But wait a minute, you say, clocks didn’t create time, clock just keeps track of time, right? No. This is oversimplifying here, but before the clock we didn’t have what we think of today as time, instead we had something different.
Before there was time, we had seasons.
In the ancient world they used the term kairos to refer to those moments when something special happened. When the Bible talks about time, this is the the word that is used. Much of the time this word is translated in your English Bible as seasons, but it just means when something important happens at just the right time.
Because in that world, Life was based on the actual world we inhabited, harvest times and winter months and festivals. This is what Mumford means when he says that the invention of the clock disassociated time from “human events.”
Now time was something that stood on it’s own and could be segmented away from the relationships we had with the Created world and the people around us. Now time could become a commodity, measured in the smallest of slices and something you felt like you never had enough of.
Time is money, time is running out, there’s never enough time.
This is a new problem, and it’s one I think the Christian story is uniquely capable of speaking into.
You can read the rest.
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