Why God admonishes “today” (and speaks ill of “tomorrow”)

Imagine a darkened room where the walls cannot be seen, as if you were suspended in space. Floating in the center of that room is a glow-in-the-dark ruler. You are able to walk around it, look beneath it and above it. In one glance, you are able to view the entire ruler. This is the analogy I use when I think of God and created time. In created time there is a beginning and an ending with various measurements in between. On this ruler we exist at a single point in time that Scripture refers to as “today” or more definitively describes as “now.” Unlike God, we cannot see the past or future on this ruler, but only the present. Existence is always in the present tense, like God, who in the analogy is the person observing the ruler.

Because we are finite creations, the infinite is not something we can readily grasp, yet God has attempted to instill in us his sense of eternally present, so that we may think and act according to his perspective. Consider the following scripture regarding the critical nature of the present:

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation. (2 Cor. 6:2)
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, (Heb. 3:7 and also Psalms 95:7)
…Jesus… saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew [immediately] got up and followed him. (Matthew 9:9)
“Come! follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Mark 1:17-18)

When God says, “Now” he means “Now” and not when we can schedule it in. His use of commanding words that require immediate action is one way that God instills in us his ever-present perspective.

There is another time-centered caveat that God wishes to instill in us and that regards the future. Of “tomorrow” God has little good to say.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:34)
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. (James 4:14)
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. (Prov 27:1)
“Come,” each one cries, “let me get wine! Let us drink our fill of beer! And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better.” (Isaiah 56:12) Jesus called out this same attitude in the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:19-20) when the rich man said to himself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’”

Tomorrow is about as useful to us as the sign that reads, “All-You-Can-Eat-Crab Tomorrow!”

This concept of time and the infinite created serious heretical teachings within the early Church referred to as the Eunomian Controversy. This controversy surrounded a sect of Christians who taught that Jesus Christ was created, and that God could be comprehended by human reason. The two errors undermined the Person of Jesus Christ, the Holy Trinity, and the infinity of God, and were subsequently refuted by two brilliant brothers, St. Basil of Caesarea and St. Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th century. Gregory of Nyssa would go on to write 12 books against Eunomius, and one argument he would use against these errors was the concept of time.

Gregory’s Time Argument

Gregory argued that if the Son had a beginning, then inadvertently so does the Father. He writes, “He [Eunomius] who asserts that the Father is prior to the Son with any thought of an interval must perforce allow that even the Father is not without beginning.” When Eunomius places time between the Father and the generation of the Son, Gregory argues that,

…he places a certain interval [of time] between the two: now he must mean either that this interval is infinite, or that it is included within fixed limits. However, the principle of an intervening mean [i.e. time] will not allow him to call it infinite; he would annul thereby the very conception of Father and Son and the thought of anything connecting them, as long as this infinite were limited on neither side, with no idea of a Father cutting it short above, nor that of a Son checking it below.

Time and space exist within the context of limitation. The infinite, however, is extended in any direction without boundaries, hence Gregory argues that,

…this view of theirs will bring us to the conclusion that the Father is not from everlasting, but from a definite point in time.

Eunomius’ argument was not only untrue, but logically faulty. The Creator-God, whom Eunomius referred to as the Ungenerate (i.e. never having been born), is by his own philosophical assumptions placed within the limitations of space and time.

God, who is limitless, wants us to think more like him. He wants us to concentrate on today, while it is still today, because it is all we have.