It is a very silly idea that in reading a book you must never "skip." All sensible people skip freely
when they come to a chapter which they find is going to be no use to them. In this chapter I am going
to talk about something which may be helpful to some readers, but which may seem to others merely
an unnecessary complication. If you are one of the second sort of readers, then I advise you not to
bother about this chapter at all but to turn on to the next.
In the last chapter I had to touch on the subject of prayer, and while that is still fresh in your mind and
my own, I should like to deal with a difficulty that some people find about the whole idea of prayer. A
man put it to me by saying "I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of
Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same
moment." And I have found that quite a lot of people feel this.
Now, the first thing to notice is that the whole sting of it comes in the words at the same moment.
Most of us can imagine God attending to any number of applicants if only they came one by one and
He had an endless time to do it in. So what is really at the back of this difficulty is the idea of God
having to fit too many things into one moment of time.
Well that is of course what happens to us. Our life comes to us moment by moment One moment
disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is
like. And of course you and I tend to take it for granted that this Time series—this arrangement of
past, present and future—is not simply the way life comes to us but the way all things really exist We
tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just
as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started the
idea that some things are not in Time at all: later the Philosophers took it over: and now some of the
scientists are doing the same.
Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a
million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little
snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty—and every other moment from the beginning of the
world—is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to
listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.
That is difficult, I know. Let me try to give something, not the same, but a bit like it. Suppose I am
writing a novel. I write "Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!" For Mary
who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work
and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between
writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think
steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as
long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside
the story) at all.
This is not a perfect illustration, of course. But it may give just a glimpse of what I believe to be the
truth. God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried
along in the imaginary time of his own novel He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He
does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only
being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had
been the only man in the world.
The way in which my illustration breaks down is this. In it the author gets out of one Time-series (that
of the novel) only by going into another Time-series (the real one). But God, I believe, does not live in
a Time-series at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him it is, so to
speak, still 1920 and already 1960. For His life is Himself.
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the
whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave
A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside
or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.
The idea is worth trying to grasp because it removes some apparent difficulties in Christianity. Before
I became a Christian one of my objections was as follows. The Christians said that the eternal God
who is everywhere and keeps the whole universe going, once became a human being. Well then, said
I, how did the whole universe keep going while He was a baby, or while He was asleep? How could
He at the same time be God who knows everything and also a man asking his disciples "Who touched
me?"
You will notice that the sting lay in the time words: "While He was a baby"—"How could He at the
same time?" In other words I was assuming that Christ's life as God was in time, and that His life as
the man Jesus in Palestine was a shorter period taken out of that time—just as my service in the army
was a shorter period taken out of my total life. And that is how most of us perhaps tend to think about
it. We picture God living through a period when His human life was still in the future: then coming to
a period when it was present: then going on to a period when He could look back on it as something in
the past. But probably these ideas correspond to nothing in the actual facts.
You cannot fit Christ's earthly life in Palestine into any time-relations with His life as God beyond all
space and time. It is really, I suggest, a timeless truth about God that human nature, and the human
experience of weakness and sleep and ignorance, are somehow included in His whole divine life. This
human life in God is from our point of view a particular period in the history of our world (from the
year A.D. one till the Crucifixion). We therefore imagine it is also a period in the history of God's own
existence. But God has no history.
He is too completely and utterly real to have one. For, of course, to have a history means losing part of
your reality (because it had already slipped away into the past) and not yet having another part
(because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing but the tiny little present, which has gone
before you can speak about it. God forbid we should think God was like that. Even we may hope not
to be always rationed in that way.
Another difficulty we get if we believe God to be in time is this. Everyone who believes in God at all
believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do soand-
so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking
that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead
and we cannot.
Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be
free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call
"tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for
Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because,
though you have lost yesterday. He has not.
He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though
tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment
were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions
in just the same way—because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He
does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is
already "Now" for Him.
This idea has helped me a good deal. If it does not help you, leave it alone. It is a "Christian idea" in
the sense that great and wise Christians have held it and there is nothing in it contrary to Christianity.
But it is not in the Bible or any of the creeds. You can be a perfectly good Christian without accepting
it, or indeed without thinking of the matter at all