American Style Homeostasis – The Times they are a Changing

The effect time has on all humans has created the science of homeostasis. The idea was first put forth by French physiologist Claude Bernard in 1865. Bernard discovered that all living organisms have internal "multiple dynamic equilibriums adjustment and regulation mechanisms." In simple terms, that means we all have an internal clock.

Homeostasis is that inner knowledge of time or our ability to define a day with or without a clock or a watch. People confined in places where no light or other stimuli could be seen, adapted to life in 24 hour cycles without any knowledge of day and night or what hour of the day it was.

Everyone knows what osmosis is, but only one in ten thousand know that reverse osmosis is called plasmolysis and even fewer understand how it works. In the study of homeostasis (the effect time has on man) there has been no word ever introduced like plasmolysis to help explain the effect man has on time.

In fact only a few people in our entire civilization have ever conceded that man can significantly affect the outcome of time on his own world. Those who are seen as prophets and seers are saddled with the task of both seeing the times and then proclaiming to a busy and distracted world just what that time is.

Just as internal stimuli (drugs, alcohol) can change or warp an individual's sense of time as in going out for an evening in the local pub in Cleveland and waking up the next morning in Tijuana, Mexico, the internal clock can be affected by excessive external stimuli.

Modern distractions are too numerous to list but whether we are jogging while listening to our favorite radio station or roaring to work on the interstate while thinking of what we must prepare for dinner and talking with our school aged children on a cell phone all at the same time, the total product of all this is the same. We lose our sense of what time it really is in our lives, our broader relationships and in our communities and even our nation.

The external influence on the internal clock of modern man becomes intoxication and renders us dysfunctional as a result of imbibing on endless bottles of by the ways and the deluding drug of distraction. When someone does accurately discern the time for us, the only question that remains is, do we have time or will we make time to stop and listen.

A seer need not resort to statistical syllogisms to ascertain what part of his message is being heard and what part is being ignored. Usually he needs only to watch the trends and preoccupation of a people to see where they are mentally focused. Jesus said "…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." (Mt 12:34) What people talk about the most is the shortest route to their state of mind.

The one message I repeat the most in all of my presentations is that it is not America's economy that is souring the grapes. Few seem to catch on, the connection seems all too hard to believe and the gab of the hour is still predominantly the economy. Almost every night of the week someone who is disturbed by the present administrations stimulus and spending policies is noting the woes of the economy and conversely supporters of the administration are promising it will all pan out if only given time to work. The key word here is again; time.

Failure to see the connection between a nation's immorality and its economy is one of the greatest mistakes in inductive reasoning that any civilization will ever make. Scriptures are replete with warnings and examples of failures in every area of the economy that are directly tied to a nation's moral behaviors or the lack of them.

Preoccupation with salacious behavior in media, conversation and daily pursuits in this nation has peaked. What is common today would have created a national blush only a few decades past. The only thing after a peak according to the Bible is judgment. A nation or an entire civilization brings itself into another time by ignoring this immutable fact.

When ancient Israel refused to listen to her prophets and seers they were shocked when Prophets like Ezekiel showed up and said that they not only had been going too far but they had pushed themselves into a change of time. Their immorality was affecting the external aspects of their homeostatic balance; in short they were changing their own times for the worst.

Ezekiel was sent to give them the final warnings before their dreaded enemies, the Babylonians, were to come and crush their entire way of life. Ezekiel said "Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed; and hast defiled thyself in thine idols which thou hast made; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years: therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the heathen, and a mocking to all countries." (Eze 22:4)

When we fail to see the parallels of pornography and poverty, moral collapse and economic collapse, we have done far more than missed a point. We will have changed the times and our national life will not be the same.

Christ was very concerned with those who failed to read the times because he knew that everything about time as they knew it would change irreparably if it went unnoticed. He also knew that if they missed the time of a visitation they would not fail to miss the time of the subsequent judgments that would ensue as a direct result.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the city missed the message, the Messiah and the moment of their greatest time. "And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another…" If you don't know much about that period of history let me remind you that only a few years from this proclamation the Roman conqueror Titus left Jerusalem in a heap of rubble.

Jesus explained in no uncertain terms that this needless catastrophe could have been easily avoided because the entire matter was birthed by a simple lack of not discerning the times they were living in. He finished his pronouncements by specifically naming the causes of the self induced calamities. He said "…because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." (Lu 19:41-44)

Not discerning the time always has dire consequences and Christ often rebuked people for their hypocrisy concerning the use of their best cognizance for everything except discerning the time. He said "Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?" (Lu 12:56)

The New Testament alone uses the word time in over 200 verses and many of those references have to do with someone either fully understanding or completely missing a very important moment in time. Man's built-in clock functions in every human being on the planet, but there is a greater element to the perception of time that is also part of homeostasis. Our collective sense of time can determine what times we will actually live in. We can decide whether they will be good times or bad times.

It takes no genius to discern that even our economy will be affected by our failure to discern the times and yet that may be the least of our problems after all. The question is simple; if all this is verily true, then what time do you think it is?

Do you think it is a time to blab up the economy and be silent about our unbridled licentiousness? Give us one newscaster, one pundit or one person who has properly discerned the times and we will have started on the road to a national recovery.