"Right," I said, staring at my Lenten cheeseburger, wishing I was an angel.
"I will explain that in the course of our discussion today. The subject is matter, time, and space."
"Oh, no!" I thought, "Then there are worse things in life than lunch in Lent."
"Have you ever asked, 'Where was God before the universe was created? or Where is heaven? or How big is infinite? or How long is eternal?'"
"Yes," I said, "hasn't everyone?"
"Exactly... I am going to give you the answers."
(I almost choked on my cheeseburger. Of course, I usually do anyway, but this had caught me by surprise.)
Michael continued, "Let's start with time, and then we will move on to eternity. How would you define time?"
I thought for a moment while swallowing and then took a stab at a definition. "It is like a line made up of the past, the present and the future in which the past is everything already done, the present is what is happening now, and the future is everything that will happen. How is that?" Certain I had failed again, I had another bite of my cheeseburger.
"A reasonable start," said Michael. Then he inquired, "When does a cheeseburger taste its best?"
"What?"
"When does a cheeseburger taste its best?"
"That sounds like the start of a joke an eleven year old would tell."
"Does it taste best in the past, the present or the future?"
"I can only taste it in the present. Fortunately, that won't last long. Soon it will be just a recent, relatively unpleasant memory."
"Exactly my point."
"How would you know that cheeseburgers leave a relatively unpleasant memory?"
"I was not referring to your cheeseburger. I was referring to the fact that the present moment is very short. Infinitely short. It is virtually non-existent. Do you understand?"
"No." I said.
"Once you do, you will see how difficult it is to prove that
you exist."
"I thought the problem at hand is proving that you exist, not that I
exist! I think I need an explanation."
"Yes. Let's start by looking at the present. How long is the present moment?"
"Well..."
"What are you thinking of right now." Michael snapped his fingers on the word "now."
"Let me see..."
"Don't bother. You are too late. That 'now' moment is already past. Here comes another one.... right... now!" Again he snapped his fingers. "But it too, is already gone.... You see, the present moment is very short. You can divide time down into smaller and smaller bits so that a nano-second is a long time. The time line is made up of an infinite number of points, or successive occurrences of 'the present' which have no dimension. They are infinitely small, impossible to measure. Normally, when you are thinking about the present, you are mostly considering the recent past and anticipating the very near future. The true 'present' hardly exists. I'll give you another example. Do you understand how a film is shot?"
That was a subject I did understand. I answered, "Yes, a camera takes, say, 16 individual pictures in one second. When they are played back at that speed, it looks like continual motion, but it is not. It is a succession of snap shots strung together."
"Exactly, each picture captures a moment in time. Now if you could take an infinite number of snap shots per second of, say, a running horse, you would have a better understanding of what it was doing at any 'moment of time.' However, even if you could develop such snap shots instantly, it would not 'prove' that the horse exists now, but that it existed in the moment just captured on film. Verifying the past is easier than verifying the present. However, it is only natural, having verified the immediate past to then jump to the conclusion that the horse continues to exist, but just because it existed a moment ago does not prove that it will continue to exist. It would be much harder to make this assumption if horses were in the habit of disappearing in an instant."
"Thank God," I said. "People are insecure enough about the future. They don't need to be worrying about going out of existence every second."
"Do you?"
"Do I what? Worry about going out of existence suddenly?"
"No, do you thank the Most High that you remain in existence? You said, 'Thank God.' Do you?"
"I guess I should."
"Let's move on. This is not a discussion of your prayer life. We are simply trying to define some terms accurately. Now, give me your best definition of eternity."
I thought a bit, and said, "The Church and the Bible teach that we can have eternal life, so I suppose it means we live forever. Time will just keep on ticking by."
"That is one way to look at it but it is mono-directional. Try again."
"OK, how about time without beginning or end; you could look down the time line both ways forever. Something that lasts forever in both directions is eternal."
"That is better, but it still is rather weak. It is one dimensional. Eternity isn't just a time line with both ends running on forever. A certain amount of eternity didn't roll by before God created the universe. Putting eternity onto a time line doesn't work. You get closer to understanding eternity or infinite time by making it both three dimensional and non-dimensional."
"Of course, that must be right!" I said with feigned enthusiasm. "Only I don't have any idea what you mean."
"First let's make time three dimensional. Pick a date."
"OK, April Thirtieth, 1952." (My birthday seemed like a good enough date.)
"Now suppose you could go back in time and relive that date."
"No thanks, it was tough enough as it was, and I wouldn't want to put my mother through that again." Michael again ignored my attempt at humour.
"Still, if you could go backwards in time, that would break one of the laws of time and space. Now in addition, what if you could not just go backward and forward on the time line, but you could go up, down and across it, so that time stood still and you could go exploring a particular moment in time? For example, suppose you could return to exactly two o'clock on 30 April 1952 over and over again. First you could visit the hospital where you were born, then you could visit Parliament and see what they were debating. Then you could check on what Joseph Stalin was having for lunch and finally you could check in on the seventh inning of the Yankees - Red Sox game."
"That would be interesting, but it would take a lot of time."
"In fact it would take no time at all. You would have to be outside of linear time in order to be able to do it. That is how the Most High sees time. He is not inside of it. To be eternal as the Most High is eternal, is to be outside of linear time altogether, to be able to look at it all at once: past, present and future."
"That must be why you can't fool God."
"Yes."
"When I was young I tried working that one out. I would sit at my desk intending to fool God. I would say, I am going to raise my right hand off the table and then, in a sudden motion raise my left instead. Of course I would figure out that God knew what I was thinking all along. Even a quick change of mind wouldn't surprise him. Even if I meant to raise my right hand and my motor control somehow was momentarily messed up and I raised my left, God would have seen it coming anyway. Omniscience always seemed to me to be an unfair advantage in playing 'Let's see if I can fool you.'"
"So you have the basic idea."
"Yes, time could be said to exist in three dimensions. I can measure it more than just linearly." I paused briefly and then asked a question. "Michael, let me see if I am understanding something correctly. If God is like you say, then he knows everything in advance, or he has absolute foreknowledge. He knows everything before it happens. Even my eternal destiny."
"From one point of view, yes."
"So am I going to go to heaven or hell?"