"so do you think it is wrong to know the time? would it be better not to have clocks? how do you think it would be better if we did not focus on time so much?"
In response to my previous post, a friend of mine asked these questions (that’s a direct quote from the email). First off, I hope it was clear that the entire previous post was a quote… the blockquote is actually the author of the book quoting another person. I guess I probably should have added some commentary to it… but I was too lazy to do that. I don’t necessarily think what I was quoting was correct… necessarily. I just found it thought-provoking.
Do I think it’s wrong to know the time? Well… no… I kind of hope it isn’t wrong to know the time, because most of the time I *do* know the time, and I’m in fact even concerned with time. That said, I don’t really know if knowing the time is wrong. I believe many times culture blinds us to certain faults and sins, and I am not exempt. Perhaps I’m blind to the fact that keeping time by minutes and seconds is sinful. But if that is the case, then I am blind to it, because I can’t see that there’s anything particularly wrong about knowing the time.
Would it be better not to have clocks? Perhaps, yes… it seems like that might be a beneficial thing. Obviously culture would completely fall apart in first world countries if we did not have clocks and precise time-keeping. So I don’t propose that it would be a good idea to just get rid of clocks and distance yourself from society (although that whole monastic idea might be good I guess… but that’s a different topic). I don’t think it’s something that can be changed, or that we can do anything on our part do really remedy the evils of precise time keeping, and I don’t think in themselves clocks are absolutely evil. It’s just the things that tend to result from a culture keeping exact time that can tend to be negative or bad.
how would it be better if we didn’t focus on time so much? Well, I think focusing on time so very precisely makes us incredibly busy, and completely fragments our lives. Because we have to run here, then at exactly this time we have to move there, then at exactly that time we have to do this, and so on and so forth. It fries the mind and takes us away from thoughts of eternity. It disconnects us from God and puts a sense of urgency upon the now, the world. It encourages obsession with worldly things, because time *is* a worldly thing. You can see how this could be very detrimental to a Christian… becoming caught up in the here and now is not conducive at all to setting one’s sights on eternity. So I think one of the benefits of not focusing on time so much would be to make getting caught up in this world harder, and getting caught up in eternity easier.
Those are the thoughts off the top of my head. Take them for what they’re worth.
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