Is It Your Time?

I recently heard a young woman giving a speech during which she proclaimed to all within her age group that today was her generation’s time.  This is a somewhat common phrase heard in most cultures around the world.  The idea that now is your time (or our time) is an expression fairly well understood by most people of the world.  It embodies the sentiment that a generation should seize the moment (carpe deim – as it were) and lead the way into the future.

Every generation that comes along encounters a point where they (the collective of the generation) believes it is their time.  But what does this really mean?  Does anyone, or any one generation really own time (or even a segment of time)?

Time is an interesting thing.  We mark time as humans because we know things from a finite perspective.  We experience a beginning, birth, and we at least perceive an end (death).  We know history from this finite perspective as well.

For the Atheist, especially those that ground their beliefs in an Evolutionary model, time is a critical component.  It is used as both a validator of their model as well as a marker of why we are at the place we are within that model.  By this I mean that time, and lots of it, are necessary for their model to make any sense or to even work.  And time also serves as a marker within their system to explain how we (mankind) got here and to predict where we are going.

But time is literally a linear thing.  It stretches in both directions from the point we find ourselves within it until it literally out distances itself from our present day means of comprehension.  Consider the fact that some (and I stress some, not all) Scientists place the age of the Universe at approximately 13.77 billion years old.  This “age” is calculated based upon a singularity (in this case the Big Bang event).  But what about time before the Big Bang?  Did it not exist?  Despite the fact that Dr. Stephen Hawking’s lastest work on the subject, The Grand Design, might suggest that you can indeed get something from nothing (a mental and mathematical gyration of adding matter and anti-matter (a 1 and -1) together, he simply cannot erase time.  What was before the nothingness?  What was going on while we were sitting around waiting for the nothingness to combine that matter and antimatter together in order to produce the Big Bang (yes, I’ve greatly simplified the theory and boiled it down to something a layperson can discuss – the essence is still the same)?  What happens after the eventual end to the Universe when everything collapses back in on itself?  Does time suddenly stop?  Just because everything known and unknown ceases to be?  Common sense would dictate not.  If Scientists wanted to be fair about their supposed age of the Universe they would simply proclaim it to be infinite, stretching beyond any hypothesized singularity or event and extending it to limits heretofore uncalculated and unimagined.

However, if they were honest in doing so, they would also produce an ironical paradox for themselves in that the Evolutionary model is built upon bounded, and calculated, periods of existence.  Once you step into the realm of the infinite, you begin to build a Theistic model, and that is something they reject.

For the Theist this is not a problem.  When you have a God at the head of your model, you understand that God created (literally started) time himself.  My Theistic model holds that God exists outside of time.  He is not part of it, and thus is not subject to its rules, limitations, and properties.  God, and God alone, is the Supreme being who created the model, including time, that we find ourselves within.  And what existed on the other side of the beginning?  Why God, of course.

Time is also interesting in that no one person or generation has any more or less time than any other generation or person.  We all mark time exactly the same and we all co-exist within that period of time that we are a part of with others.

My Theistic model also places us into eternity.  An eternity in which we continue to mark time (Isaiah 66:22-24) (Revelation 22:2) by month, and by extension, by year.

And given that we all face an eternity of time (although our eternity certainly had a beginning, and yet is without end) one might beg the question “When is your time“?

From the Theistic perspective, you should seize the day, but not because now is your time, but because what you do today determines the remainder of your disposition throughout all of eternity.

In reality, it is all of our time, both young and old, and everyone in between.  And our time is only what is allotted to us here in this present life on Earth.  And that time is the determining factor of all of eternity for all of mankind.  It is actually the one thing that makes Atheism such a sad state of affairs.  Because theirs is a gamble that once the perceived end is here, there is no more time (for them) and nothing matters any more (why it mattered before or matters now is a great mystery I have questioned many times before in this blog).  However, if the Atheist gambles incorrectly, and the Theistic model proves true (as I believe the evidence supports), they then have an eternity to exist with the consequences of a life choice made during A Brief History of Time (pun intended).  And during an eternity, 13.77 billion years will seem but a blink of an eye to us all.

So my rhetorical question: Is It Your Time? should be answered with a resounding “Yes!” and each and every one of us should make the most of it.  Moreover we should all take that time, granted since our beginning, to determine for ourselves, will we, or will we not, care what happens for an eternity?

The Theistic model says: Yes!  I do!  After all, Its Only Time.