May 14th 2014

For many years now, I have been intrigued by the knowledge that each of us probably has many atoms of carbon that were once in Jesus' body in our body and that each piece of communion bread we eat does as well.  I knew I had the information from my course in human anatomy and physiology and my course in environmental biology to do the calculation, but I also knew it would take an hour or so to do the dimensional analysis to be sure the math/process is correct and an even longer time to put the math in a document.

Well, today I finally got the inspiration to do the calculations.

First, let me explain what I am getting at without the numbers.  Each of us is constantly changing our atomic makeup.  Many of the atoms that made up most of my body five years ago are long gone and have been replaced by new ones.  Let's take carbon as the example.  We ingest carbon most commonly as glucose or starch or some other similar form of energy.  This energy is stored in our liver where it is called upon when we need it or it is "stored" in muscle and other tissues.  There it may be called upon if we don't ingest enough energy in our food, but our cells are constantly being remodeled, so much of the carbon there is also regularly recycled.  The recycled glucose/carbon is often burned to give us energy and the byproduct is carbon dioxide, which we exhale. (See How the Intricate Simplicity of the Cell and the Heme Molecule Reflect the Trinity and God's Plan of Salvation at Natural Revelation.) We do this and Jesus did this over his 33 years of life.  So in reality a large number of carbon atoms were part of Jesus' body and then exhaled as carbon dioxide over His lifetime.  If we knew that number and assumed each carbon atom would be evenly distributed in the atmosphere and biosphere over the intervening 2000 years and also assumed 2000 years would not be sufficient time for very many of the carbon atoms to enter the inorganic cycle, (this is probably the weakest part of this analysis), we could calculate the proportion of these carbon atoms that were once part of Jesus' body.   Since this proportion is true of any organic carbon, we should be able to estimate the number of carbon atoms in that piece of communion bread we are about to partake that were once in Jesus' body and, likewise, the number of carbon atoms we have in our body that were once in Jesus' body.

The numbers will astound you.

Background sources to check some of the values used: background sources.docx

The analysis: Carbon Dioxide Calculations.docx

Further musings, perhaps relevant; perhaps not:

On March 3, 2013, we were taking communion and I saw the following analogy:  The ritual of communion should remind us of what happens to the food we take in when we eat and drink (during communion or otherwise).  Food does us no good until we eat and drink it so it can be broken down inside us into small enough parts that we can absorb them, after which they become part of us. Likewise, God's Word does us no good unless we eat and drink it so it can be broken down inside us into small enough parts that we can absorb them, after which they become part of us.

On 1 June 2014, our pastor, Paul Collins, mentioned that Jesus' body was not his heavenly body, he was wearing his "work clothes."  It's important to remember Jesus's preincarnate body is His real body, whatever that may be, and it was often apparently corporeal as evidenced by his theophanies in the Old Testament.

For an expansion and updating of these ideas, see Jesus in our Communion Bread.docx  

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