Disclaimer: This article delves lightly into mathematics. Any who fall in love with said science are at their own peril of fanaticism in them, and are not to blame the author. However, the author would feel ecstatic to elaborate upon the field mentioned.
In today's Book of Mormon reading, I came across this scripture:
“...time only is measured unto men.”
- Alma 40:8
Time is a concept of interest in almost all academic disciplines. It is also a hot topic in the gospel: "Wait upon the Lord" we say. "Patience is a virtue" we say.
Without getting analytic over the nature of time in God's realm, I suggest a concept in the mathematics that can add perspective to how God may see us.
The well-known and beloved tales of Alice in Wonderland was written by one versed in mathematics. During his era, mathematics was moving from rock-solid rules of safe understanding to the abstract world of, might we say, inventive mathematical concepts.
This author of Alice – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, "now masquerading as Lewis Carroll" as an article puts it (https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_10.html) was indifferent to the direction mathematics was headed: abstracity and imagination. Dodgson was passionate toward the down-to-earth matjematics of his upbringing. It is made apparent by numerous modern mathematicians that Dodgson's indifference was expressed in subtley throughout Alice's adventures.
Now I'm returning from my somewhat tangential backgrounding: in one segment of the story, The Hatter and two friends are stuck at a table due to the absence of a fourth character: Time. Their futile attempts to leave the table are taken to be a reference to the mathematical research work of a mathematician named William Rowan Hamilton.
Hamilton studied what we might call multidimensional numbers. For example, an individual's coordinates on the earth would be two-dimensional: lattitude and longitude values.
When we use numbers, we need to be able to add them, multiply them, etc. When they are multidimensional, we also need to do more things, like "rotate" them. (Just take my word for it.)
Hamilton (the mathematician aforementioned) worked for years on three-dimensional numbers, but could not for the life of him, get them to rotate. This was represented in Alice's adventures by The Hatter and his friends rushing around the table in a frenzy, and unable to progress to a location other than their table.
These three dimensional numbers work as the three dimensions of space. Hamilton eventually discovered that rotations could be accomplished if there was added a fourth dimension: representative of time.
All of this tangential elaboration brings me back to our original topic: when we meet up with a friend, do we not plan for both location (three dimensions) and time (the fourth dimension)? When we speak of significant events, do we not note the importance of their location and time?
So I raise this question: when I define myself, and look at my meaning in life, why would I only analyse myself for the state of being I am at now, and neglect looking at myself throughout all of time? Hamilton could not perform simple algebraic manipulations of numbers without that fourth dimension representing time, so why should we try to analyse ourselves without it?
I requote the scripture phrase from earlier:
“...time only is measured unto men.”
This is why knowing who and where we were before our conception in the womb, and where we are going after this life is vital in understanding who we are, and what our purpose in life is. Who I am now doesn't define me. To echo the cliché but true: what matters is what I can become.
Given even the slowest of progress, progress is still progress, and in the scheme of eternal opportunities for improvement and learning, we all have the capacity to make it to eternal perfection with God's hand in our lives.
I pray we all analyse ourselves in all possible and righteous dimensions, in God's eyes.
