Time. Reality. What is it?

I just want to clarify that this is just my working theory. This is not necessarily what I believe to be true. Right now, this is where I'm at, and this is just me attempting to organize my thoughts.

The way experience reality is moment by moment. Past, present, future. We keep track of these moments with things like watches or calendars. God has even given us day and night as a way of tracking this experience. One thing is certain: we live, or exist, moment to moment. We don't know how long a moment is, and that really isn't important. What is important is that we understand that this is how reality, for us, happens. We are constantly moving away from something (the past) and, at the same time, moving towards something (the future). We exist in the now (present).

We exist within the reality of our Creator. Sure, there are certainly limits that we have that He does not. But, nonetheless, we exist within Him. He impacts us and we impact Him. He is, by His own nature, relational and He has created us in this same existence. He wants us to experience His reality because He wants us to experience his Community. God can not step in and out of His reality any more than you or I can step in and out of existence. His reality just is, as He just is. There is no beginning to His reality and there is no ending either. Nothing exists outside of His reality.

Time for us, then, is the way we experience our existence within God's reality. I do not believe that God is outside of time in the sense that some might suggest (IE. C.S. Lewis). But I do believe there are laws of physics that govern time and space for us, and these laws do not apply to the Creator of the laws themselves. The law of physics that I want to focus on is the speed of light. According to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, time is relative to motion, and nothing can move at the speed of light. The faster you travel the more time is compressed.

Let's say we sent a man into space traveling at 160,000 miles per second and told him to return in 10 years. When he returned to earth, he would have aged 10 years. But we who were here would have aged 20 years. Time would have been compressed in half for the man traveling at that speed. Another example: Let's say we sent a man into space traveling at 170,000 miles per second. After 20 years went by on earth and the man returned, he would have only aged a single day. Twenty years of time would have been compressed into a single 24 hour day for the man traveling at that speed. One last example: even though according to Relativity this is impossible, let's just say that we sent a man into space traveling at 186,000 miles per second, or the speed of light. Time for that man will compress into an infinite or instantaneous moment.

For God, being able to surpass or at least exist at the speed of light, time would be compressed into an instantaneous or eternal moment. Each passing moment would be compressed into that eternal moment. So within that eternal moment, there is no time as we know it, or at least time seems to be nonexistent because it has become instantaneous. Every moment that comes into existence becomes a part of that eternal moment. This moment that is happening right now, this very second, our present existence, our present thought, is being compressed or becoming one with that eternal or instantaneous moment.

Something that I wonder is why does this even matter and why is it important that we understand it. I think when it comes to understanding Christ's death and the fact that He absorbed our sins on the cross it is extremely important. If we had not yet committed the sin, how could it be absorbed into Christ? And how does Christ die for the sins of all who believe in Him, if not all who will believe have believed yet, or even been born for that matter? I think this understanding of time and reality might answers these questions and so much more. Here's an example of how it would play out. Let's say I sin. After I am convicted, I repent of the sin and confess it to God. The sin that I confess is being absolved in Christ on the cross at that very moment because as the moment passed for me it became compressed into the eternal moment for God.

The future is not yet resolved, and therefore the sins of believers that will occur in the future have not yet been absorbed into Christ on the cross. Since that moment on the cross is now instantaneous, whenever someone in the future sins it will be absorbed in the same way that the sins of Moses were absorbed into Christ, at the same moment, and on the same cross.

If this is true, than when we quiet our mind and focus on Jesus, He can connect with us through time and space and He will absorb our sin in His body on the cross at the same moment that we are confessing it to him. For me, that is powerful image of our powerful God.