Most of us, if we’re honest, live by the clock. The alarm sounds and we are off, watching the minutes slip by. Time-sensitive deadlines drive our days. We have appointments and meetings, we eat at a certain time, and the day ends by a certain time. Bound to our timepieces, it often seems our every moment is synchronized and controlled.
In contrast to the “objective” measures of time marking seconds, minutes, and hours, there is also a “subjective” experience of time being “fast or slow.” Those of us who are growing older describe our experience of time as passing by more and more quickly. We feel our vacation time as ephemeral, while our work week plods slowly by—and yet both are marked by the same objective measurements of time. How is it that our subjective experience of time is so different from what our watches and clocks objectively mark out for us, second by second, hour by hour?
This question of our subjective experience of time is one that the ancient philosophers and early Christian leaders pondered. Their philosophical and theological musings bequeathed to us many perplexities regarding the human experience of time. Saint Augustine, for example, wrestled with the fleeting character of our human temporal experience. No sooner do we apprehend the present than it has receded into the past. He wrote, “We cannot rightly say what time is, except by reason of its impending state of not-being.”(1)
Regardless of our perceptual and philosophical difficulties with understanding the nature of time, what seems most crucial for our lives is the significance of events that happen in time, moment by moment, hour by hour, and day by day. Seeking to reclaim this emphasis, theologians have tried to understand the nature of time by what takes place in time—a narrative of unfolding events.(2) These theological discussions involve God’s engagement with time. Is God a wholly atemporal being, outside of time and history? Or is God genuinely engaged with time and revealed through an unfolding story of historical disclosure?
The biblical writers give witness to a God who progressively unfolds saving acts within history. The divine plan of salvation that Christians believe culminates in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ is called salvation history. God did not, for example, reveal every aspect of salvation to Abraham or to Moses. Instead, the biblical writers give witness to the God who works within and through the temporal events of history to reveal the plan of redemption. We see this unfolding in God’s commissioning of Moses prior to the Exodus: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty (El Shaddai) but by my name ‘the Lord (Yahweh)’ I did not make myself known.”(2) Within the long ministry of the prophets, a God is revealed who gradually discloses what will take place. Isaiah presents the God who “proclaims to you new things from this time; even hidden things which you have not known. They are created now, and not long ago: and before today you have not heard them” (Isaiah 48:6-7).
For Christians, God’s decisive revelatory action in time is in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. While there are many glimpses, sign-markers, and hints pointing towards a messianic redeemer in the Old Testament, ultimately God chose to enter a particular time as a human being to live life among the time-bound.
The significance of those time-bound events continues into our time, and indeed into eternity. And through the unfolding of time, humans can grow in their understanding of who God is and what God has done through Jesus, the Messiah. Indeed, as Jesus spoke with his disciples, he suggests that there would be more to learn and more to reveal through the work of the Holy Spirit: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears he will speak; and he will disclose to you what is to come” (italics mine; John 16:12-13).
The witness of Scripture suggests that the events of our lives reveal this ongoing work of the Spirit. Sometimes, we apprehend the significance of those events in the present time. Other times, it is only through the lens of hindsight as events recede into times past that we understand God’s action. While time might move slowly for some or quickly for others, while minutes and seconds and hours are filled with appointments, meetings, and all the events that make up our time-bound existence, we would do well to look around to see how the Spirit of God is working through what might appear to be ordinary events in the march of time. Indeed, those who follow Jesus ought never to forget that God entered time to enact the new creation in Christ’s resurrection. As we grow in our understanding of that timeless act, the events of our temporal lives act as sign-markers for eternity. And while we often see the significance of our time-bound events “through a mirror darkly,” the day will come when “all things are subjected to Him…that God may be all in all.”(4)
Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.
(1) Augustine, Confessions, XI, 14.
(2) Colin Gunton, cited in John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 120.
(3) Exodus 6:2-3, Italics mine.
(4) 1 Corinthians 15:28.
Tag Archives: experience
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Gaps
Cognitive dissonance, the study of psychology tells us, is the internal tension that results when our experience doesn’t match our professed beliefs and values. It is that sense of unease when we encounter something that contradicts what we have held to be true. We often experience this tension in the course of academic training as we learn new ideas. Or we can be jolted as we meet new people with vastly different backgrounds and cultures from our own.
But perhaps dissonance is felt most acutely when it occurs in the realm of faith commitments and expectations. Why is it that even when the right thing is done, the good action taken, nothing appears to change in my life or circumstances? If suffering is merely an illusion, why do so many people experience so much pain? How is it that marriage can be so difficult and yet God’s ideal for relationships? How is it that prayer seemingly goes unanswered even in the face of faithful and persistent prayers? How do I reconcile personal and global suffering with a view of a good and benevolent Divinity governing the world?
Some, to be sure, might claim to have never experienced (or noticed) cognitive dissonance as a reality in their own lives. There are always quick explanations offered for those who don’t find it quite as easy to reconcile the gaps between beliefs and experience: We have drifted away from our moral center. We have not studied enough, or prayed enough. We have not understood right teaching. Perhaps there are times when all of these explanations may be true.
But is it always so easy to explain dissonance away? I asked this question anew when I looked at the questions raised by John the Baptist as presented in the New Testament. John the Baptist was the cousin of Jesus of Nazareth. Like Jesus, he had an extraordinary beginning, having been born to parents beyond child-bearing years. The last of the great, Hebraic prophets, the gospels portray John with all the intensity and moral outrage of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Malachi. John was fearless in his proclamation issuing the call of repentance to sinners and the religious leaders alike. He even baptized Jesus in preparation for his own itinerant ministry. He was resolute in his stand against immorality and hypocrisy. He understood his unique and limited role in preparation for the Messiah. Even as his own disciples came undone and complained that the crowds who once clamored to see him were now flocking to Jesus, John stood clear in his calling: “You yourselves bear me witness, that I have said, ‘I am not the Messiah,’ but ‘I have been sent before him’” (John 3:26-28).
Yet knowing all of this background creates a dramatic contrast when we hear John speak after he is imprisoned by Herod. His resolve was shaken. Both Matthew and Luke’s gospels record his own experience with dissonance: “Now when John in prison heard of the works of Jesus, he sent word by his disciples, and said to him, ‘Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?’”(2) His question belies the ‘gap’ between the reality he envisioned and his current reality in a cold prison cell. If Jesus is the Messiah, John must have wondered, why am I sitting in this jail? The Messiah John proclaimed would “thoroughly clear his threshing floor” and “burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12). The Messiah was coming to rid Israel—and indeed the world—of evil. Yet in John’s day to day existence in his lonely prison cell, evil had won the day. “Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?”
John’s dissonance is not unlike the gaps between belief and experience. Yet perhaps, according to author Scott Cairns, “[These also] can become illuminating moments in which we see our lives in the context of a terrifying, abysmal emptiness, moments when all of our comfortable assumptions are shown to be false, or misleading, or at least incomplete.”(1) Surely, John thought, the Messiah would free him from prison, bring justice, and bind up all the wicked like chaff to be burned. Yet, what was expected was not experienced. John experienced the terrifying and abysmal emptiness that came in a Jesus who was free from his expectations and of his own assumptions.
Jesus acknowledged that his ministry would be disruptive, and even be misunderstood. In responding to John’s doubts, Jesus said, “Blessed is the one who keeps from stumbling over me” (Matthew 11:6). Like John before us, those who seek to follow Jesus often stumble over him. The gaps between what we believe and what we experience create fissures in faith into which many fall. Yet, as Cairns suggests, might mining those gaps uncover the treasure of encountering Jesus in new ways? Might mining the gaps we experience hold the treasure of new insight and the beauty of a more faithful devotion if we are willing to let go of “comfortable assumptions” and cherished expectations? If so, then might all the faithful dig deep and find that what is precious and most valuable is often found in the fissures of dissonance.
Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.
(1) Scott Cairns, The End of Suffering (Brewster MA: Paraclete Press, 2009), 8.
(2) Matthew 11:3; Luke 7:20.
Charles Stanley – Preparing for the Valley
Read | 1 Peter 4:12-19
The primary purpose of a mountaintop experience is to prepare us for the valley. That’s why we can’t stay up there. When Peter, James, and John came down from the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-9), they encountered many difficulties that eventually led to their witnessing Jesus on the cruel Roman cross.
As much as we might long to remain on the summit, God doesn’t keep us floating around in some ethereal counterfeit spiritual experience; eventually we must return to the dusty, empty plains of life. His intention is that we be strengthened by worship and His Word—and then go about our Monday routine, prepared to make an impression upon others. If Jesus walked among us today, He’d spend His time in alleyways, on street corners, and in places where few of us in our dignity would want to be caught.
The three disciples no doubt would have wanted to stay with the Lord on the mountain, but that’s not the purpose of a spiritual high. The point is that God may reveal Himself to us in a fresh way. Then He readies us through that inspiration to go back to the common places where we have to face tasks we might prefer to avoid. Life’s realities aren’t to be escaped. God wants believers to learn to live every day in reliance on His indwelling Spirit.
The Lord was using the time on the summit to prepare Peter, James, and John for their true purpose. When God lifts us up, He doesn’t intend for us to stay there. He gives exceptional spiritual experiences to strengthen us and make us more effective when we engage in everyday life.
Joyce Meyer – Seriously, Don’t Worry!
And which of you by being overly anxious and troubled with cares can add a cubit to his stature or a moment [unit] of time to his age? —Luke 12:25
Don’t worry. Be happy. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying many times. Have you noticed that it’s easier said than done? I believe that to actually stop worrying requires having experience with God. I don’t think there is any way a person can fully overcome habits of worry, anxiety and fear—and develop habits of peace, rest and hope—without years of experience trusting and receiving God’s love.
This is one reason why having faith and continuing to have faith in the midst of trials and challenges is so important. We must steadfastly resist the temptation to give up or to start being anxious or worried when life becomes difficult—and keeps getting more difficult. During these hard, trying seasons, God is building in us the patience, endurance and godly character we need in order to eventually develop joyful hope, strong love and confident expectation in Him.
When you find yourself in the midst of a battle against our enemy, the devil, remember that every round you fight produces valuable experience and strength. Every time you endure an attack, you become stronger. You become better able to hold your peace and resist fear, anxiety and worry. To endure means to outlast the devil and you have got what it takes to do so.
Loving God means trusting Him in every situation and refusing to allow the enemy to control you, torment you and rob your peace through worry. It will take practice and experience with God to break this habit, but you can do it by His grace. Commit to the process of becoming a worry-free, trust-filled person who lives in the peace and joy God wants you to experience.
Love God Today: Today, refuse to worry, be anxious or allow fear to operate in your life. Declare your trust in God in every situation.
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 