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   quantum physics and the Edict of Milan
Friday, April 6 2012
Gretchen likes to somehow have at least one Passover meal each year, and this year that meant hosting one herself. She invited a number people, and we ended up having over Nancy, Nancy's sister Linda, Linda's husband Adam, and, for those keeping count in fundamentalist Christendom, Linda's unborn baby, now with only two months left as a Republican concern. Of our guests, Adam was the only actual Jew, and Nancy had never been to a seder before. Not that this was a seder under any useful definition, though I had put together a Haggadah for the occasion. It looked like this (cover on the left, content on the right):

World's Most Mercifully Short Haggadah.  Now fully secular!  We suffered.  We struggled.  Things got better! Let's eat!

I ended up hand-making five copies of this Haggadah, and, as with real seders, we all took turns reading from it. I read the title page, Adam read "Things sucked," Gretchen read, "We struggled." Nancy read, "Things got better!" and Linda read, "Let's eat!"
Gretchen had made matzah ball soup, potato-and-artichoke pancakes, mushrooms covered with cashew cheese, and a concoction involving cooked carrots and lentils. There was also a salad and Nancy had made something involving chick peas.
Normally a seder includes a highly-ritualized discussion of slavery in Egypt and what it means to struggle for freedom. All of that was summed up in my "now fully secular" Haggadah. However, somehow there ended up being a need for a discussion of this sort. So instead, completely organically, we found ourselves discussing the central mystery of Christianity. Though both Linda and Nancy have suffered through their fair share of church services, none of us could get our heads around how it could be that Jesus Christ died for our sins. Though even this defies logic, Jesus might conceivably have died for the sins of those who had lived before he was crucified, but how could his death possibly apply to sins committed by people two thousand years later? In order for that to make any sense, Christianity has to be a lot more like quantum physics, a discipline where common sense is no guide whatsoever. Indeed, whether Christians know it or not, quantum physics might actually be the greatest gift to their cause since the Edict of Milan.


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