Humans: 'Time's Fools'?

Part 2:What Does Immutability Mean?

Part3: Reconciling Scriptures
Part4: Why Does It Matter?

Humanity’s search for meaning focuses on the search for something immutable. Humans, who experience changing emotions, changing physical and mental abilities, and changing appearance, keenly feel their impermanence. Our extreme changeableness makes us search for something that does not change, something we can be sure will endure forever. We desperately desire something immutable and certain in our lives. Much of great literature expresses this common human desire, especially that of the Elizabethan age. Needless to say, it is quite important for Christians to have an excellent understanding of this issue if we want to effectively present truth to a searching world. In this post I want to look briefly at the desire for certainty as expressed in literature, expose the reason for this desire, and explain why God is the only source of satisfaction for it.

Writers of the Elizabethan age in England explored the theme of immutability extensively. Edmund Spenser, the author of the allegorical poem The Faerie Queene, dealt with the subject in many of his poetry, especially Sonnet 75, in which he wrote:

‘Once I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide and made my pains his pray.’

The sonnet bemoans man’s impermanence, but at the end, Spenser declares that love can endure after death. ‘Where whenas death shall all the world subdue/Our love shall lie and later life renew.’

William Shakespeare addressed the same theme in his sonnets. In Sonnet 116, famous for its appearance in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, he writes,

‘Love is not love,

That alters when it alteration finds

Or bends with the remover to remove:

Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark…

Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come…’

In the Elizabethan age, many people believed true love could satisfy their desire for permanence. In the twenty-first century, people believe differently. Modern America looks at Shakespeare’s poetry wistfully. Though they might like to do so, few people trust that love will last forever. Instead, the modern world views success and affluence as the most valuable and lasting things.

Why do people have this desire?

It is undeniable that mutable beings seek something immutable, but why? The answer lies in another common Elizabethan literary theme – time. People realize that in the light of eternity, their individual lives have little significance. After a few hundred years, few of us will be remembered because time will have done its work. If there is nothing immutable in the world, most of us are doomed to a short existence followed by oblivion. Our lives will have no meaning.

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However, people want to have lives of significance, to act with purpose and assurance. We rebel against the idea that our existence is meaningless. But, in light of humanity’s changeability, meaning is impossible unless there is something unchangeable in the universe to which people can link themselves. Thus, the search for meaning is the search for something immutable. Throughout history, mankind has substituted different things – immortality, wealth, love, success, education, fame – for unchangeable reality, but every choice has proved to be a failure.

What is the answer?

Christians know that God is the only immutable being. He is also personal, just, and loving, which means that people really can experience fulfillment through communion with him. Belief in God gives life purpose, direction, and significance.

The most extensive biblical exploration of human mutability and divine permanence is found in Ecclesiastes. King Solomon comes to the conclusion that ‘all is vanity’ and that ‘there is nothing new under the sun.’ In the light of his realization that nothing in creation can offer the security that changeable humanity desires, Solomon writes that the only meaningful life is one lived in obedience to God’s law. ‘I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it.’

History’s greatest writers have cried our for something lasting, but most have not found a satisfying answer. St. Augustine, however, succeeded where Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare failed. In his Confessions, he summarized the search for meaning in one sentence: ‘Our souls are restless until they rest in Thee.'