Note: An updated version of Michael’s talk was published on January 5, 2025)
For the last two weeks, we have been discussing the Sabbath as a sacred time of rest and Grace. A statement that Dr. Weaver has mentioned in both of the classes is going to be the starting point of our discussion today, Quote: “By making time sacred instead of space sacred, God forever removed mankind’s control over the designation of what is sacred. Man, you see, can control space but cannot control time.” Today, we will discuss how humankind has actually challenged God over the control of time, and in so doing, we have lost touch with God and the sacred.
In this class, we discussed several times about the diminishing role of God in modern life. We were trying to come to understand how this happened. What invention or philosophy was or is going to be the cause of the irrelevance of God? Was it the printing press, or perhaps the computer? Was it the internet, or will AI be the final straw that will drive God into extinction?
For today, I would like to discuss with you the invention that has caused us to lose much of our reverence for God. It is actually none of the ones that we have discussed before and in fact its invention preceded all of them. The fourteenth century invention that weakened our reverence for and reliance on God was…. The mechanical clock! Distinguished among other previous clocks, such as the sun dial or water clock, which were suspect to the seasons.
This idea was proposed by Lewis Mumford. Mumford was an American philosopher and historian who was interested in how the invention of machines transformed our societies and ways of life into capitalism. And the first machine that facilitated this transformation: the clock.
Before the clock, time was in the hands of God. A human lived and acted based on our human experiences; we ate when we got hungry, we went to sleep when we got tired or it got dark outside, and we woke up with the chickens. Of course, this varied throughout the year and during the seasons as the days became uneven in their duration. This is what we will refer to as organic time. What happens during organic time is outside of our control, and we are only able to respond to it. Phenomena and natural events outside of our control dictated how we behaved and lived. Since humans were not the arbitrators of their lives, it was easy and natural to see and revere God everywhere they looked.
Mumford says all of this changed upon the invention of the clock. Time stopped being “organic” and became “abstract”. “By its essential nature, the clock has dissociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” With the invention of the clock, we are able to quantify and measure time, and this transformed our living reality. Mumford goes on to say that the clock is the most important machine that led to the capitalist society we live in. Think about it this way: When we divided the 24-hour day into two 12-hour shifts, one for the day and the other for the night, we invented wicks, chimneys, lamps, gaslight, electric lamps, so as to use all the hours belonging to the day.
The clock has synchronized our actions, we go to work at 8 and finish at 5, and then get stuck in rush hour, we eat, not when we feel hungry, but when the clock says it’s time to do so and we sleep and wake up not by our organic functions, but by the tyranny of the clock.
This is Mumford again: “When we think of time not as a sequence of experiences, but as a collection of hours, minutes, and seconds, the habits of adding time and saving time come into existence. Time takes on the character of an enclosed space: it could be divided, it could be filled up, it could even be expanded by the invention of labor-saving instruments.” We have basically made time into space and declared our dominion over it. When we make time into a space, we have an illusion of control over it. In reality, we are the ones who are now time-slaves. Time is now a commodity and not an experience. As the saying goes, time is money, and your worth as a human being is calculated based on your hourly rate.
Mumford would like you to think of the clock as a machine, much like a printing machine or a vacuum cleaner, but instead of producing printed paper or vacuum for cleaning, what the clock produces are the seconds and minutes. When it does that, your experiences, emotions, and life events are now dictated by the ticking of the clock.
When time became quantifiable, it lost its sacredness. When the clock standardized time, we stopped looking for God in the everyday experiences of our lives. God became more distant and harder to find. It is not just God that we have lost touch with, we are also not in touch with ourselves anymore. We are in a constant race against time. We imagine that our quantifiable achievements are going to shield us from our death, and we are in a rush to accumulate as many of those achievements as possible. We do not accept the organic cycle of life that goes through birth, growth, development, decay, and death and we try to defy it by adding to it as much more time as possible.
However, amidst this pursuit of temporal control, certain ancient practices and traditions stand as reminders of a different perspective on time—specifically, the Sabbath, observed from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday in the Jewish tradition. The Sabbath, rooted in the biblical narrative of creation and subsequently codified in the Ten Commandments, represents a deliberate relinquishing of human control over time, acknowledging a higher authority.
In the book of Genesis, after creating the heavens and the earth, God rests on the seventh day and sanctifies it as a day of rest (Genesis 2:2-3). This act of divine rest establishes a precedent for humanity to emulate—a rhythm of work and rest that aligns with the natural order of creation. The observance of the Sabbath, therefore, becomes a spiritual discipline that transcends mere temporal regulation; it is an act of faith and obedience, acknowledging God’s sovereignty over time.
In the biblical context, the Sabbath is not merely a day of idleness but a sacred interval for reflection, worship, and communion with the divine. It signifies a pause in the ceaseless pursuit of productivity and self-reliance, inviting believers to trust in God’s provision and grace. The Sabbath invites us to release the grip of time from our hands and to enter into a state of spiritual renewal and refreshment.
The symbolism of the Sabbath, especially in relation to the mechanical clock, underscores a profound theological truth: that true rest and restoration come not from our ability to control time but from our willingness to surrender to the divine rhythm of creation. By observing the Sabbath, believers affirm their dependence on God, acknowledging that He alone holds the ultimate authority over time and eternity.
God occupies the Eternal. The Eternal is a measure of time, but it cannot be measured by mechanical time. God’s time zone is very different than ours. We obviously have to leave the time produced by the clock behind, and instead listen to what God is telling us-through our experiences, emotions, encounters, and the unencumbered moment to moment living. This, I think, is what the sabbath is all about. This also aligns with eastern religions’ emphasis on meditation and the practice of being present- after all, that’s where God resides.
Listening to this, have you realized how much the clock dominates your life? How many times do you look at your clock per day? Can you imagine living life without a clock?
What do you think of this new angle on the Sabbath, that what is required is to leave our time measurements and pursuits behind and instead listen to the voice of God present all around us? Can you spot the hypocrisy in chasing the sabbath from a specific minute of sunset on Friday until a specific minute of sunset on Saturday?
David: I think it’s a great idea to abandon a time-bound Sabbath, and I think you can do that if the Sabbath is strictly an individual affair, because it cannot work for a community. To practice Sabbath in a community requires time coordination; you have to set the day and time of the Sabbath meeting because otherwise, you just cannot have a community gathering. It just won’t work without the use of time as humans have engineered it, as Mumford so well explained.
So, I am all for it. And as I said last week, I do think that the Sabbath can be a personal affair; it doesn’t have to be a community practice.
Kiran: I like the idea that by suspending our control over time, we are recognizing that sacredness is in the divine. Submitting to Him is a very powerful idea. I think we lose that symbolism when we strictly observe the exact moment of sunset to start and end the Sabbath.
Realizing I am this tiny little part in this universe, and here is the sacred time created by the Creator, and that it’s my privilege to suspend everything right now and surrender to Him—is a beautiful thing. It makes me want to keep the Sabbath.
Donald: I guess I’m a little confused. To me, a mechanical clock is like a light bulb. Naturally, we only have light at certain times of the day. Just because you have a light bulb doesn’t mean you’re not controlling light; you’re able to produce light and use it in a modern way. Mechanical time, to me, is nothing more than a reflection of natural time. Now we manipulate it a bit based on our location and time zones, I suppose.
Yes, we divide time up, but as I see it, we’re dividing natural time up, rather than dividing mechanical time up. We’re taking natural time and organizing it into segments so that we can gather and organize ourselves to be on time.
In photography, when you take a picture, it timestamps that moment. That’s mechanical time, I suppose. But it actually still represents the moment; it has nothing to do with telling you the natural time at which that image took place. And it’s very useful. Such “metadata” about the picture can tell you where it was located but not what the moment is about. That is something that is human. Why you took that picture is totally up to you. The metadata is still nothing more than data: this is where you took it, this is what time you took it. AI may identify who’s in the photo, but it can’t tell you what the relationship between the people in it is. It can guess, and apparently, it will get better at it.
The purpose of a photograph is to remember what’s important to us. And then we look at the metadata, and we can say, okay, when did that take place? Those are very important things. It would be fascinating to have had a camera during the time of Christ with metadata. I
Our focus is on the Sabbath. But again, a mechanical clock only reflects the bulletins every week that tell you when sunset is and when sunrise is. So, sunset is the next step. It’s dividing time up and precisely defining what the Sabbath is naturally.
Michael: I don’t think mechanical time reflects natural time. The problem is we’ve been with mechanical time for so long that we miss what natural time is. We know to the minute the times of sunrise and sundown. But imagine it’s cloudy, and there are no clocks.
The idea of natural time would be that your day in the winter is very different than your day in the summer. When do you go to sleep? When do you wake up? When do you work? It’s all dictated by this natural time. The clock—what mechanical time measures—is irrelevant for nature, and I would argue, for the human organism.
For example, with regard to memories, it turns out that we don’t remember things based on when they happened, but based on our emotions at the moment. When you look at your life events, in hindsight, you always remember how you felt, or what happened. It doesn’t matter what the time was, the year, or your age; those are all mechanical timers. But the natural events happened in their own rhythm.
C-J: Speaking of rhythm, that’s what I was going to say—that time, to me, is not measurable because it’s interpreted. And if you think about the many dimensions within the universe, the spectrums within that, it’s really just an illusion. Anyway, we have a sun, we’re in a solar system, so we can capture that. But it’s very finite. But the truth of it is, even throughout the day, they go, “Wow, the day went really fast,” or “I can’t believe how long it took me to do that.” It’s really an illusion. And the Sabbath is built into that.
So, the first year that I retired was the most difficult because I was accustomed to the mechanism of measured, socially agreed upon time. But then when I had free rein, I was caught between, “I’m going to do this, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes, or who I’m doing it with, or what my intention is.” Those weren’t the metrics anymore. And so, tapping into other things like creativity, personal value, exploration, all those things became my metric. But I think, as an organic being that has energy content, I am more aware, maybe because I’m towards the end of my life, it could be today, here now, that I’m much more aware that living in the present, being aware of the presence of God in all things is perpetual.
And sometimes it just makes me smile because if I was working, I wouldn’t have time for my conscious mind to identify that; I’d be absorbed in a task or a responsibility. So it’s very freeing. It allows me to examine my choices in life, those experiences redefined, and the impact of that whole different way of perceiving time and putting a value on it. I hate clocks now. Before, I measured whether it was a good day if I got a lot accomplished; now, I see it as an impediment—necessary but an impediment.
I think all of these new inventions are wonderful in the sense that they help us to maximize in this construct of time, this measurable, definable; we’re more productive and creative, perhaps, but I really enjoy, much more, daydreaming, or reflection. It’s like being a child again, but at a higher level of thinking.
Donald: I guess I’m still stuck on that phrase: ”living in the present.” It’s a concept I’ve battled with, or certainly confronted, based on my professional background. Some people argue that using a camera suggests you’re not fully experiencing the moment. “Put the camera down and enjoy the moment,” they say. I have dear friends who have done that over the years.
It’s interesting when you grow older, your kids have matured, and you realize you have no pictures. As a photographer, I have argued that one of the highest values of being a photographer is to look at things more carefully and precisely with a camera than you would by just gliding through the moment. Without taking pictures, during an interesting time in one’s life as friends age and move beyond the strict schedules of their working years, becoming more affluent and moving from one event to another, they claim they’re living in the present, but they can’t remember what they just did. They’re not relishing the moment.
So, I consider photography actually as something that suggests I take a slower, different look at things because of having a camera. And I highly value having metadata because it helps me organize when things took place.
The Bible consists of just written stories. They didn’t have cameras back then, but they did their level best to precisely reflect what was important at that moment. A lot of effort was put into trying to organize things and get them lined up so that the stories come together in a more precise way.
Don: Are you suggesting, Donald, that the Sabbath is God’s camera?
Donald: Exactly. He’s wanting us to slow down, take a look, and reflect on what’s most important. And He has told us to do so. As opposed to gliding through the moment and saying, “I loved Jesus every day of my life.” No, He wants a special moment. And He wants it time-dated.
C-J: That seems am arguably autocratic way of having a relationship with God. It’s like saying, “This is the day I want you here, and if you’re 15 minutes early, you’re on time.” I could never live like that. Nomadic tribes, for example, breathed in the air, were thankful for their community, and depended on oral traditions passed down from generation to generation. They discussed changes like when the waters changed. What happened before the waters changed? Was it too hard? Did we get too much rain? They didn’t need a camera because they were one with the earth.
Look at the Aztecs and how they used their calendars related to tracking God, because to them, God was nature, and every day they lived very close to the earth amidst disease, war, famine, etc. There’s something very nice about getting lost in an idea.
So, whose idea was it to write the days of the week? What was created in the Bible?
Donald: I think it was functional. It had to do with commerce. They needed to know when to plant, when to harvest, how long it took to get from one city to the next, to bring their goods to market. They had to know there was this rotation on this free market trail, like the Silk Road. I don’t think it had anything to do with nomadic people who probably didn’t travel more than 20 miles.
C-J: I see it as a narrative, an example, a pathway to gather people together in this very important exercise of storytelling. For Donald, it’s the camera, but in ancient times, it was storytelling from the elders, from those considered gifts from God—the healers, those who knew what natural medicines were available in the environment and how to keep people healthy through trial and error. You don’t mix meat in a milk pot; you don’t eat pork because of the risk of trichinosis, that worm that gets into the muscle when pork isn’t fully cooked. I really don’t think it’s about a physical way of capturing point A to point C, and what happens in between.
The storytelling is important, the planting and sowing is very important, but singling one of those out and saying this has higher value—that’s why it’s really important. The Sabbath may be just a time and place that we might carve out to make sure we don’t forget. But for me, the Sabbath and its time and place is ever-present, maybe because I’ve had a very nomadic life. It’s very fluid, new experiences, and always challenging.
My life is not predictable. I challenge people to say their life is. Those who work, do research—it’s never the same day twice. And no, it’s just how you look at it. When I taught, every day was different, my students were always different. I think it’s an illusion, but a very important narrative.
David: Ramadan seems like it’s a kind of annual Sabbath for Muslims, a month of meditation and restraint. I know Fridays are a Sabbath of sorts, but they don’t seem to treat Friday quite the same way as Christian’s treat their Sabbath. I could be wrong there. My point is that the timing of Ramadan is determined by the moon and its phases, not by the clock and calendar. It depends on the phase and setting of the sun and moon. In short, it’s the old time, pre-mechanical time.
Michael: When we apply a clock to something, we are quantifying it. We measure it and say, “If it’s before this minute, I’m fine; I can do my thing. After this minute, I have to observe the fast.” And that’s the point where I put myself in the shoes of God and say, “This is when I do what I do.” And that’s the whole point of the clock, which I think is a little difficult to see because we’ve been living with it for centuries, and we’re completely dependent on it. It takes a while to see how life was very different before the clock, very hard to see what was different.
David: The Nobel Laureate physicist Frank Tipler argued (persuasively to me, but controversially to others) that time is the devil. And if that’s the case, then certainly it’s not very good of us to make use of it!
Don: I’m struck by Michael’s observations about time. My understanding of the biblical record is that God gave man dominion over the earth, over the sea, and over the fishes in the sea, and the birds of the air and so forth. But, after the Flood, He again gives man dominion over the earth, but He seems to be more circumspect with time. Our attempt to wrestle control of time from God is part of our condition of the fall. I think God calls us to a position of relinquishing our desire to control time to Him.
Donald: I’ve said over a number of years that Adventists are fixated on time. It’s really how our church began. We measured time when we thought something would take place. The Great Disappointment was about time. The Seventh Day is something we pronounce very distinctly when talking about judgment, you know, “23 days,” and the prophecies in Revelation all focus on very specific times. Time is very prominently important in the Bible as it speaks to prophecy. Now, are we not supposed to pay attention to that, or what was the purpose in the Bible of talking about time whatsoever?
C-J: To me, time is always relative. In the Old Testament, the Hebrews who followed a certain line became Jews and in the New Testament the Hebrews who believed in Christ became Christians. So after a certain period of time, they were no longer merely Hebrews—they became Jews. And the Christians came out of that. So again, the storytelling, they’re always looking for a messiah. It doesn’t put a time date stamp on when one is expected, but it has certain characteristics. He had to be a leader, know military strategy, be a peacemaker, be wise and patient, and able to see into the future in terms of what would be good for the people. But they didn’t say all those criteria had to be present; what they did say was that the Messiah would come and the Messiah would have these components.
And that’s why so many times Jesus was asked, “Are you the Messiah?” And that’s what Jesus said to His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Because it’s relative. We use that word quite easily in terms of “Oh, I was saved,” or “that person was hired,” or “thank goodness, that person was there; an angel of God was present.” We say that in a really broad context, but we recognize in those statements the presence of something greater than ourselves, meaning humanity.
So, I don’t think it’s wise to put God in a box because it’s easy for me to draw that box, beginning, middle, end. I like looking at God and saying there are endless possibilities and God’s wisdom is beyond my understanding, even if I make a mistake, it was kind of built into the plan: “Okay, you’re human. I anticipated this, but I had a plan B, I’m way ahead of your calculations. Don’t worry about it. Now you’ve learned, right?”
So when we try to put God in a block of time, in a space, within a narrative, we do a disservice to the divine. It’s like saying, “God, please don’t let it rain tomorrow because it’s my wedding.” That’s a very selfish statement. It rains because hot and cold air mix, there’s enough moisture in the air, it’s the right season, and it’s going to rain. So to deal with that, in old times, they had a saying, “If it rains, the marriage will be good.” We have workarounds. I never want to put God in a box. I never want to say, “You promised me this, and it should look like that.” That’s the way I’ll know it’s you because you are consistent in how you behave.
I think God meets us where we are. And it’s fluid. The universe is not static. We’re just little tiny atoms and molecules going along on the train track, metaphorically.
Don: The observation is really an interesting one. I never thought about it before, that Christians in general, and Adventists specifically, link a great deal of their belief system to a timeline—a prophetic timeline, a timeline of Sabbath keeping, and so forth.
It’s fascinating what we do in terms of our constructs, and putting ourselves in the middle of it. One of the things I’ve learned in our discussions here about the Sabbath and grace is that when we put ourselves at the center of the Sabbath, when we put ourselves at the center of these timelines, then we do God a disservice.
We should be looking at what the significance of these timelines—prophetic timelines, Sabbath timelines, etc.—say about God and His eternal grace, as opposed to what they say about us and us putting ourselves in the middle of the Sabbath. It doesn’t negate the Sabbath or its importance, the special invitation that it makes to us to enter into a oneness with God on a regular basis. But it does change the point of emphasis, I think, and that, to me, is a real blessing.
Donald: I’ve described it more as a fascination with numbers. We take numbers very seriously in the Bible and try to interpret them. Whether those numbers represent time, or other meanings, the number seven itself is a prime example of how we place a distinction on that number.
C-J: It’s not just the Jewish faith that uses numbers for divination. Asians do it too, or have done it, and still do it in their calendars. The Aztecs used numbers, but divination can be used in many ways to explain sickness, times and seasons for planting, politically…
I agree that we need to make more room for God and not try to fit God into our plans. Instead, we’re supposed to fit into God’s plan, not the reverse.
Reinhard: In the Bible, of course, there is no mention of Monday, Tuesday, and so on. It speaks of the preparation day, of Jesus’ resurrection on the first day of the week, and so on. Time is not really defined in terms of hours like we do today; it talks about the first hour, second hour, ninth hour, which are vague.
In the Old Testament, ages are noted precisely—for example, Adam died at a certain age, and some of the ancestors lived for 900-plus years. However, as far as the 24-hour cycle goes, that’s not detailed.
In our consensus, Saturday is the Sabbath, but actually, the worship day is observed from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. So, the term “Saturday” isn’t really a substitute for “Sabbath”. In the Indonesian tradition, a new year starts on the 31st at sundown. But in northern lands, there is no sunset in Summer, so they need another way to determine the Sabbath.
The bottom line is that God asks us to worship Him on the seventh day of creation, from sundown the previous day. But whatever day people choose as their day of worship, I think God will accept it. Although I keep to my belief—I go with the truth I know, the seventh day as the Bible says.
Anonymous: Michael has shaken up my previous understanding—or maybe put many question marks on it. Two points in particular drew my attention during this discussion.
Firstly, the number seven. Since there were no named days like Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc., how did the people in ancient times count? They must have relied on the moon and the sun, which God gave us as signs of times. For example, during the time when the Israelites were in the wilderness, and God gave them manna to eat and gather every day except for the seventh day, and on the day before the seventh day, they were to gather double portions for the Sabbath. So, how did they know it was the seventh day? They must have counted. I don’t know how they started—maybe by observing the moon? How did they know for sure? What if they messed up the count? What if that man who went out to gather manna on the Sabbath and was killed for doing so simply messed up his counting? How do we know?
The second point is that in light of grace, the number seven doesn’t matter as much as living throughout the week, or even life, as a Sabbath. Because grace is always being offered to us in every single second, every moment, continuously. Life is a continuum; there is no need to designate or assign beginnings and ends, but the mechanical clock changed everything and really took humanity out of God’s view.
But if we view the Sabbath as resting in grace for our whole lives, then the specific days don’t matter. We have the moon for actual counting, and we have the spirit for resting in God’s grace, always. With that spirit of rest dwelling in us, we live in a continual Sabbath. Because we’re resting and acknowledging that God is the creator and our lives are in His hands. So we’re resting, day after day, without even counting to seven to start the Sabbath or to one to start the week.
Reinhard: Of course, they knew about the year, how the sun returns to its position. They knew about the moon, how it completes its cycle every 30 days. And of course, night and day together make up 24 hours. But the week—seven days—there is no sign from nature for this.
God told the Israelites through Moses, “Tomorrow is a day of preparation,” etc. So the concept of the seventh day comes not from observation but directly from God. The Jewish practice from that day to now has observed that as a separate day. So while the concept of a day may relate to natural observations, the seven-day week does not, except as God instructed.
Michael: I think that’s a simple point, but exactly the point. It seems like it’s hard to realize until you retire and can enjoy more than just moment-to-moment living. But I think that’s exactly what God was trying to say: when you’re working, you have to take time to rest, to forget about your own time and just accept God’s grace.
Don: We’ll pick it up next week. David’s going to talk next week about grace and love, and how they interact or amount to the same thing.
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