In the end of all things is their beginning, and only from the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who has called them from nothingness. From the perspective of eternity, the end comes first and the beginning later.
David Bentley Hart
As we approach the end of one year and the beginning of another, how optimistic are we about our own personal future, our country’s future, and the future of the planet? Many of us approach the future of our democracy and the ecological health of the earth with trepidation. Cynicism and pessimism characterize many of our expectations for the future. Those who refuse to acknowledge the most difficult and threatening crises humanity has ever encountered simply go their deluded way as though there were no problems. Many, aware of these gargantuan challenges, see no way out of this dilemma and will cynically “fiddle while Rome burns.” Others will simply desair.
How should we as followers of Christ face this future? Unfortunately, answers provided by some Christians are not helpful and even add to the problems we face. Those with “beam me up, Scotty” Rapture theology have distorted and blasphemous responses and expectations. (See my two blog articles exposing the fallacy of any belief in a Rapture.) Those expecting Jesus to return at a Second Coming and rescue the world from annihilation fail to understand the Parousia (the Greek word misunderstood as Second Coming) as a metaphor. (See my blog articles on the Parousia.) The 20th century with two World Wars and the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust should teach us that God is not going to be the divine “Mighty Mouse” who comes to “save the day.” Without the necessary repentance of humanity regarding its violent, greedy, and arrogant ways, the earth as a habitable planet for humans and many species of fauna and flora is doomed.
So how can we as Christians, who believe in and trust Jesus’ resurrection and our (and the cosmos’s) ultimate resurrection, hope for a better future for us and for generations to come? How can we live in and through the crises facing humanity and the planet? Is Christian hope just for the next dimension, or can such hope inspire us to act in healing and transforming ways now?
The quote by philosopher-theologian David Bentley Hart above is helpful. We moderns and post moderns are trapped in a linear understanding of time. We experience time as a point on a line which stretches from the past to the future. The past is gone and can never be recovered. The future is not yet and cannot be visited or experienced. We live from dot to dot on the timeline which we assume is reality.
However, since 1915, scientists have understood that time is not a constant. In fact, time by itself does not exist. Time and space exist together as a grid. Einstein theorized and science has proven that time is relative and is determined by its relationship to space and gravity. Objects like the sun and planets “bend time” as their gravitational pull warps space. Also, the faster objects go, the slower time becomes. The slower objects go, the faster time becomes. If one travelled in outer space approaching the speed of light and experienced five years of time on the voyage, when he returned to earth, no one would be alive that he had known before he began his journey. Time had passed much quicker on earth than for the space traveler. As counterintuitive as this may seem to us, the relativity of time is real. The universe is far stranger than any of us can imagine!
Augustine 1600 years ago intuited that time is not eternal but is a part of God’s creation just like space and objects. He maintained, contra the pagan philosophers of his day, that God created the world “with time” and not “in time.” His theory answered the question which prompted it: “If time began with creation, what did God do before creation?” Augustine’s answer was that there was no “time” as we experience it before creation, and thus it’s foolish to ask such a question.
So, we might wonder how God “experiences” time. Theistic faith asserts that God is both transcendent and immanent. As Creator, God is outside of time and within time. Some theologians suggest that time is more like a sphere than a line for God. Imagine a sphere. (Please realize that the sphere in this analogy is a metaphor, and all metaphors have their limits.) A circle has no beginning or end. If time is like a sphere (and not a line moving inexorably and only from past to future), the past, present, and future are all available to God. As such, all of time exists for God in God’s transcendent dimension even though we experience time in a linear fashion. The Creator is not confined by our experience of punctiliar time. For God, any point on the sphere exists as a simultaneous part of all time.
So, how does any of this help us as we face the future—the immediate future, the long-range future, and the ultimate transcendent “future”? That question will be the subject of the next article in this series.
