Chapter 2 – Time
In the previous chapter, I wrote about something (God) which is outside the universe. Now before we talk about anything else that is outside the universe, I want to write about something that is not outside the universe, though we often treat it like it is. Time is not outside the universe. Time is part of the universe. Time was created by God.
The problem is that from our point of view, time proceeds in a steady rate in one direction – it is as close as anything can come to be an absolute fixed standard. It seems from our imagination that time could, in theory, go forward in the same direction forever, though it is harder to imagine how it could have gone on backward to an infinite past. But this imagination is all wrong, and it’s because our perspective is too small. If I look out the window, the world sure looks flat - but it’s not. In the same way, time is not an absolute, and things outside the universe, like God, do not live under its constraints. I’m going to offer some arguments for this point from the Bible and also from science, but before I do, I’d like to illustrate it by an analogy.
Many readers will be familiar with The Lord of the Rings, the book series by J.R.R. Tolkien, which was also made into a movie trilogy. In The Lord of the Rings, there was a timeline of events happening in what was called middle-earth. Early in the first book of the Trilogy, Bilbo the Hobbit celebrates his 111th birthday. So here is a question: if Bilbo was 111 years old early in the book, was Bilbo born before or after J.R.R. Tolkien fought in the First World War Battle of the Somme? Hopefully the reader will realize that the question is nonsense. Tolkien doesn’t live under the timeline he created for The Lord of the Rings. In the same way, God doesn’t live under the timeline he created for the universe. We are like the characters in the book. God is like the author.
Now as to arguments – in the previous chapter I started with God, so this time I’m going to start with science. We may feel like time is a universal absolute, a constant, but it is not. If the reader has a handle on how time is addressed in Einstein’s theories of Special Relativity and General Relativity, then this will be familiar. If not, I’m not going to explain all about relativity, not even close - but I would like to describe just a few things about how time is relative.
According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, time varies based on speed. If there were two 20 year-old twins, and one got on a spaceship that traveled far faster than any we have today, so fast that it got to a significant percentage of the speed of light, what would happen? When the twin from the spacecraft returned and met his twin who didn’t travel, the twin in the spacecraft would be younger than the twin who stayed at home. It is possible that the home-bound twin would be 60 years old, while the traveling twin would be 30 years old. The clock the twin kept on the spacecraft would also log only 10 years worth of activities, while the clock that stayed home would record 40. Time is running at different rates for the two twin brothers.
There is also general relativity (different from special relativity), which indicates that time is relative based on the force of gravity. This time let’s put the two twins in two different spaceships and have one of them fly in the direction of a black hole – a super-massive object which, if you get too close, will not even let light escape its gravity. The twin in the spacecraft not approaching the black hole will perceive that his brother’s spacecraft is moving slower and slower, but it will never look like he gets all the way to the event horizon of the black hole (an event horizon is the point at which light can’t get out.) At the same time, the twin in the spacecraft approaching the black hole will look back at his brother who is staying away, and if he could see clearly, he would watch his brother rapidly grow old and die. Time is running at different rates for the two twin brothers.
Some readers may look doubtfully on this discussion, since relativity is hard to understand and sometimes we get suspicious of things we don’t really understand. A further complication is that these are the “theories” of relativity, and theories may eventually be shown to be wrong. That might happen with relativity, but I want you to know that they won’t be wrong in a way that meaningfully refutes what I just described – if they are wrong it will be because they don’t work completely at the quantum level or something like that. As far as we know now, the theory of relativity not only is right, but we have to adjust for it in the real world.
One good example is the GPS satellite system. If you have a smartphone and use the map function for directions, you use this system. The GPS satellite system is a network of 24 satellites orbiting the earth. Because satellites in space are moving at a higher speed relative to where we are on earth, clocks on a GPS satellite run 7 microseconds slower per day than clocks on earth due to special relativity. However, because we on earth are closer to the earth’s center and subject to a greater force of gravity than the satellites are, clocks on a GPS satellite run 45 microseconds a day faster than clocks on earth. In short, clocks on a satellite run 45 microseconds faster because of gravity minus 7 microseconds slower because of motion, or 38 microseconds a day faster than clocks on earth. GPS satellites are programmed to make this 38 microsecond adjustment due to relativity. If they did not make this adjustment, the way the GPS network works, your smartphone directions would drift off by more than a whopping 6 miles per day. Time relativity is true.
You may have seen the scene. Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wait with baited breath to see if their spaceship lands safely on Mars. They’ve been working on their project for years, and now it all depends on whether or not the spacecraft can make it through the thin Mars atmosphere and land safely without having a fatal crash. It’s not the first time we’ve tried this, and it doesn’t always work. This time the spacecraft lands safely and sends a signal back home. Everyone cheers. But the funny thing is, when everyone cheers, it’s not for something that just happened. They are cheering for something that happened 12 minutes earlier. Depending on where Mars is in relation to Earth, it takes at least 6 minutes for the electronic signal to get here, and if Mars is on the far side of the sun, it can take more than 20 minutes. Nothing goes faster than the speed of light, so it takes time for information to get to us. The sun may have blown up seven minutes ago, but we wouldn’t know it for another minute yet. When we look at stars that are farther away, we are not seeing them the way they are today. We are only now seeing what they looked like long ago.
So how fast do the clocks run from God’s perspective? Which of the twin’s times applies? When does God see things happen in the universe? I think a Christian or most any theist would have to agree that God sees things differently than we do with regard to time. If we see something far away, like a star, we are not seeing the present, but rather the distant past. Christians believe God is omni-present, that is, everywhere at once. An omni-present God would at least see everything when it actually happens. But if we understand that God is outside the universe, we should also understand that he is outside of time entirely. Trying to ask when something happened for God makes no more sense than comparing a timeline of J.R.R Tolkien’s life with the timeline for life of Bilbo Baggins.
In the Bible, there are several passages that also seem to indicate that God is outside of the timeline for the universe, and that people who have died, or any spiritual being who is with God, is outside that timeline as well. In John 8:56, Jesus says to the Pharisees, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” Think for a minute about the verb tenses in that sentence (Abraham had died almost 2000 years before). It confused the listeners too (look it up for context). Jesus doubled down a minute later saying, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
Understanding that God does not live under the timeline of the universe may help us to better understand some difficult points in the Bible and in Christian theology. I’ll give several examples.
In Christian theology, it is commonly understood that Satan and demons are fallen angels. However, Christians often are unclear on this concept if they have to discuss when this fall took place. In some ways, it seems like it should be before creation and certainly before the fall of man, but it doesn’t seem like there is enough time there to let that happen. Later, in Revelation 12, the last book of the Bible, John sees a vision of this fall happening (not past tense) and it’s all wrapped up in the last times. As long as we understand that what happened with Satan getting kicked out of heaven was something outside the physical universe, then we should also understand that it was outside of time as we know it. The question as to when it happened becomes meaningless.
In Luke 23:43, Jesus, who is being crucified and is about to die, says to the thief crucified on the cross next to him “Today you will be with me in paradise.” This verse has been rightly reassuring to Christians as it holds out the promise that if we are absent from the body we are present with the Lord. At the same time, it has been confusing. For one thing, Christian theology doesn’t exactly have Jesus going to paradise during the time frame between his crucifixion and resurrection, (“he descended into Hades” – the Apostle’s Creed). Even more confusing is that the clear teaching of the Bible and all Christian churches is that we are promised a resurrection of the body at the last day. So we end up imagining a situation where someone dies and his soul or spirit goes to be with the Lord, then at the last day it makes a comeback to get back into the original body but in a resurrected/glorified form. I’m not saying that idea is entirely wrong, I’m just saying that the only part of it that is confusing is that part that pertains to time, and time with the Lord is not the same as it is for us who are still entirely inside the physical universe.
Perhaps this understanding of time being part of the universe and God being outside of the universe could also shed some light on the complex topic of reconciling God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will. That’s far too deep a topic to get into here, but I offer it as a thing to think about.
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