Jeremy Bearimy
Eleanor: What?
Michael: In the afterlife, time doubles back and loops around and ends up looking something like Jeremy Bearimy. This is the timeline in the afterlife. Happens to kind of look like the name Jeremy Bearimy in cursive English, so that’s what we call it.
Eleanor: Sorry. My brain is melting. How can events happen before the ones that happened before?
Michael: It’s just the way it works. It’s Jeremy Bearimy. I don’t know what to tell you. That’s the easiest way to describe it.
Chidi: OK, but what the hell is this? The dot over the i — what the hell is that?
Michael: OK, um, how do I explain this concisely? This is Tuesdays. And also July.
Janet: And sometimes it’s never.
Michael: That’s true. Occasionally that moment on the Bearimy timeline is the time moment when nothing never occurs. So you get it.
Chidi: This broke me. The dot over the i, that broke me. I’m – I’m done.
(Season 3, episode 4)
This is reminiscent of the Doctor Who episode Blink, when the doctor explains the nature of time: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”
There are a few time related issues in the Bible:
As mentioned in a previous post, every person who has ever lived will stand before Jesus and give an account of their lives. That’s a lot of people; there are over 7 billion alive right now. If they took an hour each to review their whole life, that’s about 800000 years. I can imagine Jason Mendoza saying, “Do we at least get sandwiches? Or maybe a burrito. Ooh, what about one of those six foot long subs, and there could be different fillings all along so you can eat some now and some at lunch time and some on the next day.”
There tend to be simple solutions to problems that seem unresolvable in the Bible. For example, early prophecies about Jesus said that he would reign forever, but also that he would also suffer and die. The resolution was, he died and rose again. In the case of people individually giving an account of their lives, I suspect time just works differently in the afterlife.
Another issue is whether God is outside time (and time is an element of creation), or if God experiences time as a sequence of events (and existed from eternity past). He relates to human beings within time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is restricted by time. Either way, he is omniscient and knows everything that will ever happen; saying “he chose us before the creation of the world” implies that he knew every person who would ever exist – along with the choices they would make – from the very beginning.
Which leads to predestination and free will. If God chose some people to be Christians and not others, does that mean we don’t have a choice? Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Isn’t that a bit unfair?
The idea of being chosen is in the realm of God’s omniscience. He knew who was going to accept his gift of forgiveness, and so two things are happening simultaneously: we are choosing to follow him, but he also chose us in advance. We really do have free will; being created in the image of God means we genuinely have the ability to choose and are responsible for our own actions. At the same time, because we are broken due to original sin, we don’t have the ability to respond to God if he doesn’t give us the grace to do so. But he offers his gift to everyone, and you never need to be worried that maybe you weren’t chosen – if you want to be forgiven, you absolutely can be.
Some people are not convinced free will exists at all:
Eleanor: This is all just determinism.
Michael: What?
Eleanor: Determinism is the theory that we have no control over our own actions. Everything we do happens because of some external force, which exists outside of our control.
...
Eleanor: Everything in my life has been determined by my upbringing, my genetics, or or my environment.
And everything in my afterlife was determined by you.
There is no such thing as free will.
...
Waitress: You want something to drink?
Eleanor: Maybe I do, maybe I don't.
But whatever I choose will be the result of millions of biological, genetic, and societal factors that are entirely outside my control.
...
Michael: I tried to script your whole afterlife.
And I devised a 15 million point plan to torture you.
You made choices I never saw coming.
I call that free will.
Eleanor: What if all your choices are predetermined?
Michael: Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.
Eleanor: What? We don’t know. Maybe there’s a mega-demon who built a torture chamber for demons, and this whole thing is just him torturing you. And maybe all the mega-demons are just fulfilling a destiny laid out by a bunch of super intelligent tarantula-squids, who are torturing them ...
[ Michael pours iced tea over Eleanor’s head ]
Eleanor: Why did you do that???
Michael: Because I have free will. And because you’re being so annoying.
(Season 3, episode 7)
Next: The Actual Bad Place – knock-off handbags and tap water.
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