Wednesday February 20, 2008
The power of threes
We were studying the biblical book of Genesis, when we came across the passage where three strangers meet Abraham under the fabled oak trees at Mamre. According to the Bible, Abraham was 100 years old at the time; his wife Sarah was 90. But the three strangers – later referred to collectively as The Lord – assured Abraham that he and Sarah would have a son, within a year.
“How did three people become \’The Lord\’?” someone asked.
“Maybe three is supposed to represent Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” someone else suggested.
I don\’t think so. Mainly, because that was long before anyone thought of the Trinity. I suspect, in fact, that it happened the other way around.
Cultural significance
The number three seems to have such profound cultural significance that the people who first defined Christian doctrines may not have realized why they focused on three facets of God.
Think about it. There were three crosses at Calvary. Jesus chose three disciples – Peter, James, and John – as his closest companions. He took them with him in the Garden of Gethsemane; he took them up the Mount of Transfiguration with him – where they saw three figures in white. The Magi from the east brought three gifts for the baby Jesus. Jesus suffered three temptations in the wilderness. After Jesus\’ arrest, Peter denied Jesus three times. On the lakeshore, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Jesus rose from death on the third day…
And it\’s not just in Christianity. Hinduism has three primary avatars of the ultimate Godhead: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer.
When you enter a Buddhist temple, you\’re expected to bow three times: first for the Buddha; then for the Dharma, the Buddha\’s teachings; finally for the Sangha, the community of believers.
Think too of the Three Musketeers, Three Men in a Boat, Three Little Pigs, the Three Stooges…
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For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
So what gives three such power, I wonder?
In geometry, two points define a line; three points define a solid surface. A chair with two legs will fall over; a chair with four legs will almost always wobble; but a three-legged stool will stay stable even on an uneven floor.
A photographer once taught me that a picture of two people tends to split apart; with three, it holds together; with more than three, numbers don\’t matter any more.
In writing, three examples are enough. Fewer examples will fail to make the case; more examples are just overkill.
In conflict resolution situations, adversaries often “triangulate” – the issue they\’re supposedly fighting over is actually about someone or something else.
Perhaps three manages to be simultaneously reassuring and cautionary. It reassures us that this is not a one-shot wonder, a single unsupported opinion, a one-size-fits-all solution. At the same time, it warns us not to get sucked into a monolithic mentality; there are no uniform perspectives, no universal answers.
Even the one God, it says, can be known in at least three different ways.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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