The Pope and the Incredible Shrinking Man.

Hollywood, despite its commitment to entertainment and its fear of violating the canons of political correctness, occasionally offers us insights into life that are surprisingly profound. And though the cinematic diamond-in-the-rough may be the exception rather than the rule, it is well worth the time it takes to give it our thoughtful attention.

Universal Studios' The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is one of the best science fiction movies of the 1950s and has become a cult classic. The storyline, like many of its ilk, is utterly implausible. Yet the far-fetched scenario it concocts sets the stage for some remarkably profound insights.

Scott Carey, played by Grant Williams, passes through a strange radioactive mist while boating. There is no discernible immediate effect, but in time, he slowly begins to shrink. His wife notices that his clothes are unexplainably too large for him. His wedding ring slides off his finger. Medical tests show that radiation from the mist is reacting with an insecticide on his skin causing an anti-cancerous condition in his body that produces progressive shrinking.

At the close of the movie, Scott finds himself on a basement windowsill looking out at a starry night. He wonders whether someone as small as he is still a human being. Existential screenwriter Richard Matheson is equal to the occasion:

So closethe infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly I knew they were the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meetlike the closing of a gigantic circle ... . And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fear melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero.

I still exist!

The great gap, as philosophers have often pointed out, is between nothing and something. But the gap between something large and something small, between something old and something young, is simply a matter of space and time. To be a day or a week or a year older pales in comparison with the eons of time that preceded our coming into being. "Existence is the perfection of perfections," as Aquinas noted. If there "is no zero" to God, there should be no ...