By Pastor Tedd Mathis

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools

As we see the chaos of our day, it might be wise to remind ourselves, man has been here before. Social and political revolutions are rooted in ideas – and ideals. Sometimes they head in a God-honoring direction. Sometimes, Reality is revolted against. Having just marked our nation’s declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776, it might be good to take a glance at another revolution and its ideas and ideals. Rejecting and seeking to obliterate what God has revealed in nature, revealed in His Scriptures, and written on our hearts can only lead to absurdity and social chaos. One such case was seen in the French Revolution (c1789-1799). The following is adapted from a Twitter thread by Jash Dholani. It is taken from his book, Hit Reverse: New Ideas from Old Books.

After the French revolutionaries beheaded their king, they had another bright idea: “Let’s make the day 10 hours long.”

This is not a joke. Left-wing “experts” actually changed the length of minutes, hours, and weeks in the name of science…This is the story of that disaster.

The French revolutionaries adopted a new calendar for three reasons:

– To eliminate religious consciousness from the French society

– To make time more “rational”

– To announce the birth of an egalitarian era

In their zeal they forgot an important factor: human nature. This is a story of political arrogance.

The revolutionaries overestimated the power of science and underestimated the stickiness of religion.

In an attempt at secularization this was a radical attempt for the France to redefine time itself. In France, from 1793 to 1805, one hour = 100 minutes. One min = 100 seconds. One week had 10 days. The 10th day was made the rest day. John Adams called this change “superficially frivolous” and “coarsely vulgar.” 

The ‘New year’ shifted from January 1 to September 22. The 7th day, traditionally a holiday (“holy day”) became a typical week day.  Sociologist Zerubavel notes that the 10-day week was meant to disrupt the “traditional, sacred seven-day cycle”

The purpose was to disorient people and make them lose track of “Sunday.” That is, the day for going to Church, and having a weekly sit-down with the Divine.

The French Revolutionary Calendar was designed by the top experts of the day. The chief designer: CG Romme (Physics professor); mathematicians and astronomers chipped in. Tradition/old habits didn’t matter; the designers answered “solely to the principles of Reason and Science.”

Sociologist Zerubavel: “The Revolutionary Calendar was introduced in an age which advocated the total obliteration of the old order in the name of progress & modernity: the beginning of the new Republican Era marked the total discontinuity between past and present” Ring a bell?

Every calendar has “critical dates” which are suffused with a symbolic importance. The Revolutionaries changed the first day of the year from January 1 to 22nd September – the day of the “foundation of the French Republic.” Society was to spin not around religion but politics. Days which had a unique flavor due to their religious significance like “the saints’ days, Sunday, and the Church’s religious holidays were abolished. Each day became mathematically and symbolically alike. Differences were to be erased – whether among people or on the calendar.

By adopting calendrical rhythms alien to the rest of the world the French created artificial barriers to communication, understanding, and ultimately trade. How would you fix delivery schedules with a country whose calendar is untranslatable into yours? 

Imagine you’re a French man in 1793… The revolutionaries have not just beheaded the King and slaughtered their own, but have also made the week 10 days long. The day is now 10 hours, not 24. Your old clocks – and your old instincts – need to be thrown out. By denouncing all authority as arbitrary, the revolutionary finally harms himself: On what grounds will he govern once the king is gone?

In hindsight we can see the “boomerang effect” of the Calendar redesign. If the old dogmas were random, why are the new ones any better? 

The people HATED the new Calendar. It made them work for 9 days straight instead of six. Plus it was confusing. Special clocks were made to translate the Revolutionary calendar into the Gregorian calendar and back.

People’s age-long habits were redesigned without their consent.

By the way, Stalin would also impose a new calendar for the Soviet Union. With some variations, from 1918-1940, the week was cut to five days to eliminate the holiday of Sunday. Days were assigned colors, and workers were given colors. When it was your colored day, you took a day off. Families and friends had different colors and so they never hung out.

Back to the French: the new way was designed by the biggest scientific minds of the time and was a colossal failure, It should serve us as a warning. An attempt to restructure time by politics instead of the sacred inevitably ends in chaos.

Who ended the tyranny of artificial time and took his country back to the Gregorian calendar? Napoleon, June 16, 1806 – the Year of Our Lord.