There is an ongoing debate over ending the changing between Standard and Daylight Saving Time every spring and fall. I mentioned Saturday that the House recently passed the Sunshine Protection Act which now moves to the Senate.

There are reasonable arguments being made against the act, such as the fact that kids would have to catch the school bus before sunrise during the winter months. I would counter that they already do that on standard time so making standard time permament wouldn’t fix the problem. There other arguments about circadian rythm and what is healthier; Americans rarely make decisions based on health concerns. I would just like for it not to get dark at 5:30 pm in December. I find late afternoon and evening sunlight more usefull, for family activities to simply going out to eat or buy groceries after work. But there is one argument regarding standard time that makes me ask… “say what?”

Leave the clocks alone. Standard Time is what God intended.

The idea that noon means the sun is directly overhead is entirely arbitrary. That’s how people started setting mechanical clocks, which is a recent advent in human history, because that is how people previously set their sundials. And neither of those man-made devices were mandated by God Almighty. The Maker of Heaven and Earth caused the sun to rise and set and named those periods of light and darkness day and night. But he did not create Standard nor Daylight Saving Time. He did tell mankind to divide the day into 24 hour periods of time. He did define the meaning of noon or draw the International Dateline that zigzags through the ocean avoiding islands and land masses. As a matter of fact, in Genesis 1 “the evening and the morning were the first day.” So and so forth for the rest of the creation week, evening then morning defined what one day was. For this reason the Jews to this day start a day at what we would call 6 pm. The Sabbath for instance begins at 6 pm on Friday evening and continues until 6 pm on Saturday. When you read things in the Bible like the third hour or the ninth hour of the day, those are 9 am and 3 pm respectively. That method of keeping time is based on what God did during the creation week. He gave them a calendar on the night they left Egypt but clocks and time keeping are entirely man-made devices.

For centuries human beings defined noon as when the sun reached its zenith. We used to set our clocks and watches by it. When the railraods began expanding during the 19th century, you could actually get from one place to another quickly enough for your watch to be several minutes wrong when you arrived. It was necessary to create time zones and establish a system of sychronizing clocks. The four time zones in the US were defined by Railraod time, later becoming the time zones we have today when the globe was divided into 24 such zones. The railroad companies were in some cases more powerful than the federal government; but they were never God.

If you prefer Standard time over DST that’s your business. But don’t drag God into the discussion like DST is an abomination against his will. That is ridiculous.