Yesterday, most states in America advanced their clocks by an hour and Europe will follow suit at the end of the month. Last summer, however, the Angle-Saxish Kingdom rolled back the clock and has committed to keeping standard time all year round.
There has been a history of evangelical opposition to so-called daylight saving time, resisting the efforts of overreaching governments to change “God’s time”. One Reformed Christian, in a letter sent to a Dutch newspaper in 1923, said that it “strikes the Almighty Creator in the face, and His ordinances and rules are trampled underfoot”.
Indeed, measurement of time is not artificial or a social construct, but rather based on an objective reality. In our twenty-four hour day, twelve o’clock, or midday, is the time when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. This aligns with our Lord’s design: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.” (Genesis 1.14.) Instead, some states are increasingly pushing to make midday what is effectively two o’clock in the afternoon.
The folly of this manifests itself in damage to our health. Just as God created the sun and the moon to measure time, He also created us with a circadian rhythm (also called a “body clock”) which synchronizes with solar time. Unsurprisingly, studies have found that daylight saving time causes ongoing sleep disturbances, an increase in heart attacks, and an increase in accidents. As morning light is more crucial to well-being than evening light, permanent daylight saving time (the favoured position among many lawmakers today) would be even more damaging, creating miserable dark winter mornings, with sunrise delayed beyond nine or ten o’clock and sunset nonetheless occurring before the end of the working day.
While it is true that standard time zones may themselves be called aberrations from true solar time, they are necessary for a modern state to coordinate its affairs. It is therefore better to choose a measurement of time that is a few minutes out of synchronicity with the sun – the best possible approximation – rather than one which varies by more than an hour. Natural law dictates that each state, province, or region, depending on size, ought to choose a time zone whose meridian passes through it, most likely a central location or capital city.
There is a remaining concern of wasting daylight and the adverse effects on work-life balance. Outdoor workers are already more bound by sunlight than they are by the clock, and everything else may be addressed by changes to routine and more flexible hours.
There are currently two time zones in use in the Angle-Saxish Kingdom: Greenwich Mean Time (Midle Grienwaiçhtaid) in Kolumbenvyrð and Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5, Äästerne Standardtaid) in South Hatteras.
Why You Might Be Late for Church This Morning by Dr Danny R. Faulkner