: “In the beginning was the Word... through him all things were made.”

Jesus had been holding the calendar since the beginning. At near midnight, he stepped into it.

• God enters his creation and becomes man in Jesus Christ

• Christ dies on the cross

• Christ enters death, Hades, and defeats it

• Christ rises from the dead, still fully God and fully human

• Christ ascends into heaven and returns in glory to God the Father

Now let’s apply fractal thinking. Someone might accept the incarnation yet think, “Sure, but that’s all on a grand scale. It’s cosmic. How does Christ’s incarnation apply to my everyday life?”

The fractal thinker sees the connection immediately. The same rules that apply at the cosmic scale apply at every lower scale. This meta-pattern is what I demonstrated in my previous post, “The Pit.”

Now that we understand fractals and the concept of the Logos and logoi, we know that the incarnation applies at every scale. Not just Christ, but our everyday lives.

I once heard Jonathan Pageau use the example of a person’s career, and I think it’s perfect.

Our Careers as Fractal

We are born and become children. When we reach our late teens, we leave childhood and enter adulthood, at which point we take up a vocation. We begin our careers.

This leaving of childhood and entering adulthood is where we enter the test, or challenge. Our skills meet reality as we both win and lose battles. Over the decades, if we keep getting back up after we fall, we forge our character. And we’re rewarded at the end. We leave the battlefield and enjoy our well-earned rest. In modern day, we call this phase retirement.

That’s the major arc: Childhood > Career > Retirement. It’s the Pit pattern. Descent into darkness, followed by resurrection.

If that’s the big pattern, we already know it contains smaller patterns. And those smaller patterns follow the same rules.

For example, each workday is a model of the pattern of your career. Each day is a test, just like your whole career. Each workday you wake up, walk out the door, get in the car, and leave for work. It’s similar to being born and leaving home once you reach adulthood.

The workday is a miniature version of your career. And within that workday, the pattern repeats.

At 11 am, you leave the comfort of your office and walk into the conference room. Time for your big presentation to the boss.

It opens easily enough, with introductions and a little small talk. Then comes the valley: your boss pushes back in front of everyone, and for a few seconds, you're tested. The dust settles, you get nods of approval, and you return to your office.

After work, you drive home and your spouse awaits with a glass of wine. Forty years later, after many of those workdays, you’re rewarded with retirement. You’re gifted a gold watch.

I sketched this visual showing this fractal pattern of a person’s career.

Why Does Seeing Fractally Matter?

Seeing your career as a fractal is useful, although I wouldn’t say utility is the primary benefit. I’m more so trying to point out the pattern of Christ, of the Incarnation, in our everyday lives.

Still, it’s helpful to look at the benefits, which I’ve personally enjoyed. The benefits flow from what I said earlier about fractals: the same rules apply at every scale.

For one, noticing these patterns helps you develop mental endurance. For me, as an entrepreneur trying to bring ideas into the world, I now realize that the Pit is part of the journey. I’m no longer as discouraged by setbacks and failures. I understand they’re part of the pattern.

Speaking of rules, a country song I love comes to mind: If you’re going through hell, by Rodney Atkins.

Read these lyrics and try to spot the Pit pattern:

Well you know those times when you feel like there’s a sign there on your back
Things go from bad to worse
You think they can’t get worse than that
And then they do

— Rodney Atkins, “If You’re Going Through Hell”

The rule Atkins proposes: If you’re going through hell, keep on going.

Rules don’t only exist for the bottom of the Pit, however. Rules exist in the upper-right quadrant, too. That’s where you achieve glory.

For glory, one rule I took far too long to learn: celebrate your wins. When you accomplish something, go through the ritual of celebration. Don’t skip it.

And don’t celebrate just for the psychological reasons so many modern experts champion. Do it because you’re modeling the pattern of Christ, which is the pattern of reality.

See this verse from the book of Timothy in the New Testament:

He appeared in the flesh,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
was taken up in glory.

1 Timothy 3:16

He ascended in glory. Glory is a state of honor or achievement that invites celebration. When the sports team returns home in glory, they celebrate. When you retire from your career, celebrate.

But don’t only celebrate the big instances of glory.

Fractal thinking teaches us otherwise. Celebrate the small wins, too. Just do it proportionally. A good day at work? Enjoy a glass of wine. A promotion? Take that luxury vacation.

The same rules apply at every scale.

The Fractal Pattern in Art

This incredible painting by Fra Angelico focuses on the scene after Christ has died, and before Christ’s resurrection. This event is called the Harrowing of Hell. Christ enters hell and defeats it, saving the souls that were trapped. You can see him grabbing Adam’s hand, followed by Eve and John the Baptist.

Notice two things in this painting:

• The fractal nature: Christ dies (1) and, once in Hell, (2) defeats death.

• Christ fixes what Adam broke, redeeming Adam. That’s why Christ is often called “The New Adam.” It’s once again the pattern of death and resurrection.

You can see the entire arc in Raphael’s Transfiguration. It depicts the moment Christ is transfigured before Peter, James, and John.

His face shines with divine glory, a preview of his resurrected body. And, according to the Christian tradition, a glimpse of humanity’s final destiny.

Christ stands at the peak of the mountain. Your eye moves naturally downward… to Moses and Elijah, the apostles, the crowd… finally to the demon-possessed boy at the bottom.

The composition shows the pattern:

Christ
Moses and Elijah
The apostles
The crowd
The demon-possessed boy

Modern people often assume hierarchy is about worth. Christianity sees hierarchy differently. It’s about roles, purpose, and ultimately—service. The closer a person is drawn to Christ, the greater the responsibility to pour themselves out for those below. This is demonstrated Biblically when Christ washes the feet of his Apostles.

Paul makes the same claim about Christ, writing to the Colossians:

“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Colossians 1:16-17

Here’s what I’ve come to realize…

Reality is tiered, not flat.

Everything participates in what’s above it. When I attend church, I walk from the outside world into the nave, a holy place. At the front is the sanctuary, and within it the altar and tabernacle, the holiest place.

It’s a hierarchy of holiness.

Christ the Logos is both the source of that structure and its destination. Remember the words from Colossians: through him and for him. Cause and destination.

Every career, workday, meeting, or other Pit is moving toward Christ, whether you notice it or not. He completes everything because everything finds what it’s for, its purpose, in him.

We all see the same world… beauty, love, moral intuition… and patterns repeating everywhere, from DNA to galaxies. Christianity shows us the deeper structure holding all of it together.

This view of Christianity is the one I wish I were given as a kid. I’d have paid far more attention in class. Christianity explains why anything exists, what the universe is, what human beings are, and how knowledge is possible.

It’s the only explanation I’ve found that gives a satisfying account for our world.

My best friend had just moved to Colorado. We snowshoed six miles into a ghost resort—a ski area abandoned for decades—carrying our boards and gear through the frost. Somewhere in the journey, I stumbled down a ravine and nearly into a river, my boots touching the freezing water.

That was close enough to scare the life out of me.

It took all my energy to climb out. We trudged up the old pre-cut slope to the ski patrol hut at 13,000 feet. In the morning, we were treated to sunshine and fresh powder.

I had to go down before I could go up.

This is the fifth post in Fractal Faith. If you’re new here, my first article makes the foundational claim: that Christianity is an explanation of reality, not merely a religion.

Now, we’ll go deeper.

In Fractal Faith, I’m going to show you patterns. Structural patterns that appear at every scale of reality, from biology to mythology to your own life.

You’ve probably seen that Bob Marley poster, the mosaic made from hundreds of tiles, each tile a tiny photograph. Step back, and they resolve into a single face.

When I stand back and look at the poster of reality, I see the face of Christ. One pattern isn’t a shocker, but ten gets interesting. You begin to think, “This is not a coincidence.”

The Pit is one tile. Now, let’s look at it closely.

Example of The Pit

Jonah is in a whale. Pinocchio, too. Gandalf is dragged into Khazad-dûm, and Little Red Riding Hood is swallowed by the wolf. Odysseus descends to meet the dead, and Cooper tumbles into a black hole. Joseph is at the bottom of a pit. Harry Potter, too.

Once you see this pattern, you can’t unsee it. It’s The Pit.

You see it in mythology, fairy tales, blockbusters, Scripture, psychological studies, and the lives of people you know.

Every tradition has a version of it:

• The person descends into darkness.

• There is a “cave”.

• Something happens in the cave.

• The person emerges transformed.

No, this isn’t just the hero’s journey that screenwriters teach. It’s the meta-pattern the hero’s journey is based on. And the hero’s journey is just one of many contexts in which The Pit is revealed.

Let’s look more closely at examples. The symbol in parentheses will be shown in the hand-drawn illustrations below.

Lord of the Rings - Gandalf the wizard (staff) is fighting an ancient demon, the Balrog (demon face). The Balrog falls into the pit, a deep mine beneath a mountain (The Pit).

The Balrog pulls Gandalf down with him, and they fall into a pool of water. The water is significant. In this scene, the water symbolizes Gandalf's baptism into his new life.

He finally achieves his new life after battling the Balrog all the way back up to the top of the mountain. On top of the mountain, nearly dead, Gandalf slips away into a sort of dream state.

When he returns, he’s Gandalf the white (enhanced staff), who has new powers and abilities. Same Gandalf, but transformed. His friends don’t even recognize him at first. Kind of like how the resurrected Jesus wasn’t recognized by his friends at first.

Harry Potter - The Harry Potter story involves many descents into The Pit, but one instance makes The Pit especially obvious. It’s when Harry (glasses) descends into a subterranean cavern known as the Chamber of Secrets (The Pit).

In the Chamber, Harry battles the Basilisk (snake), a serpent-like monster. The monster is notable because The Pit is associated with chaos, and monsters are symbols of chaos, the embodiment of the unknown, danger, and the uncontrollable.

The Pit… darkness… chaos… the unknown… monsters… are you seeing the pattern?

After a difficult battle, Harry defeats the Basilisk and leaves the Chamber by flying out of the entrance while holding onto a Phoenix. Harry is upgraded (enhanced glasses) in a number of ways.

Jonah - Jonah (boat) is a prophet who refuses his calling. God tells him to go to Nineveh, but Jonah runs the other direction and boards a ship. A storm rises, Jonah takes responsibility for betraying God, and the sailors throw Jonah overboard (The Pit).

He’s swallowed by a great fish. Belly, darkness, three days.

Jonah prays: “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.”

The fish vomits him onto dry land. The transformed Jonah (fast boat) goes to Nineveh, where everyone in the city repents and returns to God.

Before The Pit, Jonah was on a boat moving in the wrong direction, running away from his calling. After The Pit, he moves toward it.

One detail worth noticing: Jonah spent three days in the whale’s belly. Jesus spent three days in the tomb.

Prodigal Son - The younger son (stick figure with money bag) demands his inheritance early, the cultural equivalent of telling his father “you’re already dead to me,” and leaves home for a life of self-indulgence in a distant land.

His money runs out. A famine hits, and the Prodigal Son resorts to feeding pigs (pig), the lowest possible place for a Jewish man. He’s hungry enough to eat the slop he’s giving the animals.

Something happens in the darkness (The Pit). He sees clearly and decides to go home.

While he’s still a long way off, his father sees him and runs to him. The transformed Prodigal Son (stick figure in robe) is given a robe, a ring, sandals, and a feast.

The “dead” son is now alive

Your Career - You leave the comfort of childhood and the home you grew up in (stick figure).

You build your skills, find your work (laptop), and are constantly tested. When you succeed, you climb. When you don’t, you fall.

Any career has ups and downs, but your entire career—which spans your lifetime—is an example of The Pit.

At the end, you retire (trophy) and come out the other side a changed person.

Jesus - Finally, we arrive at Christ. My argument is that this is the meta-pattern. Christ is the bell that rings in a cave, and every other example is merely an echo.

Christ’s descent begins before the cross. God (plain cross) takes on flesh—the infinite becomes finite—and the eternal enters time. That’s already a descent.

Then the betrayal, the arrest, the trial, and the cross. Then physical death and the tomb for three days.

At this point, every other figure in this list was the edge of the pit, the place they approached but didn’t fully enter. Christ enters it completely and even descends into Hades. On the third day, the tomb is empty.

Jesus is not resuscitated, but resurrects… on his own. We’ll return to that idea in a future article.

Christ resurrects as the same person. Thomas even puts his fingers into the wound. But Christ is transformed beyond recognition. He walks through walls, appears and disappears, and looks so physically different (radiant cross) that even his closest friends don’t recognize him.

Those are just a few examples of The Pit. See the drawings below for their visuals. Notice the V-Pattern. It’s an important pattern to get familiar with.

(Personal note: I have little to no experience drawing, but I’ve always wanted to. I’m using this opportunity with Fractal Faith to develop that skill. No doubt I’ll visit “the pit” numerous times during this endeavor.)

The Pit in Art

Do these paintings of Biblical stories hit differently after learning about The Pit? Can you identify which stage in the V-Pattern each represents?

Top: Jonah emerges from the Whale. Jan Brueghel the Elder, c. 1600. Middle: Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt van Rijn, c. 1668. Bottom: Christ emerges from the tomb, Fra Angelico, Noli Me Tangere, c. 1440. All works public domain.

In Music

Many songs use the language of the Pit, both in the musical notes themselves and in lyrics.

Below is an example of The Pit from the song "All is Well" by folk singer Avi Kaplan, who frequently incorporates spiritual symbolism.

I dove into the dark
I swear I almost drowned
But I could see the stars looking up
As I was sinking down

- “All Is Well,” Avi Kaplan, I’ll Get By (2021)

The Pattern, Broken Down

The pattern of the Pit goes like this.

Descent

Something pulls you under. Jonah gets thrown off a boat. Gandalf falls into Khazad-dûm.

Darkness

Everything you relied on stops working and you’re stripped down to the bare essentials.

Moses spent forty years in the desert. The Palace, royal status—all of it gone. Tony Stark is tossed into a cave, stripped of his next-level technology, with only a car battery keeping him alive.

Transformation

In the dark, if you survive, something changes you. The pit burns off whatever part of you was fake. What’s left is the real you, and that real part starts to grow. You return, but you’re not the same person.

The prodigal son gets humbled enough to return home. Gandalf the Grey returns as Gandalf the White. Harry Potter survives, earns his lightning-bolt scar, and gains powers like being able to speak to snakes.

The person who emerges from The Pit doesn’t just survive, as surviving means you merely made it through. Transformation means you have emerged as a different person.

Your wounds fade, but remain as proof of your time in The Pit.

The Biggest Pit of My Life

I used to think my life was so unique. As I got older and looked back, I saw that it fit these patterns. Especially one instance that stands above the rest, my deepest journey into The Pit.

That journey stripped me of everything I had built my identity around: my business, my savings, my engagement, and the future I thought I was building. All collapsed at once.

I kept fighting, even at rock bottom. Eventually, I came out.

I rebuilt my career, met my wife, started a family, and I found myself holding gifts I never could have imagined before the descent.

It’s created an interesting tension. On the one hand, I’d rather not endure more suffering. On the other hand, I’m only the person I am because of my journey through The Pit.

In the upcoming posts in this series, I’ll share:

• The fractal nature of the Pit

• Why Christ is the source of this pattern

• Other patterns you often find with The Pit

This is Fractal Faith. Reality at every scale, all traceable back to one meta-pattern, the Logos.

That is, Jesus Christ.

The speaker was cowboy-shirt-wearing billionaire Chris Sacca, who I recognized from Shark Tank. His speech lived up to the hype, for the most part. He was down-to-earth, funny, and inspiring.

But then he got to the punchline, the big takeaway for the graduates in the audience.

“So how will we know when we’ve done it right?,” he says to them.

“What is the key to success?”

“Happiness. In my experience, it all comes down to happiness.”

His words felt like a balloon deflating.

Now, in the past, in my atheist days, I wouldn’t have disagreed. Sure, happiness might have seemed a bit shallow. But I couldn’t do any better.

And it really gets to the question Sacca originally asked: “How will we know when we’ve done it right? What is success?”

When he asked that question, my mind explored the possibilities.

Is happiness the goal of life?

Happiness is fleeting. When my cousin passed away from a rare disease in her late 30s, I wasn’t happy. When my parents divorced, I cried.

You’re not supposed to be happy in those moments. You’re supposed to be sad.

And the happy moments? When I received my college acceptance letter, after my first date with Laura, when my son was born… happiness arrived. But so did other things.

“Crap, college is a lot of work.”

“I hope I don’t screw this up with Laura.”

“Can we afford a family?”

Happiness comes and goes in waves, and that’s normal. External circumstances pull us between ups and downs.

Sacca would, of course, agree with me. And he would redefine happiness as more than just an emotion. He’d say, “It’s contentment” or something like that.

But this is demanding too much of the word happiness. Happiness, as the goal of life, stretches the concept beyond its meaning.

We need another target.

What about “making an impact?”

When I was in college, man, did I want to make an impact.

I adopted clean energy as my cause and launched projects to rid the world of dirty fossil fuels. I was sure our projects would make headlines. We’d win awards and be interviewed by Oprah.

Yet I was partying, drinking, doing drugs, chasing women, and avoiding the difficult conversations I should have been having with my family.

My university’s motto was: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Which is a very Christ-like saying, and ironically, the exact opposite of the path I chose. Instead of getting my own house in order, I wanted to solve the world’s problems.

But say you do get your house in order. You fix the inside and turn outward. There's still a problem: no one can agree on what the impact should look like.

Everyone has a different answer. For some environmentalists, impact means a world with fewer humans so that nature may thrive. For some technologists, it means a world where robots eliminate all labor, giving humans ultimate comfort and abundance.

G.K. Chesterton had the right response:

“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision. Instead, we are always changing the vision.”

What about achievement?

Achievement was my favorite drug, and it’s still the preferred drug of my peers.

“Get to the next level.”

“Scale your business.”

“Find success.”

I consumed a steady diet of personal development books from people like Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, and Grant Cardone. I joined masterminds where my worth was measured by my bank account balance and photos with gurus.

The pressure to achieve peaked when I moved to Los Angeles. The mountain was right there, and all you had to do was climb it.

But it’s a false god, and in my pursuit of it, I tripped, fell down the mountain, and left Los Angeles having hit rock bottom.

I lost my savings to a fraudulent entrepreneur I'd met through a mastermind. My fiancée and I broke up. I gave tens of thousands more to a guru whose promises proved empty.

The city of stars stripped me of everything I had. The one bright spot was that it left me vulnerable enough to finally question it all.

I had chased happiness, impact, and success, and all three had failed me.

“Have I really been pursuing the right goals?” I sat there in tears.

We’ve seen this story before

Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. He came back to depression and alcoholism. Anthony Bourdain built a life most people envied, and then he ended that life. Tim Ferriss, the king of modern personal development, recently wrote an article admitting the whole model is broken.

He figured out that self-improvement requires you to stay broken, and that the only way out is to transcend yourself. But when he went looking for what self-transcendence actually meant, he landed on a campfire scene in Montana, sitting with friends under the stars.

These stories are endless. Yet the secular world is still searching for a better answer.

I couldn’t find a better answer either, until I became a Christian.

The answer didn’t come by looking to my side. It came from looking up.

A Seat at the Divine Council

Ask a Christian the goal of life, and their answer is simple. The goal is to become holy.

As I explained in my first post, the skyscraper of reality points upward toward a destination. The Catholics call it sainthood. Eastern Orthodoxy calls it theosis. The destination is the same: a seat at God’s table. Participation in his life, reigning with Christ.

We are called to be like Jesus, which means transforming ourselves by casting away sin. This answer fills the gaps of the other three.

Happiness fails because it can’t survive suffering. It's the glass facade, not the load-bearing beam.

Sainthood promises something more durable than happiness. When my cousin died, when my parents divorced... those weren’t obstacles to the goal. Because in the Christian frame, suffering is where we find meaning. I wouldn’t be the man I am today without that suffering.

Making an impact fails because no one can agree on the vision. Mother Teresa had the answer to that:

“I am not called to be successful. I am called to be faithful.”

She didn’t set out to change the world. She set out to be faithful, caring for the sick and poor in Calcutta. Changing the world was a side effect.

Achievement fails because it’s a false god. You can always tell which god someone worships by what they sacrifice for.

I’m watching a TV show right now, Your Friends and Neighbors. Jon Hamm plays a rich hedge fund manager who comes home to his mansion and finds his best friend sleeping with his wife. The divorce follows, then the bills, and then a life of crime just to keep up with the life he built.

His wife later tells him that he had disappeared from them long before any of it happened. He sacrificed his family on the altar of achievement.

It’s a trope because it’s true.

Happiness, impact, and achievement share the same problem: the self is at the center.

• Happiness asks, “What makes me feel good?”

• Impact points outward, but you still choose the cause and define the vision.

• Achievement asks, “How high can I climb?”

In all three, the self is setting the terms.

Sainthood asks you to step down from the throne. It gives you something worth sacrificing for that doesn’t take everything else with it.

As Jesus says in Matthew 16:25

“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

That's the goal of life.

And for the first time, I had a foundation I didn't build myself.

Now, since becoming an Eastern-leaning Catholic, I realize, “She is the Chiefs.”

How I Got Here

I was baptized Catholic and attended Catholic school through 4th grade. Then we moved to Virginia and my parents asked me which school I wanted, public or private. My cousin was the only person I knew in our new town, and he attended the public school, so the answer was easy: public.

Statistically, I would have fallen away from the church at some point anyway. It happened earlier, and I was an atheist until my mid-30s.

Today, although I’m back in the Catholic Church, when I’m sitting in the pew, I often look East.

I credit the Eastern Orthodox Church and its teachings with much of my return to Christianity. It speaks a language the Western Church wasn’t speaking to me.

A Quick History of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Split

The Catholic and the Orthodox Church were once one. The Church formed around a long line of apostles beginning with Peter, whom Christ tasked with building his Church.

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
— Matthew 16:18

In the 11th century, for various reasons, the Undivided Church split. It was a great tragedy, and many pray that it one day reunites.

The Pattern, Hiding in Plain Sight

The East speaks in more of a visual, pattern-based language. This is the language my ears, or more accurately, my eyes, are attuned to.

It works by recognizing categories. And one of the primary categories is a pair: the head and the body. For me, the head/body relationship became a new way of understanding everything: God, the story of Jesus, and the church.

It’s a fairly simple pattern. But it’s deceptively simple because it’s fractal, meaning it appears at every scale of reality. Let me give you an everyday example.

Think about the phrase “head of the household.” You instantly know what that means. In the Western world and certainly in the Christian tradition, that role is typically filled by a man, but I want you to see the distinction between the role and the specific person. They are separate, and it’s the role that’s the key part of the pattern.

What does the head of the household do? He protects, provides for, and has the final say.

The other half of the pattern is the body. The body is the rest of the family: the members (spouse, kids), and more than that... the house, the morning routine, the handprint mold on the mantel, the yearly Christmas tree lighting.

Now let’s jump down a fractal level...

Your body has a head, and it is your heart. You might say, wait a minute, the heart is inside the body, how can it be a head?

That’s the fractal move. Like Russian dolls, you’ll find the head/body pattern nested within itself. Within every body, you’ll find a new head and body.

In your physical body, your heart is the head at this inner level. The Eastern tradition calls it the center of your being. What you receive there transforms you, and the transformation radiates outward into the rest of your life.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
— Proverbs 4:23

Our language reflects this understanding of the heart. Pascal, a mathematician and scientist, wrote: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” When we say “trust your heart, not your head,” we’re not talking about your organs. Rather, it’s a difference in fractal levels. We’re essentially saying: step down from the head/body pattern into the heart/body pattern.

That’s what I mean by jumping a fractal level.

So, at one level you have your physical head and body.
Step down, and you have your heart and the rest of your body.
Step down again, and we find your cells.

Zoom in on your heart and we’ll find cells. Each cell has a head: the nucleus. And a body: the organelles, each with its own roles and rituals.

I hope you’re noticing that this is not just a metaphor. It’s structural; it’s real. This is what I meant in my very first article about Christianity being not merely a religion, but an explanation of reality.

Let’s keep going, but reverse our direction...

We went down to the cell. Now let’s travel up past the heart, past the whole person, and further still, to the level of an organization—a sports team.

The head of a sports team is its spirit. The logo embodies that spirit best. When you wear the logo, you’re saying, “I belong to this particular body.”

Knights wore the colors of the lord they served. My cousins bought “The Broas Family” sweatshirts for our family reunion. The woman at the park? Her jersey declared, “I am part of this body. I am the Chiefs.”

Because without fans, there is no Chiefs.

Seeing this pattern changed me. Whether I was talking about a cell, a person, a sports team, or a city—I was seeing the same thing. This is the world the Eastern Orthodox tradition opened my eyes to. It’s a pattern of reality I can’t unsee. And it’s one I trust, as much as I trust the sky is blue or that I love my kids.

(When it comes to seeing this pattern, I largely credit Matthieu Pageau and his book The Language of Creation. As well as his brother, Jonathan, who applies the pattern to everyday life through his publishing company, The Symbolic World. Both draw on the Eastern Church Fathers, like Saint Maximus the Confessor. I’ll put together a reading list at some point, but the point is, this is an ancient way of seeing, not a modern one.)

So, Where Is Christ’s Body?

I couldn’t find a reason why the same rules that apply at the level of a cell, a person, or a sports team wouldn’t apply to a church.

Scripture tells us Christ is the head.

“He is the head of the body, the church.”
— Colossians 1:18

So, where is His body?

“So in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
— Romans 12:5

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
— 1 Corinthians 12:27

His body is the church. And just like a cell, a person, or a sports team, you can’t reduce the body to one thing. The same fractal logic applies to every head/body.

The Bible is part of the body, and so are the sacraments, the liturgy, the parishioners, the bishops, and the saints.

If the head/body pattern is real, the body isn’t a metaphor. It has to actually exist, somewhere in history, right now.

The obvious question became, “Who is claiming to be the body of Christ’s church?”

That narrowed it down immediately. Both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church do. They claimed it as one unified church for 1,000 years, then split, and now both still claim to be the body. That’s why I see them as two strands of the same rope, held together by the Nicene Creed.

Referring to the Christian East and West as the Church’s “two lungs,” Pope John Paul II wrote:

“The Church must breathe with her two lungs”
— Pope John Paul II

Back in the pew

Every Sunday, I sit in the pew and see the same pattern I saw at the park, except now I’m the one wearing the jersey.

The priest is the shepherd of the flock, the head of this particular body. Our parish is part of the Diocese of San Diego, which has a bishop at its head. And our parish is one member of the universal church. During Mass, every Catholic on earth is reading the same readings as me.

The same pattern, at every level.

The West gave me the arguments, the sacraments, and the home I already had. The East gave me the patterns, the icons, and the mystery.

That’s why I call myself an Eastern-leaning Catholic. Will I one day convert to Orthodox? Maybe. But my prayer is that I won’t have to choose, and that the two strands become one rope again.

The website clearly said confession was Saturday at 3 pm.

“I’m rusty at this.”

It’d been a while.

“Ah, they do it in the parish hall.”

I stood in line behind an older woman and patiently waited.

When it was my time, fortunately, my muscle memory returned. I made the sign of the cross and sat.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been 30 years since my last confession.”

“What!?” cried the priest.

He was an older Filipino man who looked in need of sleep. My comment changed that.

“It’s been HOW long since your last confession?”

“30 years,” I said, a small smile on my face.

As I confessed my sins, which took a while, the priest stopped me no fewer than three times to confirm just how long it’d been.

“30 years,” I kept replying.

At the very end, after he gave me my prayers to say, he told me:

“Welcome home, my son.”

“God’s been waiting for you.”

That quote is usually credited to C.S. Lewis, and while he would approve, the attribution is uncertain.

Truth. I love that word.

Right now, I’m looking at the philosophy textbook on my bookshelf and its subtitle reads The Pursuit of Truth. That phrase sums up this new adventure with Fractal Faith.

Truth is a North Star. It reorients us when we’re overwhelmed by confusion, doubt, or deception. Back in Latin class, vocabulary was never my strength, but I remember the word veritas.

I was once an atheist, but today, I see Christianity as the truth.

Veritas.

I’m launching Fractal Faith to recount that journey and share how I now see the world. If you’re like me, you had an incorrect understanding of what Christianity is, how it works, and what it claims.

This opening essay will begin with that last bit: What does Christianity claim?

It goes deeper than “Jesus died for our sins” or “If you repent, you’ll be saved.”

The big “aha” for me was when I realized Christianity wasn’t just a religion, but an explanation of reality. Let me share an analogy that may help.

Think about the field of quantum mechanics. When people talk about that field, they use language like “we’re examining the fabric of reality.” Scientists at the CERN particle collider smash atoms together and discover subatomic particles that make up our universe.

Christianity operates at this level, but far beyond.

The Skyscraper Metaphor

Imagine you’re in New York City and you see a skyscraper being built. Workers raise the steel skeleton floor by floor. There are no windows, walls, or paint yet.

You look up and see a steel triangle pointing to the sky. The spire. A fitting image would be the Empire State Building.

That image is a good way to understand how Christianity explains reality.

The steel skeleton represents an ontological structure. Ontology is the study of reality, focusing on the truth of what exists. Going back to this article’s opening sentence, if you only want to believe in what’s true, you’ll want to know about ontology.

Back to our skyscraper, it both exists and its structure speaks to us. It really speaks to engineers. An engineer can look at a building and gauge how much weight each beam can hold, which joints are strongest, and what happens if you remove a screw.

The skyscraper exists ontologically. And its existence speaks to us.

Reality also has a structure that speaks to us. Reality gives us information about how it’s made. How it works.

Here’s one thing we learn by observing reality: things that freely give to each other while remaining distinct tend toward life.

Just think of the cells in your body…

Your cells contribute to your body's health. Right now, cells are providing the energy you need to read this article. At the same time, those cells have walls. They enjoy their privacy. They stay themselves.

Remove the cell wall and the cell dies, dissolving into its surroundings.

Going in the opposite direction, if the cell never gives and only takes, stealing from its neighboring cells, hoarding, extracting, well... that’s what a cancer cell does.

The ideal situation is the body’s cells check two boxes: they give freely, and maintain their distinct identities.

Marriage works the same way. Some husbands and wives lose themselves, giving so much that they dissolve into the family. Some men and women only take, extracting whatever they want. In either situation, dissolving or extracting, the marriage falls apart.

It can only hold when both husband and wife are giving freely while remaining themselves.

Economies, too. When both sides of a transaction give and receive freely, wealth grows. When one side just takes—like in a monopoly, exploitation, or fraud—the system hollows out.

We find examples everywhere because it’s a fundamental pattern of reality, like the mold that made the muffins.

When you have unity with distinction, life flourishes. You see it at every scale: the cell, the family, and the society.

Things that align with that pattern tend toward life and communion. Things that violate it tend toward fragmentation and death.

The beams support the skyscraper, carrying loads and transferring weight. The beams also remain distinct. Can you imagine a beam going floppy or saggy, like a Salvador Dalí clock?

The building tells you how it wants to be treated. The pattern we’ve observed, giving freely while remaining distinct, tells us how to treat anything. Including people.

Take morality. When humans take actions that align with this two-part pattern of reality, we tend toward flourishing. Actions that violate reality tend toward fragmentation and death.

The building doesn’t punish you for removing its load-bearing beam. It just falls. Reality doesn’t punish you for violating the moral law. It just breaks.

The triangle at the top of the building points to the destination. The Eastern tradition has a word for it: theosis. The Western tradition prefers the term sainthood. It’s a complete transformation of who you are, in full communion with God.

I’ll explain more of this goal in a moment.

When you participate with reality, when you give freely while remaining yourself, when you join this divine dance, you are moving toward the top.

You are moving toward God.

The Shape Already Cut Out

The shape of the building cutout tells you exactly what belongs there. You see the size and the shape and think, “That’s calling for a round window.”

If you install a square window, you’re violating a structure.

That’s how the moral law works. Reality already has the shapes cut out. A sin is using the wrong shape.

When I commit a sin, when I lie, cheat, or steal, I am trying to force in the wrong piece. And if I continue to sin, spiraling deeper down, I’ll encounter addiction, isolation, and eventually death.

Nobody forces this cycle on me as a punishment. It’s simply what happens when I violate the structure of reality. I chose it freely, even if it’s against my best interest.

I used to think that when I sinned, God sent down a disapproving lightning bolt. He does hate sin, but now I see sin more like an action that removes a load-bearing beam.

A building will hold for a while, but each violation weakens the joint. Find me the happy and healthy 80-year old who spent his life cheating, drinking, and chasing money. He doesn’t exist.

The reverse is also true. Sainthood is when a person has aligned with the pattern their entire lives, and their structure has become visibly strong.

You see it in everyday people. We’ve all had the experience of meeting the Christian who's doing it correctly. The one the town adores and calls a “good Christian man” or “good Christian woman.”

Those people are on their way to theosis. They’re becoming saints.

Sainthood is where our lives are pointing. Literally, it’s the “point” of our lives.

Our purpose.

Every beam, every load, every moral requirement... all of them orient us upward toward that point, toward sainthood, and full communion with God.

I used to think sainthood was a gold star for following the rules.

“You’ve been a good boy. Here’s your prize.”

I used to think of Moses coming down the mountain with the Ten Commandments and think, “He’s carrying arbitrary rules. Those are just God’s personal preferences.”

Today, I see the Ten Commandments as necessary. Their shape is demanded by reality’s structure. God doesn’t need to dictate them because we can read their requirements directly from the ontological fact.

Does Reality Have a Right Answer?

Back to that first sentence: “The only reason to believe something is because it’s true.”

Do you see what that assumes?

It assumes an objective reality, a singular truth. And that’s actually a good question to ask right now.

“Do I believe there is only one truth?”

People engage in all these debates about where the universe came from... did it come from the Big Bang, has it always been here, did it come from God...

But whatever the answer, do you personally believe that there is an answer? And only one answer?

Christians do. If you do, too, then you believe in objective truth.

(I do.)

Objective truth says I cannot be both myself and my brother at the same time. I cannot be both here and in Sri Lanka at the same time. It cannot be both day and night at the same time.

1 plus 1 cannot equal 3.

This is Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction, and it’s not a religious claim. It’s perhaps the most fundamental claim anyone can make about reality.

And if there is an objective reality, then there is a singular truth about where the universe came from, about what we are, and our purpose as human beings.

Once I understood this idea of objective truth, I asked, “What about morality? Is morality objective?”

For example, was what the Nazis did objectively wrong? Or just something I disagree with?

If there’s no transcendent standard, no unbending yardstick, then who’s to say what they did was actually wrong rather than just something we felt was wrong?

That’s an extreme example, but it applies to our day-to-day.

I once did something I now regret: I returned an item to Target that we hadn’t purchased there.

My justification was simple. “You won’t get in trouble. A big company doesn’t care.”

I felt in my gut it was wrong, but I won’t argue this on moral grounds. Let’s take a look at the Target situation through our skyscraper metaphor.

Remember that at every scale of reality, from the cell to the relationship to the society, you find the same generative pattern: things that give freely to each other and remain distinct tend to flourish. The Christian word for that is love.

Things that extract for themselves—or dissolve into everything else—tend toward collapse. And what keeps the whole structure alive is love.

(The romantic idea of love is a subset of the much larger Christian idea of love.)

Target is an entity like a cell, a marriage, or the economy. And the interaction between a person and that entity is a real relationship with a real structure.

The moral rule about honesty in financial exchanges is not a preference that sits atop the relationship. Like the steel beam, the moral rule is load-bearing. It describes what the relationship requires.

When I returned the item we hadn’t purchased there, I treated this entity as raw material and used the relationship for extraction. It wasn’t a fair exchange.

It was like me treating a steel beam as decorative, foolishly believing its load could be diverted. But the beam doesn’t care how you read the situation—it simply breaks. The structural damage is the real punishment.

I violated that structure when I extracted from Target. It doesn’t matter whether Target ever notices.

If you plant a peace lily in your walkway and want it to grow, you wouldn’t water it with bleach. No one needs to tell you that because the plant’s structure tells you.

The plant cells scream, “We can’t handle bleach!”

This is why Christian morality is almost self-evident once you see it clearly. The commandments help us, but you don’t need to start with them. Start with the question: Does this lead to life, or does it lead to fragmentation?

Ask it honestly about gossip, betrayal, or a Target return. Think about the last time someone you trusted lied. You could feel the fabric of your relationship tear.

The proper answer to “How should I behave in life?” is already there in the structure. Early Christians recognized it and wrote it down.

Once I understood Christianity as an explanation of reality, as a complete view of objective truth, my objections to it collapsed one by one.

“But the church is corrupt!”
That doesn’t mean Christianity isn’t true.

“But believing in God is nothing more than wish fulfillment!”
That doesn’t mean Christianity isn’t true.

“But suffering exists!”
That doesn’t mean Christianity isn’t true.

These are all legitimate concerns, and I’ll address them eventually, but they have nothing to do with whether or not Christianity is true.

And if the Christian worldview is true, if the Christian God exists, and if he became man in the person of Jesus, then it’s our world’s most important event.

The Pattern of Fractal Faith

The patterns I’ve shared are just a taste. You find them everywhere. In literature, theories, architecture, the human body, and marriage.

This is fractal faith.

Nothing really made sense until I understood it, and now I’m sharing it with you.

The real competitors to Christianity aren’t so much other religions. All of them share shades of truth. The real competitors are materialism, nihilism, and the idea that the universe just exists for no reason.

Thanks for joining me on the adventure.