Thinking about time
20/05/14 05:21
Sometimes people are reluctant to tell me about their thoughts and beliefs. They think that because I am a Christian minister I might somehow be offended by beliefs and thoughts that are different from my own. Maybe is isn’t the fear of offending as much as it is a desire to avoid attempts to convert them from their beliefs. I’m not much at trying to convert others, really. I do not mind sharing my beliefs. In fact, I enjoy the opportunity to speak of faith with others. But I don’t feel especially called to change the beliefs of others.
Recently, I visited with a member of our congregation who was attracted by belief in reincarnation. I was tempted to go into a long discussion of the history of philosophy, but what was needed at that particular moment was listening, not more information. It does, however, make a difference how you view time. And there are multiple perspectives on the nature of time reflected in the Christian bible.
Although nothing is ever as simple as a simple dichotomy, It helps to think in terms of two basic ways of viewing time: either each moment of time is unique, having never before existed and never to be repeated, or time has an ability to repeat: what is now has been before and will be again. These two ways of viewing time are referred to as linear and circular. Right away there is a problem with the common titles. Those who believe that each moment is unique, do not always see the flow of time as a line with a set order. Those who have a sense of repetition in time do not always view time as a circle that comes back to the same point over and over again. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who see time as possessing both qualities.
Different parts of the Bible make reference to both ways of viewing time. The creation stories that begin the book of Genesis are fairly linear in their interpretation of time. There is a beginning and the events of creation are all unique and occur in a specific order. The two narratives (Genesis 1:1-2:3, and Genesis 2:4ff) don’t have all of the details in the same order, but both present a few of time as moving from one unique moment to the next.
Wisdom literature takes a different perspective. The beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes makes it seem as if the author has a circular view of time: The sun rises, the sun goes down; the wind blows to the south and goes round to the north again; what has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done. The author even states boldly, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
It is a remarkable feature of the Bible that it has the ability to present a wide variety of perspectives. Whenever I hear the Christian faith presented as a set of “either/or” decisions, I wince a little bit. I know that there are those who believe that they possess the truth and that the world is best seen from their perspective, but such an attitude seems to stand in contrast to the Bible, which is gentle and subtle in presenting a wide variety of perspectives and beliefs in a single volume that wrestles with the relationship between humans and God and offers great truth and insight without intimating that there is only one way to be a person of faith.
What is even more interesting about the Bible and how time is portrayed is the way in which the Bible acknowledges that human ways of perceiving and talking about time are not the only whats of seeing time. Psalm 90 states, “a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” The ways in which we count and measure time are not the same as the way time appears from God’s perspective. I have heard this difference in view described as horizontal time and vertical time. Those who interpret this way say that we humans look at time in a horizontal fashion, stretching from beginning to ending, whereas God sees it in a vertical fashion with beginning and ending occurring simultaneously. Such a way of thinking may be helpful to some, but it seems to me to be incomplete. Certainly God shares human time. God is present in the long moments of anticipation and waiting. God is present in the times of great joy and great sorrow. God’s perspective on time might be different than ours, but the horizontal and vertical planes seem to me to be inadequate to describe that difference.
Time can also be viewed as variable. In our experience the length of an hour spent waiting for news of a loved one is different than an hour spent reading a novel. We frequently experience time as passing at different speeds. It all depends on what we are doing and what emotional weight coming events hold for us.
Like many other things, the entire notion of time is a bit artificial. We have come up with systems of dividing time into years, hours, minutes and seconds. It helps us to understand the passing of time. To assume that our way of counting is somehow universal is mistaken. We know that the transformation of geology on our planet moves at a much slower pace. We know that the distances in space strain our notions of time. Einstein demonstrated that motion changes the passage of time. To assume that the days of creation referred to in the Book of Genesis comprise of 24 hours each, measured by the same clocks that we use in our everyday life seems absurd to me, but there are plenty of people who interpret that portion of the bible exactly that way. They have come up with a timeline that places the moment of creation at a specific point on the human calendar.
I’m fairly certain that we don’t understand time very well and that we use different frameworks to speak of time because no one framework is adequate in its description.
Like many other areas of life, there is more to be discovered.
Recently, I visited with a member of our congregation who was attracted by belief in reincarnation. I was tempted to go into a long discussion of the history of philosophy, but what was needed at that particular moment was listening, not more information. It does, however, make a difference how you view time. And there are multiple perspectives on the nature of time reflected in the Christian bible.
Although nothing is ever as simple as a simple dichotomy, It helps to think in terms of two basic ways of viewing time: either each moment of time is unique, having never before existed and never to be repeated, or time has an ability to repeat: what is now has been before and will be again. These two ways of viewing time are referred to as linear and circular. Right away there is a problem with the common titles. Those who believe that each moment is unique, do not always see the flow of time as a line with a set order. Those who have a sense of repetition in time do not always view time as a circle that comes back to the same point over and over again. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who see time as possessing both qualities.
Different parts of the Bible make reference to both ways of viewing time. The creation stories that begin the book of Genesis are fairly linear in their interpretation of time. There is a beginning and the events of creation are all unique and occur in a specific order. The two narratives (Genesis 1:1-2:3, and Genesis 2:4ff) don’t have all of the details in the same order, but both present a few of time as moving from one unique moment to the next.
Wisdom literature takes a different perspective. The beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes makes it seem as if the author has a circular view of time: The sun rises, the sun goes down; the wind blows to the south and goes round to the north again; what has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done. The author even states boldly, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
It is a remarkable feature of the Bible that it has the ability to present a wide variety of perspectives. Whenever I hear the Christian faith presented as a set of “either/or” decisions, I wince a little bit. I know that there are those who believe that they possess the truth and that the world is best seen from their perspective, but such an attitude seems to stand in contrast to the Bible, which is gentle and subtle in presenting a wide variety of perspectives and beliefs in a single volume that wrestles with the relationship between humans and God and offers great truth and insight without intimating that there is only one way to be a person of faith.
What is even more interesting about the Bible and how time is portrayed is the way in which the Bible acknowledges that human ways of perceiving and talking about time are not the only whats of seeing time. Psalm 90 states, “a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” The ways in which we count and measure time are not the same as the way time appears from God’s perspective. I have heard this difference in view described as horizontal time and vertical time. Those who interpret this way say that we humans look at time in a horizontal fashion, stretching from beginning to ending, whereas God sees it in a vertical fashion with beginning and ending occurring simultaneously. Such a way of thinking may be helpful to some, but it seems to me to be incomplete. Certainly God shares human time. God is present in the long moments of anticipation and waiting. God is present in the times of great joy and great sorrow. God’s perspective on time might be different than ours, but the horizontal and vertical planes seem to me to be inadequate to describe that difference.
Time can also be viewed as variable. In our experience the length of an hour spent waiting for news of a loved one is different than an hour spent reading a novel. We frequently experience time as passing at different speeds. It all depends on what we are doing and what emotional weight coming events hold for us.
Like many other things, the entire notion of time is a bit artificial. We have come up with systems of dividing time into years, hours, minutes and seconds. It helps us to understand the passing of time. To assume that our way of counting is somehow universal is mistaken. We know that the transformation of geology on our planet moves at a much slower pace. We know that the distances in space strain our notions of time. Einstein demonstrated that motion changes the passage of time. To assume that the days of creation referred to in the Book of Genesis comprise of 24 hours each, measured by the same clocks that we use in our everyday life seems absurd to me, but there are plenty of people who interpret that portion of the bible exactly that way. They have come up with a timeline that places the moment of creation at a specific point on the human calendar.
I’m fairly certain that we don’t understand time very well and that we use different frameworks to speak of time because no one framework is adequate in its description.
Like many other areas of life, there is more to be discovered.