A Ramble About Alternate Timelines

My family and I have recently gotten into the SyFy series Eureka. It's about a secret government run town full of mad scientists who invent things that only exist in science fiction (the irony is palpable). One of the major recurring plot lines of the show is alternate time lines. If you're a Back to the Future fan then this should be old hat. If you're not, let me explain.

An alternate time line is what happens when someone travels back to the past and changes something. This change then has a ripple effect through the chain of cause and effect so that when the person returns to his original point in time he now exists in an alternate time line with a history from the point where the change occurred that he doesn't remember happening. The principle is that even the smallest deviations from the cause and effect chain can have massive repercussions. The farther back in history you change something, the more likely that a single, seemingly insignificant change, maybe a word or even just a feeling will cause major changes to established history. For example, what would have happened if instead of just a romantic fling with a French girl during WWI (yes, it's documented that he had a son with her), a young lieutenant Adolph Hitler deserted his unit and ran off to be with her? No rise of Nazi Germany. No second World War as we knew it. No Holocaust. Likely, no modern State of Israel. History would have radically changed from that point on. The fate of millions hinged on how he felt about a young French girl at a single moment in his life.

I was recently talking to my daughter about why God doesn't seem to act or let us know something we need to know until the last possible moment. Instead He asks us to trust Him. And when He does let us know something ahead of time, it's usually pretty vague. It's enough to get our attention, but not enough for us to really act on yet (at least that's been my experience). More often than not, He remains completely silent on any forthcoming events in our lives until they happen.

God understands cause and effect better than anyone. This should be obvious, but a lot of the time we don't seem to appreciate that fact. He knows what everyone is thinking, feeling, and doing at any given point in time. He knows the exact position of every sub-atomic particle and its direction (impossible for us, not for Him) at any point in time. He knows all possible outcomes of any given moment of interaction. He knows with absolute certainty what track one choice will place us on over another. He also knows with absolute certainty what set of choices and outcomes are the absolute best for us and everyone else around us. In other words, He knows all possible alternate time lines which could emerge from any different set of possible causes from a single thought or feeling to a change in the breeze.

He also knows, given His desired outcome for us, which of our choices would lead to that desired outcome and which won't. This is why He withholds information from us until the point He deems we need it. He knows, better than we do, that if He were to give that information too early there is a certainty it would influence our behavior in such a way to where the desired outcome would no longer be possible. If He were to give the means to accomplish something too early, it might make us feel more secure, but it will most certainly keep everything which needs to happen from happening. Even the slightest deviations can have huge consequences; consequences which He can see and we can't.

So, God asks us to trust Him with it. When He tells us to do something now, we need to do it now. A good example of a botched opportunity was Israel refusing to invade Canaan when they were fresh out of Egypt because they saw the large and scary residents there. They only found out forty years later that the Canaanites were so terrified of Israel they they could have just walked in and pushed them over. Instead, they had to do laps around a mountain in the desert for forty years and wait for the scared generation to die off.

God asks us to trust Him because He actually does know what will and won't happen in any given set of circumstances and choices. When He refuses to explain what's going on, He does so because He doesn't want us to botch the best He's got for us. He only continues to say “you need to trust Me on this.” When He can safely give us hints or information, He does. When He can't, He doesn't. When He withholds the resources we need for something until the last possible minute, He does so because He knows that if He doesn't it will screw everything up. He knows how far He can trust us with something better than we do, and though it may irritate us, we should take comfort in that.