Time and place and transience
Part 4: I don’t want what is precious to be gone and lost forever
We are used to the idea of God being the repository of all good values, but I now want to put forward the idea that he is also the repository of all experience.
We’ve met the idea before of timeless God, who experiences everything that is happening, everywhere in the universe, everything that has happened and everything that will happen, all simultaneously, in a timeless present. Let’s relate God’s experience to my own.
I am picturing now my daughter on her 3rd birthday. That event is long ago – just a memory, but as I recall it now, the experience that I had then is present to me again. I am aware that I am still in this room now, typing, but in my experience I am also reliving a moment from her 3rd birthday. And I think the idea of “reliving” the experience is a fair one. It is not like looking at a photograph of her 3rd birthday, where the photo is an artefact, taken on that day, which I can now hold in my hand and observe. The photo may also spark off my actual memories of the event, in which case the photo has simply served the purpose of assisting me to bring to mind the event. As I recall the event, I am experiencing at least some of the things I saw and felt on that day.
Now, when I am dead, that memory will be gone. My wife was the only other person present at that event, so she also has memories of my daughter’s 3rd birthday, but, in fact, the memory I am holding in my mind now happened when my wife was out of the room, so I am the only person in the world who has this memory. So, when I am gone, the memory will be gone too. This actually also applies to my daughter. As she was only 3 at the time, she probably has no memory of her 3rd birthday, but if she did, her memory would not be of her, sitting in her chair, in her pretty blue dress; her memory would be of me looking at her, sitting in her chair.
So, we are talking about a memory of an event that happened a long time ago. The event is “lost” in the sense of being long gone – just part of the transient flux of life. Yet the memory of it is still present – for as long as I am here, the memory still exists. However, if God is real, God also experienced the event. As he is always present, everywhere, and as he is “present in my head”, God has exactly the same memories of the event as I do. (In fact, he has more because, for example, he could observe my daughter from all points of view, and, if I popped out to the loo and missed 2 minutes, God did not miss it.) So, God actually has exactly the same memories as me, as, because he lives in me, he sees things from exactly the same point of view as me.
I believe that this is a really important idea. What it means is that, when I am gone (even if there is no life after death in heaven) I still exist in the memory of God. As God reviews his memory of me enjoying my daughter’s 3rd birthday, in just the same way as I relived the event as I remembered it, so God relives the event. The event is, at least to some extent, happening again in the mind of God. In fact, as an omnipotent God, if for some reason (though this would not happen) God found his memory of the event inadequate in some way, he could recreate me and my daughter on her 3rd birthday so that he could experience the event again. As I say, he would not need to do this, because his memory would be sufficient to bring the event alive again to his mind – just as my memory is sufficient to bring the event alive to me now.
Spiritual Devotion 