The world is not flat

Years ago, a noted prophetic voice told radio audiences that God had shown him in a revelatory experience that outer space was not empty as thought. Because God had created it, it had to have substance. People thought him crazy. Christians called him a heretic. A few years later, science proved him right.

Recently, this same prophetic voice (who accurately foretold the financial collapse in 2008, as well as dozens of other world events) stated that before our lifespan is over (speaking of most people), science will prove that time is a substance. It seems as though science is all but there.

Because time is created, it is not just a concept but a reality. Often we speak of it as if time is simply a law, like gravity, or if the present is all there is. But that can not be true.

Recently, a theology known as "open theism" has grown in popularity. Open theism is promoted because it rightly shows God to be relational, loving, and actively involved with us on a personal level. He chooses to be influenced by us. That's good stuff! Pursuing God for the love He is, is the best of motivations!

But part of its basic idea also has this: God is not beyond time, interacting with us personally within time, but instead God is inside of time - He is not in the future because the future does not yet exist, and He only knows what the future holds because He is infinitely capable of figuring things out. He has a big brain.

At first, this may not seem like a big deal. So what if the future isn't here yet, and the God we believed could see the future really can't?

The deal is this: If Christianity defines God as being inside of time, while time is not infinite but a substance, then our problematic conclusion becomes this: time is bigger than God.

However, God is beyond time - just as He is similarly unaffected by gravity.

Leaders of nations and the Church were confounded when the solar system was discovered to not revolve around the Earth. Church hierarchies were angry and their doctrine was humiliated. Their worldview assumptions had informed their interpretation of Scripture, and Galileo unwittingly proved their Earth-centric doctrine to be wrong (though it took them years to come to terms with it).

Just as the church erroneously interpreted Sacred Scripture as saying the Earth is the center of the universe - because the view confirmed their worldview - so the church is in danger of a similar misstep today. If we hold the doctrine of open theism, the legitimate scientific discovery of time as substance will either humiliate our doctrines because we made God smaller than time, a created substance - or science will again laugh, because our doctrines will seemingly prove to them that our God is not god, but another figment of religious imaginations, held within the greater universe. He becomes simply superhuman, devoid of the attributes of deity.

To use another illustration: We know the world is not flat. Yet, world leaders and explorers were confounded when the world was proved to be round. However, the round-Earth discovery forever changed world exploration, because explorers then knew their ships would not fall off the side of the ocean. It opened the horizon to them, literally. A correct view of the Uncreated God, who, while moving in time with us and filling our lives with His life, holds Him as beyond time. And just as the round-Earth discovery transformed world exploration, our knowledge of an infinite, all-present, beyond-limits God will transform our personal exploration of Him.

Notice, I did not call this correct view Calvinism. Nor did I say it was not Calvinism. I do not support any theological bent that would attempt to explain away our responsibility as God's children, as messengers, as ones who love those in the world. Or any "belief" system that says the gospel is not power to effect the human heart and history. A true understanding of God's nature, however partial ours is, will always expand our ability to follow Him, to fulfill responsibility and change history.

I am not attempting to resolve mystery, or remove the seeming tension between an infinite God and having the ability to influence Him. Instead, the nature of God could in fact make us more uncomfortable, the mystery could grow and feel even more unresolved. Maybe that's how He likes it.