"What is it that we all believe in that we cannot see or hear or feel or taste or smell — this invisible thing that heals all sorrows, reveals all lies and renews all hope? What is it that has always been and always will be, from whose bosom we all came and to which we will all return? Most call it Time. A few realize that it is God"
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Brault’s move is a bait-and-switch dressed up as a bedtime riddle: he walks you through a checklist of the senses, then offers an “invisible thing” that behaves like a deity, and only at the end admits he’s been talking about God. The trick works because he starts with the secular name that modern life is comfortable worshipping - Time - and then reframes that comfort as a kind of unacknowledged theology. It’s not a proof of God so much as an exposure of a habit: we already speak about Time with devotional language (“heals,” “reveals,” “renews”), so why pretend we’re not making metaphysical claims?
The intent is to collapse a familiar distinction. Time, in everyday speech, functions as a moral force and a therapist, an omnipresent agent that “fixes” grief and “uncovers” truth. Brault leans on that idiom and then asks what we’re really doing when we outsource meaning to an abstraction. The subtext is slightly accusatory: calling it Time is the socially acceptable way to talk about providence without committing to religion.
The context is a modern, post-dogmatic spirituality where faith often survives as metaphor. Brault doesn’t argue from scripture; he argues from language. “From whose bosom we all came” borrows the intimacy of religious cosmology and applies it to a force we pretend is neutral. The last line flatters the reader into a minority - “a few realize” - making the conclusion feel like insight rather than submission.
The intent is to collapse a familiar distinction. Time, in everyday speech, functions as a moral force and a therapist, an omnipresent agent that “fixes” grief and “uncovers” truth. Brault leans on that idiom and then asks what we’re really doing when we outsource meaning to an abstraction. The subtext is slightly accusatory: calling it Time is the socially acceptable way to talk about providence without committing to religion.
The context is a modern, post-dogmatic spirituality where faith often survives as metaphor. Brault doesn’t argue from scripture; he argues from language. “From whose bosom we all came” borrows the intimacy of religious cosmology and applies it to a force we pretend is neutral. The last line flatters the reader into a minority - “a few realize” - making the conclusion feel like insight rather than submission.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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