On Daily Affirmation

It's calculus season.
in 3 weeks, I'll be about to take the AP Calc AB exam. Until then, every day I have to spend 2 hours on homework trying to not fail.
But in the midst of school, i've had a little time to think.

It's Easter Season.
Today was Good Friday.
Easter's the best holiday because as long as you avoid shopping centers, you're allowed to just sit and think reflect. listen.
It's a much needed respite before the College Board takes over my life.

Christians spend a lot of time complaining about the world- society, culture, nonchristians... we complain about everything that makes us uncomfortable.
It's one of those things that we shouldn't be proud of, and it's one of society's main reasons for not liking christians to begin with.

A few people in America have been trying to get every aspect of Christianity out of our federal government. The words on our money, the line in our pledge of allegiance, the customs of courtroom proceedings.
These are things that aren't in our laws, but that were adopted by various organizations at various times because people back then were predominately christians. No one complained when "In God we Trust" was first printed on our money. They probably liked it. Thought it was a nice touch. That was the culture then.
But since then, times have changed, and Christians in our usual remonstrative way have been disenchanted with the idea that "God" would be taken off our money.
But there's one aspect of society that is so intermingled with Christianity that isn't going to change anytime soon; one place where no one is going to sue the United States of America for violation of "separation of church and state".
That aspect is the Date.

The date for me, right now, is the 10th of April, 2009.
The reason today is that day is because 1,484 years ago, a Romanian monk named Dionysius tracked the years back (slightly inaccurately) to Jesus' birth and used that to keep track of the years.
Eventually it caught on and here we are, year 2009.
What I really like is the term "AD."
Now, some scholarly folk prefer the term "CE" to mean "Common Era" because they don't like Jesus. But from what I can tell, most americans still say "AD".
Which is an abbreviation for Latin which, when translated, means "In the year of our lord".
Here's what's cool about that:

Before Dionysius came around with his AD/BC numbering system, the year was kept track of by who was the local ruler.
For example, when Augustus came into power, the year was "1 Augustus" and started over when Tiberius became emporer. If you've ever read the old testiment of the Bible, numbering schemes like that are absultely everywhere.

But think about that. The year used to be determined by how long your ruler was in power.
And yet, nothing is any different today.
Every time you say that the year is 2009, you're reaffirming that Jesus Christ has been lord for (roughly) 2009 years. And counting.
The reason why we never started over with a new "year 1" is because Jesus never had a successor. And he never will.
Society probably doesn't like to think about it that way.
but that's alright with me. They'll figure it out someday.