If I was in line to receive a million dollars, I would be paying attention. Almost anyone can find something to do with a million dollars, but apparently this is not the case with 40-year-old Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman.         

Perelman would have received the prestigious Fields Medal earlier this week at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain. According to an Associated Press report, three other mathematicians did receive the special medals—handed to them by Spain’s King Juan Carlos. But Perelman didn’t show up at the convention. Colleagues say he’s just not interested.

The Fields Medal is accompanied by an award of just a few thousand dollars, but in the year 2000, The Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts offered one-million-dollar bounties for solutions to seven historic, unsolved math problems. Perelman seems to have solved the one known as the Poincare Conjecture. It has to do with donut shapes and spheres—why one shape can’t morph into another without tearing—and it could eventually reveal more about the curvature of the universe (If you didn’t quite get all of that, I think it’ll be okay; or if it’s not, we’ll suffer the consequences together). If Perelman’s proof stands up to the scrutiny of colleagues, he could get a big check from the Clay Institute. But his acquaintances say he also seems uninterested in the million dollars. Apparently he just wants to be left alone to do math.

This passion for math intrigues me. What is it about math that so captures the minds of a few people? I knew a guy in college—a math major—who told me that when he was a little kid he would rather make up math games inside his head than play with his toys. Albert Einstein is said to have occasionally used his paychecks as bookmarks, having little interest in actually cashing them.

The pure single-mindedness is remarkable, but it’s not only math that creates such passion. I’ve known musicians who would completely lose track of time while they practiced. I’m just enough of a musician to have had that experience myself for a few brief shining hours. I’ve also occasionally lost myself in a writing project to the exclusion of everything around me. But for me, these experiences are brief, and then I’m back in the “real world.”

But what is the real world? Is the mundane everyday stuff of monthly rent and car payments more “real” than a passion? As I’ve thought about this, I’ve turned to a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

“Seek first the kingdom of God,” Jesus said. I’ve heard preachers use this text to verbally bully already guilt-ridden Christians. The message of these preachers seems to be, “Put God first, or else.” I suppose a case can be made for such a message, but if you read Jesus’ sermon carefully, the emphasis is much different:

“Do not worry about your life,” Jesus says, “what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? . . . Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? . . . Therefore do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ . . .  For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things” (Matthew 6:25-34, NKJV).

Life is more than stuff, Jesus says. Your Father knows your needs, so why worry? That is a much different emphasis than Put God first, or else.

But what about putting God first? What about making Him your passion? Is it possible that this is what passionate mathematicians and musicians are doing? I can’t judge motives, but this may be exactly what they are doing. God created math and music, and He created people with the gifts that allow them to excel at those activities. Mathematicians or musicians—or any others—who use their gifts well, and who acknowledge that those gifts come from God, are fulfilling the role for which God created them. They are putting God first.

The point of Jesus’ sermon is not that we should somehow separate ourselves from life, but that we should live it passionately according to His will. The counsel to put God first is not limiting; it is liberating—giving us permission to achieve all we possibly can, by His grace, in whatever He has created us to do.

When I think along these lines, I’m still not sure I consider a million dollars to be entirely useless. It might be the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise, “all these things will be given to you as well.” But it seems clear there are elements in life that are a whole lot more important than a million dollars.

B.W.