I chuckled to myself when I was asked this question. As innocuous as it sounds, the inability of most theologians to answer this question has lead the skeptics to ridicule the teachings of Christ. It was a few weeks ago when I came across a perfect answer for this question which was given by one of my favorite teachers, Ravi K. Zacharias. Heavily influenced by his words, I felt the need of disseminating the answer.

  • What was God doing with all his time before he created?

The fifth-century A.D. Christian teacher Augustine had two answers to this question, one humorous and one serious. The first one was that God was spending his time preparing hell for people who ask questions like this! The serious one was that God didn’t have time on his hands, since there was no time before creation. Time began with creation. Before creation, time did not exist. The world did not begin by a creation in time but by a creation of time. But, you may think, if there was no time, what was there? The answer is, eternity. God is eternal, and the only thing prior to time was eternity.

Further, the question implies that an infinitely perfect being like God could get bored. Boredom, however is a sign of imperfection and dissatisfaction, and God is perfectly satisfied. Thus, there is no question of boredom. An infinitely creative mind can always find something interesting to do. Only finite minds that run out of things to do get bored.

Finally, the Christian God with whom I share a relationship with, has three persons who are in perfect fellowship. There is no way such a being could be bored or lonely. It is not the point of having someone to “talk to” but someone of perfect understanding, love, and companionship.