I was reading something in my physics textbook that caused me to think about the phrase in a new way and I thought I'd give it to you to chew on as well.
An object that moves in a circle is moving in two dimensions. However, if you cause it to
cast the correct kind of shadow, that two dimensional motion can be projected into one
dimension. If, for example, you shine a flashlight on the object so that the light strikes the
circle directly on the edge, not either one of the sides, then the shadow cast by the circle
will look like a straight line. [An] object moving in that circle, then, will appear to move up
and down on a straight line, rather than around and around in a circle.
...think about it this way. The very act of casting a shadow results in losing one
dimension. If, for example, a tree casts a shadow, the shadow is flat. It has width and
height but no depth. Thus, the shadow is a two-dimensional representation of the three
dimensional tree. In this case, we are creating the shadow of a two-dimensional object.
Since the process of creating a shadow destroys a dimension, we are turning a
two-dimensional situation into a one-dimensional situation. This makes the circle cast a
shadow that is a straight line.
I never really thought about it that way. A shadow is a representation of something, a representation that loses one dimension. By this logic, a shadow of circle creates a line. We see this to be true. Does this mean that we are merely shadows of something, or someone, in a higher dimension?
Wow, that's cool. Often I hear an expression so many times that I lose track of what it was written to express. For example, the statement that this world is a shadow of the spiritual world, and that we are shadows of what God is creating us to be. But what does the word "shadow" mean in this instance?
I think it could mean that we are representations of God that have lost a dimension. The symbolism here is really powerful. For there to be a shadow, something has to be there. This doesn't prove God's existence, but it corraborates it perfectly. If there is a God, and he exists in a higher dimension than ours, we would expect to see some sort of a three-dimensional* shadow in our world. And we do. We were created in God's image to be, as C.S. Lewis puts it, "little Christs," but we are missing a dimension. A spiritual dimension. We are not spiritual beings (yet), but we have retained a shadow of that spiritual reality in our humble three dimensions.*
This really excites me. Not only is it an argument that affirms my belief in God, but it shows me evidence of a personal God with character and personality. He is not just transcendent but has all the attributes of a person to the perfect degree. Our characters, our personalities, our attributes, are nothing but shadows of his and will not be made perfect until he makes us perfect and brings us to that perfect dimension outside of time. Here's a quote from Mere Christianity that I think echoes what I'm trying to say:
I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what
I call 'me' can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up
to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. At the beginning
I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real
personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a
real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those
who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors
have been: how gloriously different are the saints.
