Two nights ago I dreamt that I kept typing words (god, gah-ahd, gooahd) into a little box on a website, trying to get the computer to say God. I couldn't figure out where it was. Then last night when I was dreaming, I dreamed it again, but realized with a jolt that it was the send a talking message from Hilary Duff webpage that I didn't discover until after the first dream. And now, in a moment of synchonicity, Hilary Duff is singing a concert on the news as I am typing. (I have to tell you that I started typing before I had any idea she was going to be on tv, so that didn't inspire this post.)
It always kind of freaks me out when my dreams show me things that don't appear in my waking life until later in time. It seems that time must be a very fluid thing, far different from the simple linear progression we typically envision. I've always believed that God must be somehow outside of time, unconstrained by whatever it is that keeps us humans moving from one second to the next. Is everything that happens - the past, present, & future of human history - constantly present to God? An eternal present seems to me to eliminate some of the "problems" with free will, omniscience, and predestination. In this view, God doesn't control your actions, but at the same time knows the outcomes of every choice you make and everything you do, because for him even your future actions are happening and have happened.
Perhaps precognitive dreams occur when we slip into a bit of this eternal present.
Posted by rachel at July 16, 2004 08:51 AM