I have always perceived God as an entity outside of time, looking at all happenings all at once. He sees my death and my birth and everything in between all in the same "instance" for lack of a better term. Obviously I can't describe this with human words, but I always imagined it like a person looking at a timeline, but seeing all the events happening... which makes sense, but it also doesn't makes sense because I'm using space and time to visualize something outside of space and time. That is why I was never bothered with the concept of predestination, because I can't possibly try to perceive something outside of my own capacity to understand. And why should I make conclusions based on an argument that has no vocabulary for what we're actually arguing about?
I would stare out the window of my dad's car as a teen (I did a lot of thinking staring out of the backseat window), thinking about the argument that I've heard so many times, "If God knows my every decision before I make it, couldn't he stop me from making the stupid ones?" or, "If God knows everything I do, then do I really have freedom to choose what I do?" or, "If everything is already predetermined, do I even have free will?" and then the counter argument, "Just because God knows what will happen before it happens, doesn't mean you don't have a choice in the matter." I decided it was the most useless conversation to have in the first place. People are making hard conclusions that God's all-knowing quality removes the possibility of free will... but the truth probably looks more like something none of us can contemplate anyway. The question dissipated in my mind and I never asked it again.
Naturally, the theories in the above video rocked my view of God, but my conception of God outside of time looking at all happenings at once made even more sense. Except now I have an even stranger visual of my 4th-dimensional self being a strange snake-like thing. But from whatever dimension God is perceiving things, He most likely sees things in an incomprehensible way. God is a being who transcends time and space, and resides in the highest dimension. This is always in the back of my mind when I think about Him.
Lately I've been thinking about something John Crowder said in one of his teachings, "Love is a person." This concept has been stewing in my subconscious for some weeks now. I've been stuck on 1 John 4:16 all this time, "...God is love..."
My faith in God is only strengthened as I ponder this, especially when I think about my relationship with my husband. We are like electrical conduits gaining a charge from our time spent with God and releasing that charge onto each other. The most beautiful, most intimate times I've had with him have all been times during or after our time spent focused on God. God is our source of love. He brought us together, and He sustains our love in the most beautiful, gratifying way. I pray to God and I am more in love with Dustin, no matter what I was praying about. It was that way when we were dating, when I would ask God to take Dustin away from me (because my leaders were telling me he wasn't the one for me), and I'd get up from that prayer practically drunk with admiration for that man.
But it's not true because of my experience; it's true because it's true. And 1 John 4:16 says it. God is love.
I see a variety of Facebook posts on the subject of love. Most of them agitate me because their conception is terribly limiting. A lot of my Facebook friends are of the belief that love is a choice. I used to believe it too. This reminds me of the free-will argument I discussed earlier. If I chose to love Dustin, it was the most passive choice I could have ever made; I chose love like a leaf chooses to float down a river current. It was so irresistible, there was no other choice to make. I later chose to commit myself to Dustin. But my choice to commit was merely a fruit of my love. That choice wasn't love itself!
And did I choose to love God? Well, He chose me. If I made a choice it was to cave under the tremendous weight of God's overwhelmingly irresistible glory.
Others like to say love is hard work; that you have to choose to love your spouse, and this choice is a daily recurrence. I suppose it can get to this point when life spreads you thin. But these people make love sound like misery. I don't have to choose to love Dustin daily. And I don't have to choose to love God daily. I simply love because I trust Love Himself, who lives inside of me.
If your definition of love doesn't assume the truth that God is the center of it--is the substance of it--you are robbing yourself of the hottest, most sensual, most intimate, soul-deep connection with your spouse. You're robbing yourself of a lot of fun and laughs. You're robbing yourself of true friendship(s). You are robbing yourself of the healing that could happen in a broken relationship. But, most importantly, you are robbing yourself of understanding God. All love comes from Him. And He loves you deeply.
The God who transcends time and space is love.
Christopher Nolan created a moment of utter profundity in Interstellar which I cannot describe in a way that could possibly do it justice. But this quote struck the core of me:
"You're a scientist, Brand."
"So listen to me when I say that love isn't something we invented. It's observable--powerful. It has to mean something... maybe it means something more [than social utility]--something we can't yet understand. Maybe it's some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive... love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't understand it yet."
I think I know what Nolan is referring to, whether he realizes it or not.
"...I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! (Eph. 3:17b-21)
Others like to say love is hard work; that you have to choose to love your spouse, and this choice is a daily recurrence. I suppose it can get to this point when life spreads you thin. But these people make love sound like misery. I don't have to choose to love Dustin daily. And I don't have to choose to love God daily. I simply love because I trust Love Himself, who lives inside of me.
If your definition of love doesn't assume the truth that God is the center of it--is the substance of it--you are robbing yourself of the hottest, most sensual, most intimate, soul-deep connection with your spouse. You're robbing yourself of a lot of fun and laughs. You're robbing yourself of true friendship(s). You are robbing yourself of the healing that could happen in a broken relationship. But, most importantly, you are robbing yourself of understanding God. All love comes from Him. And He loves you deeply.
The God who transcends time and space is love.
Christopher Nolan created a moment of utter profundity in Interstellar which I cannot describe in a way that could possibly do it justice. But this quote struck the core of me:
"You're a scientist, Brand."
"So listen to me when I say that love isn't something we invented. It's observable--powerful. It has to mean something... maybe it means something more [than social utility]--something we can't yet understand. Maybe it's some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive... love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't understand it yet."
I think I know what Nolan is referring to, whether he realizes it or not.
"...I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! (Eph. 3:17b-21)
