God and Time
W. Carl Ketcherside
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A gang of us were sitting in the library lounge killing time the other day and we got to kicking around our ideas about God. Do you think it is necessary to believe that God is a person, or can we settle for Tillich's idea that God is "the ground of our being"? Also, what is time? Do you think it is a force?
I am certain the conversation alluded to by my young friend in this excerpt from his letter was much more elevating than some other of the "bull sessions" held in college lounges these days. And I find myself a little intrigued by the question about God. The phrasing seems to indicate that the fellows thought one has to believe in God, and the only real question has to do with the nature of God. It is a fact that trying to live by bread alone is a pretty difficult and agonizing experience. You're always hungry deep down, and death by starvation of the personality can be harrowing.
What is meant by the expression, "Is it necessary to believe that God is a person?" Necessary for what? Does this mean, is it necessary for happiness? Or security? Or safety? If so, these are unworthy motivations for believing anything. Actually there is only one honest motive for belief and that is to be intellectually consistent with fact or truth. Anything else is secondary and is more likely to be a consequence or result of belief than a motivation toward it.
This being the case, one should believe about God what commends itself to his heart to be true. He is obligated to examine all of the evidence available and formulate his conclusion upon the basis of that evidence. In this instance the field of research spans the entire range of thought from the need of the human heart to the origin of the universe.
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I am sure that a dog can get some animal pleasure out of chewing on a rubber bone made in the image of a real one, but I cannot cut my spiritual eyeteeth or attain to any degree of satisfaction by mentally gnawing at an imitation. I am so constructed that my highest and noblest love must be projected to a responsive being rather than to an invention.
One can make an idol out of a concept as well as out of a tree trunk, and anything which comes between one and God is an idol, whether it is a mental block or a wooden block. And I am not cut out to be an idolater. If the late Paul Tillich derived his ground of being theory from Paul's speech in Athens-- "in him we live and move and have our being"-- he certainly wrested the passage if he posited a non-personal God. I am not sure he meant to do so!
To be quite honest about it, since the matter has been mentioned, I do not know what Tillich really thought about a good many things. When his writings were the current fad I read a lot of them and tried to look wise when his name was mentioned in company, but I was like a boy learning to swim on an inflated inner tube which someone carelessly punctures with a fish spear. I was glad to quit floundering around and get back to my own depth.
One who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Any real approach to God must be predicated upon belief in his existence, and it must include the idea that he is not impersonal, incapable, unreachable or aloof. He is concerned about man, and he manifests that concern by rewarding those who seek with diligence. He can be sought, he can be found, and he will reward those who make a meaningful divine-human encounter. I know he can be found because I've found him!
As to the question about time, I realize that there are some philosophers who regard it as a dynamic. I disagree with them. As I view it, time, like space, is a dimension. Space is the realm in which things exist, time is the realm in which things change. And this prompts me to say a few words about those of my good brethren who differentiate between "time" and "eternity." There is no such logical distinction that is valid.
Eternity did not end in order for time to begin. Time will not end in order for eternity to begin or resume. What we call time is simply our way of measuring that segment of eternity in which our existence is cast. Eternity has no past, present or future, although man has, so time marks only the scope of existence of humanity in the broader realm of eternity. Time is for man. Neither God nor lower animals would require it!