Prepare yourself for some run-on sentences and maybe some mini-brain explosions. That said…
Earlier this week as I was driving to my parents’ house I was thinking about God, and how he is clearly a being that exists outside the realm of human understanding, or at least beyond it, with maybe a small portion, the tip of the iceberg, dwelling in terms that we can wrap our heads around. We often use this characteristic of God, that he is not fully knowable by our limited minds, as consolation when things in this life do not make sense. How could God allow such and such to happen? Because God and his intentions are bigger than we can fathom. We use this fact in response to arguments of logic: How could God be everywhere at the same time? How could he have always existed? How could a virgin conceive and how could a man rise from the dead? How could any of the ridiculous claims in the Bible be true? In response to secular thinkers and simply the skeptical, God is bigger than human understanding. Even the smartest and wisest of us could not begin to explain the mysteries of God, and for some reason that takes some of the pressure on those of us who aren’t the smartest or wisest.
So here is what I was thinking about, specifically. I was thinking about Kilgore Trout (of Kurt Vonnegut’s imagination) and his theory that time is not a linear experience, that our limited human minds may interpret our experience in a linear way, but really all moments in time occur simultaneously, or maybe eternally, or something along those lines, and a person who is aware of this can pick and choose which order they wish to experience life events, can jump around at their leisure. (I’m basing this weak summary on Slaughterhouse Five which I last read a few years ago, so I’m sure that I’m butchering the theory. But there is some incentive to go pick up the book and read it yourselves.)
Of course, this is the stuff of science fiction. In reality, time is linear. It has a beginning, and it has an end. Human lives have a very distinct beginning and an often equally distinct end, and a series of events that take place between those two milestones. Time is linear. Right? Or is it just that our tip-of-the-iceberg sized understanding of time is linear? After all, God is eternal. He exists infinitely in all directions of time and space; he always was, always is, and always will be. How does one express such an existence with a time line? There is no beginning and no end, and while experiential evidence suggests that there is a sequence to events, it’s quite possible that it is simply a perception that comes about when we try to explain something much more complex (if I knew what that something was I would probably say it outright here, instead of dusting around with all of these question marks).
I don’t know that it is necessarily important to fully understand the physical shape that time takes. Except for this, which is what I was thinking about on the drive: if all time is actually occurring simultaneously, wouldn’t it make sense to adjust prayer accordingly? Currently we pray God’s forgiveness for the past, we pray thanks for the present, and we pray supplication for the future. I’m generalizing of course (there are some who pray forgiveness for sins not yet committed, or some who can’t stop thanking God for something that happened years ago) but this seems to be the standard association between prayer and time. But if time is not actually occurring on a line, wouldn’t it make sense to pray for things that happened in the “past”? If we prayed in 2008 for events of 2007, would it make any difference? If we prayed today for things that happened in history, the genocides and wars and natural disasters, would we see any effect? Not that the headlines of our newspapers would mystically change before our eyes (a la Back to the Future) but perhaps that the current “result” (in quotes because without a chain of events there can’t actually be any causality) of those events would be altered. That we would be changed in light of these things.
If all time is occurring simultaneously and I begin to pray for my “past” self and do so faithfully, then I could exist today knowing that my “future” self was praying for me on this very day. Surely my “future” self would know better how to pray for me, having already experienced parts of my linearly-perceived life that my present-day self has not yet.
Mostly this was just a bunch of wild thoughts that were more interesting at that time than the farms and fields that I was driving past. Probably it’s safe to say that praying for the past would not be the wisest way to spend valuable time, particularly valuable time with God. Even if time is not happening quite the way we understand it, there is a reason that God wired our brains to interpret it this way. Maybe it’s for our safety. Or maybe we are supposed to think about it, and outside of the niche of science fiction. Could we do it without laughing at ourselves? I told my mom about the subject of this post and she laughed and said, “So it’s Christian Sci-Fi.” Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe I’ll pitch it to George Lucas. And my future self can pray that he buys it!
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HHey, I read this in the morning, and didn’t give it much thought apart from the nifty idea it was. I love the last lines too. However, as I was preparing to get online tonight, it came back to mind. And I started now thinking from it…
What if we started praying without considering time linearly, but respecting the knowledge we have somehow been allowed to have until now. We stop praying only in terms of present, future and past, and we start praying in sort of togetherness with God’s universe. Considering this, we are not to pray for Adam not to eat from the forbidden fruit, or for Hitler not to commit the acts he committed, or for the tsunami not to hit Asia in 2005. Notwithstanding the dimension in which God (in His wisdom I am sure) placed us, but taking to heart what He has shown us, our prayers can be prayers that show gratefulness for the whole of reality—a reality which from the atrocities, silly and real acts of courage and faith, mistakes and assertions, and everything within—forms a beautiful spectrum as a whole that inherently glorifies God. What if our petition included this infinite line of perfection? Begging to God that Adam hadn’t eaten the apple is foolishness; it was like that before and after it happened. If we are to consider time as something that is only linear to our perception, we cannot see the events in the past as we see those of the future: malleable; but those of the future, which we consider can still be manipulated, we can keep regarding as such as that power of manipulation affects the only future there will ever be. The events can be manipulated by God when the environment seems to be leading them somewhere, but that was in God’s design from the beginning even as he took in consideration our free will. He created Adam, he gave him free will, Adam then had the choice to glorify God or not, and what doesn’t rots, what does lingers on through the source of life and yet the rotting itself glorifies the Creator. For this free will to exist there must have been the possibility of sin. God wasn’t thrown off guard by free will; he knew his creation and still had a design. He isn’t restrained by time as to not know. And while respecting that free will he has this whole design around it—around it but still owning it, using it, considering it knowing what it will be; or better said, what it is as He is not restrained by time for future tenses to affect him. If nothing can escape from glorifying him it is not for a technical lack of free will but because He simply IS, what else is there in the universe but HE. There is no escape because there is no more existence. And although He already took our free will in into account, for what it is worth to us, we are either to take willing part of the glorifying by his mercy as part of his universe, or to not take part in that glorifying ourselves even if in the end our denial will still glorify him (not us anymore, but the whole situation which included our denial itself).
Now, back to praying but now considering all this. Having this in mind we can pray for this perfect whole that simply reaffirms itself, for this beautiful spectrum, for us to consciously, willingly form part of the infinite whole of the glory to the I AM. In the threat of a Hitler, we pray against him; once we know some parts of the threat are inevitably in the design which considers free will, we find that’s part of the beautiful whole. We grieve for the bad as even the grieving is part of the whole. We fight against evil, because that is part of the whole, but we keep on praying with a prophetic voice for those little parts trapped in linear time—parts which are there in the infinitum, if we may say so, as a constant part of that infinitum—will glorify the creator. We pray that the elements that were touched by that evil through their connection with linear time will (yes, in our humility we have to accept the future tense, because we are right now restrained in a dimension of time, which in itself is still part of that infinite whole and its glorifying perfection) willingly glorify them in their freedom and that the glory that is to God will be conformed by their will. Praying on how the abominable Holocaust plays a role in a perfect design that is meant to reinstate Love as is (not love as we try to define it) connects us with that higher more complete, unrestrained by time, glory to the Creator. It sets our hearts into the actively participating in that glory, and what better place for our hearts and our whole beings than consciously in the place we were made for. Giving him glory is inherent to our existence. Not being in that place is like having the roots repelled completely from the ground even if that tree as it withers and dies only feeds that environment which it as a tree can no longer be part of.
So we pray for his will, his design, and the part we take in it. We constantly pray we actively conform it in his mercy, knowing that it is he allowing us to conform it in the first place, and knowing through faith only that in his design and because of his loving mercy he will set the way in the universe for us to do it, and confident that if in His mercy we as part of his creation of the whole are praying this with fate and in the name of the one whose name we can use to reach the creator, that it was already designed so anyway (abusing of the past tense here, which from this perspective is inexistent as such) and that our future is secure as such as long as we keep that heart that connection with the infinite that is God. In these prayers where we simply breathe for God’s glory, past, present and future matter little. It’s all a constant prayer that meshes with the divine as we live along that diving in constant peace and reliance; as we walk firmly, actively and with determination not in rituals but in a constant service as part of time but with our sight set to the timeless—never entangled by the simple and worldly time which is but another element of the whole that as part of the rest of existence becomes that simple single, all encompassing and eternal glory to the Only.
ok, that was long, I hope it is readable and understandable and all that but I just had to go ahead and post it. Its really late and I have to wake up really early tomorrow. If i read it again and really need to proofread for it to make sense, I’ll just send the new version for you to delete this one… later!
That was intense. Surely all these thoughts occupied you the whole ride!