I know that the title of this post sounds like Donald Trump saying, Mexico will pay for the wall.  It sounds like it can’t be right.  Nevertheless, the title is right.

Despite Outlawing Jesus, the Public Acknowledges Jesus All Over

In the last few days, I talked to someone who worked for Gideons, the parachurch organization.  I asked him if they handed out Bibles in the public schools in Decatur County.  He said, “No, it is illegal to hand out Bibles in the public school.”  They cannot do that.  No one can do that.  That doesn’t sound like a society that acknowledges that it runs on Jesus’ time.  And yet, it does.

The calendars for the Indiana public schools where I live call it 2023.  The sports schedules call this 2023.  This year’s basketball season is 2023-2024.  When I use the internet, the world wide web, to schedule a post, it says it’s 2023.

Anno Domini

2023 is AD.  AD is Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.  2023 is 2023 years since the birth of Jesus, assuming Jesus born at 1, since the Romans didn’t have a zero.  Whether you refer to the Julian Calendar or the Gregorian one, Jesus is the start date.

I brought in the Gideon story, because the public schools still use a date with Jesus Christ as the start date.  They won’t let anyone hand out Bibles, the book about Jesus, but they use “the year of our Lord,” which refers to Jesus.  I’m guessing that when they hand out their teacher paychecks, they use the year of our Lord for a date.  Wikipedia says:

The term anno Domini is Medieval Latin and means “in the year of the Lord” but is often presented using “our Lord” instead of “the Lord”, taken from the full original phrase “anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi,” which translates to “in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Universe

The term “universe” in the title is defined as the following:

all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos.

Wikipedia says:

The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy.

I can go with that as my usage.  The Latin etymology is universus or universum, which is all things as a whole, so speaking of everything physically as a whole, not the individual parts.

Acknowledging Jesus’ Time

When I say the universe acknowledges it runs on Jesus’ time, I mean that they refer to the year of our Lord Jesus Christ to mark the date.  With full disclaimer, I saw an episode of Star Trek that said the year of the program was 3188.  The character said that on another planet.  Star Trek acknowledged that other planets would say that they use Jesus as a basis for dating.

Presently we don’t know of another planet in the universe with life besides earth.  According to a hypothetical, sentient life on other planets says they provide the present date using the year of Jesus’ birth as the starting point.

Perhaps you could join me in the irony of all this.  This world must acknowledge Jesus, even when it doesn’t want to do that.