Monday, March 9, 2015

The Subtlety of Changing the Truth

There will be those who automatically go somewhere I never intended with this.  It is a risk I will take to make a point.  If I can stay on track, I think it is a very valuable and valid point. There are others who will decide I am a religious nut.  That poses no risk, for they already think that.  If a few more join, it won’t change the landscape much.  But if a few people read it, understand what I’m saying and begin to think instead of blindly accept, it will be worth the scorn.

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made,
25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.   (Taken from Romans I and 2)

These and other passages through out the Bible tell us that God put himself into his creation kind of like a global scavenger hunt where any person of any place, language or ideology can find him and know him if they are willing to stay with the truth.  The truth of God is in creation.  Sometimes when I am struggling with a spiritual concept, I ask God to show me in creation.  I am amazed at the things that become plain when creation is referenced under the guidance of the Spirit. 
Okay, I’ve already lost some of you.  Glad you came, see you next time –or maybe not.  That’s not arrogance, it’s fact.  If you start veering off the expected or accepted norm, some people drop you like a hot rock and never stay for the next sentence.

I was around before our country came up with the common acceptance of Daylight Savings Time.  We woke up, we went about our business and we were basically tired at the end of the day or not.  Science teaches us that the sun rises at 6 and sets at 6 on the equinox.  The moon rises at 6PM when it is full.  There is a rationale in the pattern; there is stability in the norm.  If I may, there is a piece of God in the system.
Daylight Savings Time messes with us.  It throws us off balance for a time.  We gradually adjust and then it happens again.  Why?  Because ‘they’ decided. 
For several years, we went like herded sheep through the gate.  We changed time at the vernal and autumnal equinox.  We were told it saved energy.  We were told it gave us more time in the evening.  We were told “just do it”.  And we did.  Then they began changing when we would adjust our schedule and we just blindly stumble through the gate.  It must make sense, because they decided.
What does Daylight Savings Time really save?  I’ve lived with it for over 50 years and I’ve studied it.  My conclusion is it adjusts and we adjust, but it doesn’t save anything.  Even if their logic about energy consumption and all could be proven, why not tell corporate and industrial America to start their activities one hour earlier?  Well that would take discipline and some would not cooperate.  Ah but if we change our clocks . . . . if we make it universal, they will just accept it.  The populace doesn’t really know what is good, and they don’t have the discipline to think and do it, if they know.  We are conditioned to accept this mentality.  We do not look to the creator for wisdom or guidance, it is provided elsewhere.  We can trust chaos; we don’t have to trust God.  Chaos will present itself; we need not look for God.  There is a dulling of the populace and that works for some.
Beyond that is the fact that we are living a lie –according to science itself- for the majority of the year now.  There is an awesome beauty and wonder to the passage of days and seasons. Yet time has lost its link to reason and order, but we will do it anyway.  There is no truth, no justification, but we will do it anyway. 
Mankind has skillfully misplaced one more clue to the greatest quest in life –knowing God.  I believe he is still there, still reaching.  I don’t think DST changes him, but he ordered time and seasons for a reason, for our benefit, for our understanding.  The beautiful logic of God’s order is not lost, but became clouded and adjusted to no advantage.  But we will do it anyway.
We are a people living for the bell.  ‘They’ ring a bell and we respond.  Eventually the suggestion of control makes us blindly submit.  There was a time when the teacher signaled the start of the learning process, but eventually we invented the bell so that we could all be on the same page.  And we lost a little something –for the greater good.  I will not veer off into education here but it would not be off topic if I did.
We adjust our language because ‘they’ say so -after all, words are just words.  We adjust our concept of happiness because ‘they’ say so –to spur the economy and confuse our real goals.  We adjust our morality because ‘they’ say so –what is a moral code anyway except a reflection of society.  We are being led by the blind, conditioned to follow without rationale, losing pieces of ourselves and clues to our God.
We have an enemy.  He has a strategy.  What we forget is that he set himself against God and has stayed on that path.  He wants us on that path with him.  I’m not saying that the person who came up with DST was satanic.  I believe he uses it in his plan for chaos.  It is easier to just follow than to think.  I’m not saying we should revolt against DST, I’m saying we must think a bit more deeply.  And if we claim God as supreme, we must not relinquish him to ‘them.’

It’s a choice.  We are created with a mind.  We are created with a spirit.  The pieces are being clouded and crowded out.  It should be a matter of conscious concern.

3 comments:

  1. Interesting musings.
    I have been fascinated with time for a good while now, and this fascination has taken me all over the landscape. It is difficult to just focus on one or two aspects as I discover that God actually does have times and hides himself in them. God fashioned His creation in time, and in time, his creation will exit time and enter eternity with him. But all that is a bit bigger than I can take in, so I try to break it into smaller pieces.
    Recently, I began to ponder the Shabbat. A day we inaccurately call a day of rest. I often wondered to myself why God would need to rest. But in time, a more literal translation came to me that God didn’t rest, but rather ceased from his labors. He stop laboring because it was complete. Time was set into motion for man’s benefit, not Gods. He has no need of time.
    Regulated time itself is another bother. Prior to the tick-tock machine of industry, man rose at dawn because he could see, and retired shortly after dusk. The day was divided into eight segments of roughly an hour and fifteen minutes in winter, and an hour and a half in summer.
    There was an interesting development as a result. Recently researchers discovered a forgotten time called the sleep between the sleeps that ancient writers referred to. King James translates to them as the small hours when King David arose to praise his God, and composed many of his psalms at that time. Artists of a bygone era used that as their most creative time. And laborers and their wives who were fatigued from work would wake refreshed, and it became a time of procreation.
    And last along this line that I have been following were God’s moedim. God’s appointed times for observances such as Shabbat, New Moons, Passover, Rosh Hashanah etc. In many of the observations, he didn’t specify how we were to observe them, just that we should. Seekers have been looking into these mysterious holy days for ages, and some of the conclusions are sublime in their understanding.
    Daylight Savings Time? I think that chutzpah comes to mind in the great minds who proposed the idea.

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  2. I believe time was created to give existence measure and meaning to mankind. The heavens were for signs and seasons -a specific significance in time. I think the spirit is not subject to time, a personal conclusion, but that time reveals many things about God and the spiritual world if we are open to it. That's why I feel it is a violation to 'mess' with it. But I've only recently put that into thoughts. Before it was only a feeling. None of our antics change God, but often they change our perception and response and may effect our faith and allegiance which is huge.
    My main thought this morning is how blindly we accept anything given to us and how craftily we are forced into compliance.

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