The Christian attitude towards time is most often dismissive. Time, as of this moment, is an obstacle to the Kingdom of God, as many of us wait for the Parousia–some even trying to accelerate it via different influential platforms. There seems to be, in some people’s view of time, little else than an enemy to be defeated, rather like death. The truth is, however, that time is only chained to death in the same way we are, through sin. Time is not an enemy.
In this the complete flattening of time to an endless stretch of Eternity seems a necessary condition for the enjoyment of life and the suffering of hardships. If we managed to get through a short amount of time in a hard and cold world, then an infinite amount of time is the logical reward. The question, rarely placed, is what we will do with an endless stretch of time? The erasure of time seems tied to the erasure of death, of the promise of Life, and a Good one at that. But we do not know how to deal with that.
One of my biggest concerns and fears is how we will live in Heaven. There are a thousand different depictions of the actual effects of an infinite time on the human mind, and almost none of them look promising. Even looking at pagan depictions is useless as they have an end: transmigration, drinking of the Lethe, etc. Death almost always seems a better end than infinity. How, then, are we to live eternally, if human life itself is our only measure? Will we not eventually become hollow husks that repeat the tasks they have done for aeons, more out of inertia than real drive?
The experience of time, then, must have something in it that will allow us to weather eternity. Most likely, I thought, this would be some grace from God, so I began digging deeper and deeper, trying to understand how we would not waste away eventually. This became a nightmare to me: that we would die and be stripped of what makes us human here so that we would be able to understand eternity and live in it. Some sort of procedural world where there is an infinite number of things to do and spaces to move in so that we would not become dull.
The errors in trying to understand this became evident: first, the arrogance of trying to understand God. Second, the inability to trust Him. And third, the fact that I had been so molded by modern hedonistic discourse that Heaven would have to be some sort of dopamine machine as to keep our brains endlessly entertained. Thankfully, I realized this as soon as some friends told me to go back to the source in order to assuage my concerns.
Jesus Christ Himself discovered heavenly time for us, in the Gospel: “Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the raiment?” (Luke 12:25). The Lord Himself discovered how we should worry about time:
“Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit? And for raiment why are you solicitous? […]” (Luke 12:26-28).
This is obviously a call to being humble and having faith, but at the end of this section lies the actual answer: “Be not therefore solicitous for to morrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” (Luke 12:34).
I realized I was not the first to realize living one day at a time is the true antidote to eternal stagnation. The Firefighter, Montag, from Fahrenheit 451 is a predecessor in this sense. He, too, was assailed by a culture of pleasure. He did not break through this out of pure willpower; rather, it was discovering how to live one day at a time, which seemed so alien at first, that gave him peace.
Living one day at a time is, functionally, living eternally, as we always live in this moment. Learning to live so that we worry not about food or clothing or tomorrow’s share of evils is much more than just a verse to remember in times of stress; it is how we understand Heaven. Living one day at a time is the very answer to death. It does not matter, then, as it did for the Greeks or the Saxons, how one dies that death might be more palatable; the thing that matters is learning how to live that we may share in the Kingdom.
This brings me back to what used to be my main concern: time. St. Augustine said, “understand that there can be no time without creatures, and cease to talk nonsense” (Epistles, 237). Time is something that is intrinsically ours, something that forms part of our understanding. I picture ourselves being able to wake each day, in the Kingdom, and live each day on its own as it truly is: a gift from the Lord that we have been granted. Thus, living one day at a time is an approximation of the Kingdom. We may not live in it yet, but we may be able to leave this World and, for a moment, understand how we will live in the next.
How are we to enjoy an infinite time, if not as the fruit of our work? And how are we to have anything but vacation, after our short and brutal lives? This is another point entirely, but one I feel deserves mention: we, as Christians, do not live in the world, but sojourn in it, as the worker and migrant do. This is not our kingdom, but the necessary stop before it. But we need not worry for this; as each day has its own share of evils, we must simply take it one step at a time, one day at a time.
