CFP: Time is subjective.
No physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, or string theory will be found here because, honestly, they aren’t part of this vernacular.
All the chalkboards of the world filled with equations characterizing energy and mass reflect society’s penchant for defining and classifying what it sees and experiences to fit its limited perspective. That’s right, humanity limits the universe even while trying to imagine a bigger box that scientists believe they are “thinking outside.” No matter how you look at it, it’s still a box. A box that contains light and time. Except God, who created light and time, can’t be contained.
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Confused? Don’t worry, it’ll get worse… or not.
There are two aspects of time begging to be discussed, especially regarding the advent of Christmas which it encompasses.
First is the concept of a timeline. Viewed from a historical perspective, we draw a horizontal line that is presumed to have a beginning and an end. All along the way, scientists (who apply theory) and historians (who apply written documentation of events) insert arrows to indicate epochs and incidents that have influenced social change. Some timelines relatively short, the length of a lifetime, and others are miles long pretentiously attempting to depict the expansion of the universe and the existence of humanity.
Timelines are helpful to visualize what the world has experienced in the natural sense. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, droughts, wars, truces, political upheaval, religious dissention, culture-shaking discoveries—actions of both evil and good. Just as they are limited in what they represent, timelines limit our imaginations.
Along one of these timelines is a mark in history that lasted just 33 years at a point 2000 years ago. Current culture likes to minimize the impact of this brief period but it affected mankind’s earthly experience, even changed history so much that the main calendar used to this day was predicated on this short era’s beginning. And what is a calendar except a timeline? MORE HERE
Only problem with the timeline, if you believe the Gospel of Matthew, is that Herod died in 4 BC, in Jericho. Yet he tried to kill Jesus, who started AD time keeping? Hmm . . . AD/BC is historically inaccurate, an attempt in the 17th Century to bring multi-Civilization timekeeping into unison. So, Jesus had to be born between 6 & 4 BC (2 year window for the slaughter of the innocents)
Unforunately the biggest hurdle we have to knowing the exact dates fall on the Romans.
First, during the actual time around his birth records were kept by Roman officials from their perspective or ruling records. Most were self-centered and personally narrative based. If a fact didn’t leave them in good stead that fact was suppressed or altered.
Second, when Rome, through Augustine, began to usurp the Church, and then the cleric dynasty began, dates, facts, theology, paganism all blended together through the process of syncretism to make everything a mess.
We know about when Jesus was born, lived, died, and was resurrected. We can come to a reasonable time line but superstition, culture, and historical/
theological imagination gets in the way. That’s where faith comes in.
I live according to Einstein’s “taco” theory of time (besides its elegant solution, it reminds me that I’m hungry — sorta like Homer Simpson’s international sign of the donut, but I digress). Today could be yesterday or tomorrow for all we know. And that’s not much.
Being a simple little crackerbaby, I have never attempted to explain nor justify the Christ timeline. I have spent the majority of my shoddy existence accepting that Christ is (in fact) my savior, and that without his blood, death and resurrection I am incapable of redemption.
I am dumbfounded that anyone could love me so.
“Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.” Geo. Orwell
God is eternal, we are not.
Time is a consequence of the structure of the Universe (which exists simply as one of His thoughts).
The rate of expansion (or pulsation – depending upon the actual value of Lambda) of the Universe is the determinant of what we consider the metric – time.
Thus: time is an illusion. That it seems real to us is because we exist(?) inside the illusion.
Time lines help us to understand the progressions of the epochs, years, centuries, months, days, hours – whatever it is we’re attempting to visualize.
“That was, like, two years ago, dude.” was an expression of one whose existence seemed interminable (to him, at least) and two years tantamount to two centuries – ancient history.
Each mans’ life is but an infinitesimal speck in this great swirling cosmos – and it is, indeed, dumbfounding and awe-inspiring that God could (and does) love each of us – and even more dumbfounding and awe-inspiring when we consider (at least in my case) how absolutely unworthy we are or ANY consideration WHATSOEVER!
izlamo delenda est …
The complexities of our existence are mystifying and those of us that believe do so because it makes the most sense.
Those that do not believe do so for different reasons which I won’t notate.
The one monumental question about our existence to ask yourself is why? Personally I find it far far harder to believe that everything around us exploded into being by some fluke of atomic particles and serves no purpose.