People sometimes say that time “flies”. An old joke suggests that if you really want to see time fly you should throw a clock through the window. Most people who repeated this little witticism didn’t realize how much truth there was to it. For anything to travel from A to B time is required, so the clock’s journey through near space from your hand to a random destination outside (hopefully not an innocent passer-by) is a perfectly fitting representation of this truth. It takes time for the clock or any object to go from one place to another.
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NO TIME TOULOUSE. Incredibly, some physicists are of the opinion that time does not exist at all, or that it only exists in some parts of the universe (1). They will also tell you that past and future are within our imaginations only: these things are a stubborn illusion which are very difficult to shake off. Only the present is real, according to this theory, and your great-great-great grandmother is just as surely in the present as you are. You can throw the clock but time won’t fly.
I can’t personally wrap my mind around this. It seems to me that the earth would be shaped like an inner tube, wrapped seamlessly around the sun. I personally suspect this kind of theory (or hypothesis) comes from a wish to do away with the embarrassing discovery for materialists that the universe had a beginning, just as the Bible has said for millennia. People who propose such things and spend their lives trying to “prove” them have far more imagination and faith than I as a Bible-believing Christian will demonstrate in following paragraphs.
FROM A TO B. I’ve discussed the subject of time before in this blog, noting that while many people insist that time must be speeding up because it’s so hard to get everything done in a day, the shortness and swiftness of time has been a subject of comment since the very oldest books were written, including the Bible. Time never did wait for anyone, and we’re only subject to the same challenge of getting all our A to B journeys accomplished as any other person who’s ever lived.
Having said that, there does seem to be a caveat to this principle. The man who educated us all on relativity may have never addressed the particular aspect of time that I’m about to describe. He said that two people experiencing differing effects of time depending on speed and gravity will not feel any difference. Therefore he may well not agree with what I’m about to share, but let’s remember he wasn’t a believer in the miracles of God. If you know that he commented on what I’m about to share please let me know.
TIME: WHOSE VIEW IS CORRECT? The following relates to the apparent passing of time.. While two people are within sight of a clock as an hour passes by, the hour may seem to pass much more slowly for one than it does in the other person’s perception. One may think that time is flying by, while the other is convinced that it’s going slowly. Consider a classroom of kids studying physics. Struggling to understand what they have to learn, and not all of them being greatly interested anyway, they are convinced that their one-hour class has already taken four hours to pass, while their teacher, anxious to fit everything into his lesson which he is required to do, while also marking exam papers and knowing he isn’t adequately prepared for an important meeting after the class, is convinced that the digits on the clock overlooking the entire class are changing at warp speed.
Applying this principle in a way much more cogent to us all, we become aware many times in our lives that when we’re having fun and enjoying ourselves, or when we’re in a hurry, a day or an hour can seem to pass very quickly. In contrast, when we’re doing something we don/’t want to do, or when we’re waiting for someone and have no entertainment, the clock will barely seem to change and time goes by very slowly.
Why is this? What’s going on? The physicist will shrug his shoulders, smile at our ignorance and our expression of unscientific observations and tell us that it’s all in our minds: time only seems to drag or to fly by depending on how we feel at the…. time.
BENDING TIME. I will admit to not being completely serious here, but I’ve imagined for myself that time is even less absolute than Einstein himself proposed. Perhaps, just as time varies depending on speed and location in the universe (admittedly extremely high speeds) time itself can be relative depending upon which mind it is passing in.
I will take this flamboyant speculation one step even further: I’m of the opinion that reality itself can vary depending upon whose life and whose mind it’s acting upon. It seems like a ridiculous, absurd theory I know, but the truly believing Christian can relate by considering certain Biblical accounts. As an example consider one of the stories of Jesus and his disciples on the sea of Galilee. While the disciples struggled against difficult weather conditions and in the dark of night, Jesus came to them walking on the water. We’re told that once Jesus got into the boat, the disciples suddenly found that they were at the shore. There was no interval in which they had to row for a mile or two. Suddenly they were there:
“Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading” (John 6:16-21).
At its widest points, Galilee measures 13 miles (21 km.) from north to south and 7.5 miles east to west (note 2). The disciples had rowed “three or four miles” from “the far shore” of the lake (verse 1) on their way back to Capernaum when Jesus came to them. They likely had at least a mile or two more to row, according to estimates of where their departure site was compared to their destination. In any case, they were not at the shore until Christ joined them.
Did the world jerk and shake when the boat immediately moved from the middle of the lake to the shore? Did people in the town of Capernaum suddenly find that they were at home when they thought they were kneeling at the synagogue? My conviction is that reality was shifted for the disciples but not the rest of the world. They were in their own little bubble of reality, and that bubble was under the control of the creator and sustainer of all things.
MIRACLES. All miracles are by definition an alteration or negation of reality. The One who created and sustains the laws of nature is able to tinker with them on a small or a large scale: locally or universally. Here’s another example. Joshua fought a battle as recorded in Joshua chapter ten in which we’re told that the sun stood still in the middle of the sky for “about a day”. It didn’t move across the sky for many hours, while the battle raged. Presumably the earth stopped moving and it only appeared that the sun stood still. Those weaker in the faith among us will insist that this account is exaggerated or metaphorical only, but being a believer in the omnipotence of God, I’m convinced that He is able to shift, suspend or bypass whatever events and natural laws He decides. I also believe He is able to tell the truth, as in the six-day creation of the heavens and the earth. Reality as we see it-fixed and perpetually predictable-was altered by the One who created it and maintains it.
The sun’s “standing still” may have been a world-wide phenomenon. That is that people in Papua New Guinea were wondering why the day seemed so long. However, if God is able to bend and warp things on such a scale He is also able to alter events and conditions in our own tiny slice of reality.
MURPHY’S LAW/ SOD’S LAW. Have you ever considered “Murphy’s Law or “Sod’s Law”? It says that the very thing which is most unfortunate and also unlikely to occur will occur, In spite of, apart from and beyond the laws of probability or reason. Some things just happen when logically speaking they should not happen. I’ve observed this on a small scale many times in my life. Often unlikely things happen and we might think to ourselves for a moment, “Oh, that was an unlikely thing that just happened”, and then we forget all about it. Of course, coincidences do occur in a physical universe, but are they all natural? While it’s impossible to document the spiritual affecting the physical under lab conditions as I discussed in my post, “Toast, Murphy’s Law and the Bible” (3) if you become aware of the phenomenon and watch out for it, you will witness it sooner or later.
PREORDINATION. This is where the subject of preordination comes into our discussion, though most often a preordained event will not be noticed as such. Preordination is the belief that some things or even all things occur due to a pre-arranged divine or natural destiny. If you walk into a pole it’s because you were fated to do so long ago. There are numerous manifestations and degrees of this idea, ranging from such philosophies as Daoism in which the adherent learns to bow to “the Way” of things, all the way down to the occasional “premonition” in which someone will foresee an event which comes to pass later on. Naturalistic scientists have their own version of it, so that while you think you are making free-will decisions to affect your life, you are not. This subject could fill many books and no doubt has. All I will say about it here is that just as Einstein showed that time is not absolute throughout the universe, so reality itself is not absolute. It can be bent, changed, directed, warped or even deleted according to the will of God.
While the universe is as real as it can be, and while I know that matter is solid, and we really do exist, and time really does pass from the past into the future, our own little slices of reality can be altered according to the will of God. How much this occurs is open to discussion. God’s universe is one of integrity and He does not deceive, but He is able to change whatever He wishes to change.
CURSED! I cannot close this discussion without mentioning the Curse.” What does the Curse have to do with this?” you may ask. This will be the subject of an upcoming post of mine. Briefly speaking, just as surely as angels are ministering spirits sent to minister to those who belong to God, so there are other spirits, whose given and allowed work it is, I’m convinced, to frustrate humanity.
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NOTES
1 Time might not exist – and we’re starting to understand why | BBC Science Focus Magazine
https://www.popularmechanics.com›science›a71526768›curved-time
2 The Sea of Galilee | Jerusalem Perspective
3 TOAST, MURPHY’S LAW AND THE BIBLE (2nd edition) – Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 