In Book 4:3 of Mere Christianity, in the chapter entitled, “Time and Beyond Time,” C.S. Lewis takes on a topic that simply cannot be grasped by the human mind: that of eternity. I remember when I saw Bill Maher’s movie, Religilous, there was a scene in which Maher was joking about how stupid it was for people to believe in a God who was able to listen to millions of prayers at the same time. Well, Lewis’ response to that sort of charge is this: the problem with such a view is that it still is putting God within the restrains of time. As soon as you say, “God is listening to all those prayers at the same time, then you’re not dealing with eternity—for eternity is not just “a really long period of time.”
This is something that is key to understand. As Lewis points out, we as human beings experience life within the bounds of time: there is a distinct order of past, present, and future to our existence and experience of life. But for God, who is outside of time, what we call “past,” “present,” and “future” are not past, present, and future to Him—they are simply “now.” (But even that isn’t totally true, for “now” carries with it a certain aspect of time). Perhaps it’s better to just say that past, present, and future for God…are just are.
Lewis’ point is that God is not constrained to the “time-stream” of this universe, any more than an author is constrained to the timeline of the book he/she is writing. That idea, if you think about it, is quite mind-blowing—it affects how you see how God sees you. Picture a timeline in this page: on it you see yourself at various stages of your life. You as a baby, a toddler, a grade-schooler, a high-schooler, in college, with a young family, as a retiree, in a nursing home, then on your death bed.
Now, the thing to realize is that God does not see you as you are at any one particular point in time. We see our lives unfolding, moment by moment—therefore, we cannot fully comprehend who we really are: we do not know what we’ll be like 30 years from now, and even when we look back at our childhood, we’ve forgotten probably 95% of our experiences. But God sees each one of us in our entirety: He sees the entire and full person of “Joel,” even though I cannot. In that sense, what I’ve realized is that as I go through my life and make decisions day to day, I am becoming the person I already am.
As Lewis says, as long as we are bound in time, we are confined to history—and that means we’ve lost much of the past, and we do not know the future. Because of that, we are not fully who our real selves are. But God on the other hand, “has no history. He is too completely and utterly real to have one.”
This also impacts how we see Christ. A lot of people have wondered how Jesus could be God, yet then come down into history, be born as a baby, and then live a life of about 30 years here on earth. During that time, who was running the universe? But as Lewis says, if we get a grasp of God and eternity, we have to realize that Christ’s time on earth—his walking, eating, sleeping, teaching—“is somehow included in His whole divine life.”
Conclusion
Trying to grasp time’s relation to eternity is ultimately too difficult for us. It’s something we cannot grasp with our intellect alone. Yet, I think it is something we do intuitively and experientially understand. Think of a time when you just “knew” something before it happened. My mom said she just “knew” that she was going to marry my dad the moment she first met him. I remember when I was visiting colleges as a kid, and I distinctly remember having a moment in the visitors dorm at Northwest Missouri State University, where I just “knew” I was going to go there.
And then we can all probably tell of experiences of what we call déjà vu—you just know “So-and so” is going to walk through that door…and then that person does. Strange as it may sound, I remember a time at a Chicago Cubs game with my brother: it was the bottom of the ninth, the Cubs were down by a run with guys on first and second and two outs. I forget who it was who was coming up to bat, but as he was coming up, I had an epiphany. I turned to my brother and said, “He’s going to hit a double down the right field line, and the guy is going to come around from first to win it.” And the next pitch, the batter hit a double down the right field line.
Things like that are inexplicable. I wonder, though, if they are indications to the fact that, even though we live our lives confined to time and history, moment by moment, that every now and then we get fleeting glimpses of eternity and how it intersects with history. I don’t know. But trying to contemplate eternity’s relation to history is certainly a challenge. It is bound to impact one’s understanding of God and our lives as individuals as well.
