Thoughts on the Limitless from a Limited Time/Space Continuum
by Mike Lehnherr
One evening in 1988, I was sitting on the front steps of our Army housing in Ft. Leavenworth, KS, with our seven-year old daughter, Erin. She looked at me and asked, “Dad, what is infinity minus one?” To which I replied, “infinity.” Her response was, “I know. I just wanted to see if you did.” A six year old daughter, being home-schooled by a friend at Harmony asked a similar question. “Mom, what is infinity minus infinity?” The proper response? Infinity.
Those of us schooled in traditional education know that anything minus something leaves a smaller amount, and anything minus itself, leaves zero. So why is infinity different? Billy Preston posited in his 1975 song that, “nothing from nothing leaves nothing.” Does it not then make sense that everything from everything would also leave nothing? It is exactly our traditional education and training that makes it difficult for us to grasp the illogic of our logic. Our education, training, experience and intuition all exist within this three-dimensional plane we call earth, resident on the time/space continuum. All are a result of creation. Infinity doesn’t fit, because infinity was not created – it has always been, because it is an attribute of our Eternal and Infinite God. But even that statement falls short, because “always” is a measure that is also trapped along that same continuum.
If I ask the question, “what is three apples, minus three?” The normal response I get is, “zero.” That is absolutely incorrect. I didn’t say three apples minus three apples; I said three apples minus three. If I ask, “what is three apples minus three oranges?” I normally get a confused look and a timid answer/question of, “three apples.” Which is absolutely correct. Trying to understand questions of infinity and eternity and relate them to anything created, only ends in confusion and frustration. Infinity is not a lot; just as eternity is not a long time. You can neither number the numberless, nor time the timeless. They are not related, and cannot be defined in those terms. Time, numbers, and our existence are all based within the rules and structure of the created. Comparative values can only be derived when comparing like structures. So to say that the limitless can be changed by adding or subtracting a limited entity, is like mixing apples with oranges.
The “Teacher”, in Ecclesiastes 3:11, writes that, “He (God) has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” 1 The placement of eternity in our hearts is a gift and result of the unbreakable bond we have with our Eternal Creator. Man has always known that there is something beyond our sojourn on this earth. But aside from Christ, only Adam truly understood the wrinkle between our time and God’s eternity. Adam, as a result of sin, stepped from eternity into time. The second Adam, Jesus Christ, in order to once and for all provide the remedy for that sin, did the same. The good news is that because of that second Adam, once we accept and cling to Christ, we step from our temporal existence back into eternity, where our Creator intended us to be.
This is an important concept for us to “get our heads around.” Our eternity began the moment we said yes to Christ. It does not begin the day we “cross over.” We (man-kind) were created (pre-destined in the truest form of the word – see Ephesians 1:4-14) to be eternal beings. Adam destined us to a temporal existence. In Christ, our created status is restored.
One more point and I’ll leave this subject. We are eternal beings, but only the Triune God is infinite. When we join our Father in His kingdom, He alone (again, this is the aggregate existence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) remains omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. We will not become “little gods”. We will remain in His presence, worshipping Him with the other created beings (angels), and doing whatever eternal beings do in eternity. To be forever with God, means that we have become aligned with His character, not that we have inherited His nature or attributes. That belief led to the downfall of Lucifer (see Isaiah 14:12ff), and is an entirely different subject.
Rejoice in your eternity in God, because of the infinite love of God. Live your lives as eternal beings. It helps to bring the everyday (time-limited) struggles of this world into perspective.
Major Mike
Notes from the Battlefield
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Do you believe there is something more to your life beyond your normal experience? That this "something more" is spiritual?