Today I am going to speak about a matter in the hope that others will be able to contribute or share the information with others. This morning just after waking up and getting to the computer, someone who was a bit upset was asking me about an unusual sort of calendar dispute relating to the small nation of Samoa. I am not sure how many brethren of the Church of God still live in Samoa, but recently an action was taken that would be of considerable interest to any people there who keep the Sabbath.

The nation of Samoa, for economic reasons, decided to change their timezone, moving across the International Date line to be a day ahead of where they were before, since much of their trade is with countries like China and Singapore and Australia, which formerly caused them problems in losing two business days a week to make money, something that is unacceptable for most nations nowadays [1]. Samoa, in addition, is looking to set up gimmicks with nearby American Samoa (which is now a whole day behind it) to repeat birthdays and anniversaries.

The question is this: given such a drastic change of time will cost people in Samoa a whole day, what happens to those who believe in keeping the Sabbath? My friend (from Latin America) is not a frequent traveler and was upset about what it would mean. There are really two ways that I can see of viewing this time change move (there could be more, though): a government changing dates and times, or the island traveling to a different time zone. Alternatively, you could see it as both.

For one, I don’t think the reasons for moving the time zone are all that valid. I don’t have a high opinion of the reasons why nations and governments make the actions that they do, or the time related shifts that deal with decisions made to increase profits that also increase danger (like Daylight Savings Time, which I loathe). This particular change has caused the inhabitants of Samoa to lose a whole day, skipping from Thursday night to Saturday morning, and that has an impact on how someone keeps the Sabbath, which is worrisome.

On the other hand, there is not much that can be done about it except to prepare for it and to deal with the repercussions. It is a similar case when one travels–flying from the United States to Asia, for example, means that one loses a day, and flying back allows one to gain a day. It is our custom to live by the sunrise and sunset in the time zones where we live, and if that means that we have six or six and a half days in a week or seven and a half or eight days in a week because of how the time works, we live with that, and the jet lag as a result of the travel.

Most of us live our lives fairly rooted to areas, with fairly local travel that takes us only a few timezones away. But some of us have to wrestle with the complexities of time zones that were designed to standardize communications in the last 150 years or so. And that is only on this earth–where time is relatively straightforward. Time is even more difficult to manage when one is traveling through space, because of relativity effects, or on other planets and moons. If we as a people become space travelers we will have to wrestle with time questions more difficult even than Samoa losing a whole day. Hopefully we are prepared in mind before we are faced with such questions in reality, so that rather than making things up as we go along we may be prepared to judge them consistently within a biblical worldview.

[1] http://vpcalendar.net/samoa-time-zone-change.html