Time is on My Side

The gadgets that humanity has at its disposal have always shaped society and intellectualism.  Overnight luxuries become necessities.  If society is not careful, gadgets become idols determining what and how we worship.

Take the invention of the clock.  Most of us live by the clock.  A clock wakes us from our sleep.  Our sleep time started by looking at a clock to see the time of night to analyze the proper hours of sleep we would need for proper rest.  We needed to rest because we start work by punching a time card in a time clock.

During that time of work, clocks determine our breaks, dividing our work time into strategic intervals of rest and time to refuel our bodies.  We leave work by looking at a clock and once again punching a time clock.

We race home looking at the clock to determine what time to prepare supper.  Once food has been prepped for cooking, we use the clock to determine how long each dish will have to cook.  This determines what time we will enjoy a meal and how much time we have to enjoy the remaining time doing homework, watching TV, and other pertinent things before time to go to bed.  It makes me wonder how humanity, especially Americans, operates without a clock. 

Speaking of a time clock, ABC Rail in Calera had an incident where men were in line waiting to clock out, which was against company policy and considered stealing.  As a supervisor approached to give a royal chewing to the time stealing employees, a stealing, quick thinking employee confronted him by saying, “Looks like a company as big as ABC Rail could have two clocks that had the same time.”  The supervisor turned and walked away, outsmarted, at least until the next time.

Another question is what was the necessity that prompted someone to invent a clock?

Well, it was the church.  It was invented to see how much more time it would take the preacher to finish his sermon after saying, “Now in closing” when he really means I have five more minutes to preach because it is not after twelve yet.  No, I am kidding.  However, the Catholic Church at the Pope's insistence initiated the invention.

Reading Clarence P. McClelland’s book, Quotation Marks and Exclamation Points (The Lakeside Press 1935), it reminded me of the clock’s origin.  You know necessity is the mother of invention.  McClelland writes, “Lewis Munford in his fascinating book The Techniques of Civilization tells us that the first manifestation of the machine age was in the regular measurement of time and that the clock, and not the steam engine, is the key machine of the modern industrial age.  He shows how the new mechanical conception of time arose largely out of the routine of the monasteries, particular the Benedictine monasteries.  It was in the seventh century that the Pope decreed that the bells of the monasteries should ring seven times in twenty-four hours for devotions.  Some means of keeping count of these punctuation marks in the day and insuring their regular repetition became necessary.  This led ultimately to the invention of the mechanical clock which in the thirteenth century got out of the monasteries into the cities and brought a new regularity into the life of the workman and the merchant.”

Munford says, “Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.  The clock, moreover, served as a model for many other kinds of mechanical works, and the analysis of the motion that accompanied the perfection of the clock with the various types of gearing and transmission that were elaborated, contributed to the success of quite different kinds of a machine.”

Did you notice something important there?  “Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.”  Spiritual things gave way to mechanical things.  Humanity slowly moved from God centered thinking to mechanical thinking.

When Dr. McClelland wrote his book, the Great Depression was six years prior.  That great catastrophe came after a period of great inventions and a frame of mind that technology could save humanity.  It is pre-World War II.

There are those that say that new technology (cell phones, blackberries, etc) are the new gods that people have to have to survive.  The god of technology will save humanity.  I will say that I have been in some worship services and funerals where a cell phone captured more attention than a sermon point.  I have even heard some folks, not necessarily young people, who say they cannot live without a cell phone, computer, etc.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (I John 2:15-17 KJV).

What would Munford think today?  Well, it is time to go!