Networking with St. Peter

One of the endless series of St. Peter-at-the-gates jokes running around has Peter giving a tour of heaven to a recent arrival and pointing out the enormous buildings filled with people from the various denominations. From one building emerges the sound of lusty singing, and St. Peter points out that those are the Methodists. The next building is quiet, and St. Peter explains that the Presbyterians inside are having a committee meeting. At one point, though, he cautions the new arrival to be very quiet. Asked why that is, he replies, “Those are the Baptists. They think they’re the only ones here.”

Having preached in a number of Baptist churches of various types, I know that’s true of only a certain percentage of them, but it illustrates a point, that we have far too great a tendency to isolate ourselves and our groups from others. Nor is this only a North American trait. As I toured Ecuador with some very good and sophisticated friends, I noticed that they quite pointedly ignored the Quechua Indians, behaving as if these “primitives” were an embarrassment to the real Ecuadorians.

Genealogists, though, point out that the exponential growth in the number of anyone’s ancestors as one progresses towards the past means that when we get about 1300 years into it we are related to virtually everyone else in the world-that all it would have taken was one person from a remote African tribe, for example, to intermarry with a European to place a broad African gene pool in Europe. I like to torment racists with that piece of information. “Christian” racists, of course, are convinced that in heaven there will be strict eternal segregation.

Now something called network science has entered the picture, and some of those involved in it even believe it will revolutionize all the sciences. When I heard that statement from one of them, I thought, “Now, wait a minute. Even cosmology and astrophysics?” But it could be true. Network science deals with clusters and the like, and communication between widely separated entities, so what about those wormholes we keep hearing about? Stay tuned.

One of the most fascinating points of the new science, though, is the “six degrees” concept. The idea is that no person on earth is more than six persons away from any other person. Before hearing of the theory I had often wondered how many people I would have to go through to make personal contact with some individual-say Queen Elizabeth. I quickly found a solution that would have involved fewer than six links in reaching her (not that she would necessarily be happy to get my message). The theory has been tested and proven in astounding ways. I also asked a class of mine how many of them had been in reasonably close contact with Olympic athletes, and a surprisingly large number responded.

An early experiment on the six degrees theory involved Hollywood actors. The game that developed had players bringing forth information about which actors had worked together on a given film, and then taking those and relating them to actors they had worked with on other films. As might be imagined, the results were mind-boggling. A formal game emerged centered on Kevin Bacon, who when he learned of it jokingly remarked, “Now I know I’m the center of the universe!” But Kevin caught on to something extremely important. He used the network to attack the problem of cancer, and has brought in multiple millions of dollars for the cause.

This is my point. No man is an island, and those astoundingly close links each of us has with everyone else in the world should be used for positive purposes. That cynical question by the first murderer, “Am I my brother’s keeper?,” was made when there were only a few people on earth. It is most hypocritical for us to believe the question is any more appropriate today. God let Cain’s punishment fit his crime, sending him out to wander in the wilderness, bearing a mark indicating that he should not be killed and searching for companionship, i.e., some links to the network.