It's About Time

An important consideration regarding God is how he is beyond time. It's safe to say, in our limited imagination, that when we confirm that God has always been, always is, and always will be, we place him outside time. But what is time, and is it important to God?

In Genesis 1:1 we get a glimpse into Gods past, or shall I say, our perception of an earlier time of God. In the beginning... does not really refer to God but an iteration of our physical universe. Beginning signals to us a start of something, let's say time. Without time, the physical universe would not exist as we know it. Every molecule in existence moves through time and it either interacts with other molecules or just decays as its half-life approaches. Same for atoms, same for us! Even light, which doesn't have any tangible substance, has a wavelength that travels at 299792.458 km per second.

Is time important to God? For our benefit, he created two time-based events called day and night (Gen 1:3). While the Bible places an order of creation, it suggests that there was morning and evening before the sun, moon or stars were spoken into existence. However, an order of creation would suggest time since there is nothing that says that everything was created in one instant! Therefore God does exist inside and outside of our time-line and he allows it to proceed in a precise orderly fashion.

God has control of time and he is very consistent with it's operation. Our perception of time is relative to our own awareness, however our awareness has no bearing on time as it operates within our physical universe. A real good movie seems to end too soon, while a boring lecture drags on forever. Imagine if God decided to randomly speed up or slow down the constant of time. The infinitesimal tweak of time would destroy our physical universe as we know it. The very movement of molecules and protons and electrons would be altered in time and they would instantly change from one substance to another. If God wants us around for a while in this physical universe, he (God) has perfect and accurate control of time!