June 6, 2006 - 4:52 pm
I couldn’t possibly let today go by without commenting on it’s (non)significance.
Today is, of course, June, 6th, 2006, or 06/06/2006 (to use Y2K compliant notation), or 2006-06-06 00:00:00 (if you’re talking to a SQL database), or 6/6/6 (if your just a lazy American). Naturally, our society, which is founded on a firm misunderstanding and strict misinterpretation of the Christian Bible, totally freaks out when there are three sixes in anything. Commence the dooms-day rhetoric!
I teach Sunday school for 8th grade boys (Yeah, I know. Pray for me.) and we are nearing the end of my study on the book of Revelation, where this mysterious number is mentioned quite a bit. As 8th grade boys are wont to do, they’ve told me about every urban myth and camp fire horror story concerning this number.
Yes, there are three “sixes” in every UPC bar code in the world, sort of. Yes, the guy who invented the bar code has six letters in his first, middle, and last name. Yes, in the Hebrew numeral alphabet, the letter for W is also the number six (thus WWW = 666). Yes, the Roman emperor Nero’s name using another numeral alphabet adds up to six hundred sixty-six.
But, if you’re going to get freaked out about a date, today is not the day to worry about. Our calendar is all scientific and stuff, but I strongly doubt that the numbers we have assigned to count the passage of time amount to a hill of musical fruit in God’s grand scheme. I would imagine the watches worn by the Heavenly hosts would not synch up well with even the most accurate atomic clocks here on Earth.
Will there be bizarre cultic rituals performed in dark basements today? Sure! But, will Satan’s spawn be born today? Only in a movie remake. (Tell that wasn’t marketing genius!)
If it will make you feel better, when you brush your teeth tonight, look in the mirror. If you don’t have some strange, permanent mark on your forehead that wasn’t there when you brushed your teeth this morning, you can sleep peacefully knowing that you have better than average dental hygiene. Also, you are probably not doomed to the fires of hell. Or are you?
