http://the-divine-spark.com/questioning-linearity-time.htm "Defining a nontraditional spiritual journey to God" Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:04:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 http://the-divine-spark.com/questioning-linearity-time.htm/comment-page-1#comment-9 John Moore Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:30:27 +0000 http://the-divine-spark.com/?p=147#comment-9 Your notion of time is interesting. God as the "stadium" whereby "time" is acted out, manipulated, whatever. What I am suggesting in terms of cyclical time is time as perceived by humans, especially humans "seeing" a reality based on giving importance to social institutions such as politics, education, technology, and yes, even religion. These institutions emphasize "humans" as the driver of events. Since that view perpetuates man as the source of meaning, the result is that nothing changes, war, peace, poverty, wealth, etc. keep happening over and over again. Hence, the cycle. The question becomes whether human beings -- by pursuing God and undergoing a spiritual journey starting with social reversal can ultimately "see" different realities and transcend cyclical meaninglessness. I believe this is what the Hindus on some scale were trying to discover. Your notion of time is interesting. God as the “stadium” whereby “time” is acted out, manipulated, whatever. What I am suggesting in terms of cyclical time is time as perceived by humans, especially humans “seeing” a reality based on giving importance to social institutions such as politics, education, technology, and yes, even religion. These institutions emphasize “humans” as the driver of events. Since that view perpetuates man as the source of meaning, the result is that nothing changes, war, peace, poverty, wealth, etc. keep happening over and over again. Hence, the cycle. The question becomes whether human beings — by pursuing God and undergoing a spiritual journey starting with social reversal can ultimately “see” different realities and transcend cyclical meaninglessness. I believe this is what the Hindus on some scale were trying to discover.

]]> http://the-divine-spark.com/questioning-linearity-time.htm/comment-page-1#comment-8 Josh The Hitman Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:44:41 +0000 http://the-divine-spark.com/?p=147#comment-8 This particular post caught my interested immediately. You put in more precise terms what I've come to believe.Time, as humans know it, is not as God knows it. It first occurred to me when struggling with the dilemma posed to me by some many friends, and occasionally my self, with pre-marital sex. The old argument being Pre-Marital sex is an equal sin as to Adultery. Though I'm in no way a hedonist, the standard Conservative argument is flawed when considering either soon to be married couples and or eventually married couples. The question being, If God knows they will be married then aren't essentially married already, since Jesus was with God in the Beginning and the End described in past-tense? This rather juvenile issue of pre-marital sex being analyzed by me and my other college future minister peers, lead me into the revelation that this same form of non-linear concept of time what applicable to everything. We humans almost lack the capability of imaging time the way God does. We speak of it because possess the ability to make the hypothesis and understand that it could be so, but we are incapable of perceiving it. I wouldn't even call time Cyclical, as I'm not claiming your post concludes either. You seem to bring the cyclical argument up as an alternative, but I don't believe it's right either.The best I can describe time from the point of view of God is with this visualization.Consider our human history time line. On one end we have Adam and Eve, and on the other we have the so-called end, which I won't even began to debate that concept here so for sake of argument let’s say that there is an "End of the World (Time) As We Know It." The human embodiment of God in Jesus is on the timeline, but God Godself does not appear on the timeline. Instead God is the person like the teacher in the classroom who wrote the timeline on the chalkboard. Therefore God can see each event happening simultaneously and reach God's hand into the time as necessary, but not actually being bound by the concept of Time as those within the time are bound.Even this description does not fully or accurately describe Time, alas it is late and I'm "Out of Time." This particular post caught my interested immediately. You put in more precise terms what I’ve come to believe.Time, as humans know it, is not as God knows it. It first occurred to me when struggling with the dilemma posed to me by some many friends, and occasionally my self, with pre-marital sex. The old argument being Pre-Marital sex is an equal sin as to Adultery. Though I’m in no way a hedonist, the standard Conservative argument is flawed when considering either soon to be married couples and or eventually married couples. The question being, If God knows they will be married then aren’t essentially married already, since Jesus was with God in the Beginning and the End described in past-tense? This rather juvenile issue of pre-marital sex being analyzed by me and my other college future minister peers, lead me into the revelation that this same form of non-linear concept of time what applicable to everything. We humans almost lack the capability of imaging time the way God does. We speak of it because possess the ability to make the hypothesis and understand that it could be so, but we are incapable of perceiving it. I wouldn’t even call time Cyclical, as I’m not claiming your post concludes either. You seem to bring the cyclical argument up as an alternative, but I don’t believe it’s right either.The best I can describe time from the point of view of God is with this visualization.Consider our human history time line. On one end we have Adam and Eve, and on the other we have the so-called end, which I won’t even began to debate that concept here so for sake of argument let’s say that there is an “End of the World (Time) As We Know It.” The human embodiment of God in Jesus is on the timeline, but God Godself does not appear on the timeline. Instead God is the person like the teacher in the classroom who wrote the timeline on the chalkboard. Therefore God can see each event happening simultaneously and reach God’s hand into the time as necessary, but not actually being bound by the concept of Time as those within the time are bound.Even this description does not fully or accurately describe Time, alas it is late and I’m “Out of Time.”

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