Christian theology has traditionally understood God in two basic ways. First, God is the creator of the universe and thus must logically stand outside of the universe. God "was" before there was a "was-ness" that was. God is timeless or, more than that, beyond any conception of time including timelessness, which still implies some connection to time since timelessness is the absence of time. Actually, that last statement is debatable, but it shows the problem we have understanding something that stands outside of reality and created reality. We use words like "eternal," "all-powerful," and "all-knowing," but all they do is point to our complete ignorance of that which is utterly and ultimately Beyond.Second, however, we Christians insist that this Beyond that we call God is intimately involved in reality, first, because creation continues. God is continuing to create new realities; second, because Jesus who is God With Us truly was a man like us, and, third, because by the grace of God we experience God in our personal lives and sense the flow of the Holy Spirit around us. God is Present as well as Beyond.
How can this be? Well, we don't know. But, science gives us a metaphor that helps to understand that in the universe as God is creating it such a thing is apparently possible, or at least not as illogical as it might seem. In the quantum world of the immensely tiny, reality is very different from that up here in our macro world. Tiny "bits" of reality are waves unless observed when they become particles, they can be in two places at once, and they can be somewhere before they were ever there. Ya, weird. Physicists don't really understand it very much, and they are desperate to connect quantum mechanics with the physics of the macro world but so far haven't been able to do so.
If we consider God as existing at a third level (beyond the physical quantum and macro levels), which is metaphysical and ultimate reality, it is possible and likely that God's reality functions in ways that seem illogical in a way analogous to the weird world of quantum physics. God can be both beyond time and yet experience time. God can be both utterly not present and yet intimately present in our levels of reality. God can stand outside of the universe of change and yet also change with the universe. God can be both the impersonal Dharma of Buddhism and the personal God of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. God is both the vague sense of awe felt by many who disavow the existence of God and the deeply felt personal saviour of many who know God is. God both Is and is Becoming. Stay tuned.
