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AN OLD COMMANDMENT
For centuries religionists lulve tried to divorce the fourth commandment from the other nine in the Deca–
logue, contending tlult the Sabbath is mere ritutd. They lulven't understood the moral andethical reasons
why God devised it in the first place.
I
n any given weekend in the
United States, the freeways from
the cities to the countryside will
be clogged with cars and campers.
The cities pour forth their teeming
masses, yearning to breathe free–
and cleaner- air. Though people
have just gotten off work, they are,
ironicaUy, franticaUy
working
in or–
der to get away from work!
Sorne families wryly procla im
that instead of fighting bumper-to–
bumper traffic in a national park
they will stay borne and rest during
their weekend vacation.
The weekend throngs are en–
slaved to the world of work. They
may have "leisure," but they don' t
use it leisurely: the frantic weekend
hardly disturbs the rhythm of the
workweek.
Which is where we broach the
question of the fourth command–
ment. "Remember the sabbath day,
to keep it holy... . in it thou shalt
not do any work" (Ex. 20:8-9). Of
all the Ten Commandments, it is the
one which has come under the most
tire. Theologians delicately excise it
from our .religious consciousness by
asserting that the Sabbath was a
specifi.c institution given to the an–
cient Jews in order to keep them, as
God's nation, symbolically separate.
In this way of looking at it, the Sab–
bath has nothing intrinsicaUy to do
with one's relationship to God or
man; it is merely a hangover from
bygone days, a sort of spiritual Ed–
sel, God's own version of planned
obsolescence.
·
Most people see the eminent logic
of the commandments against mur–
der. stealing and lying. Sorne nonre–
ligious people even believe that
coveting and adultery are wrong.
32
by
Jeff Calkins
And most
religious
people see the
logic of the commandments about
worshiping the one true God, not
idols, and not taking His name in
vain. But the Sabbath gets left out.
It
is not kept because most people–
including theologians- don't see the
logic behind it. They don't see how
keeping a period of time "holy"
could possibly be important to God.
The Beat of a DIHerent Drum
But the Sabbath is a means by
which God protects His investment
in human beings. lf God had made
the Sabbath
only
because we need
the weekly rest (and, of course, we
do), He wouldn' t have made a
spe–
cific
period of time holy. "Any ol'
time'' would do.
The Sabbath is justified because it
protects and enhances man's rela–
tionship to God.
lt
exists to keep us
in a proper frame of mind. We live
in a grubby, material world of
everyday things. We only see mate–
rial things. There is, as we face each
day, a built-in bias towards materi–
alism. It isn't hard at aU to avoid
anything spiritual. And unless we
take sorne time to consider, to
think
upon a realm other than the mate–
rial , most of us núght plod through
our lives oblivious to the major facts
of the universe.
There is no reason for a Sabbath
- a day of rest to consider God and
His creation- without a God. We
need time to think about that God
- because, even though God reaUy
exists, the natural tendency is to go
through life as if He
didn
't
exist.
Most men, wrote Thoreau, live
lives of "quiet desperation," like so
many bees in a hive, squandering
their lives in a furious race to get to
the end, never considering
why
they
are alive in the first place.
The Sabbath marches to the beat
of a ditferent drum. Or, more prop–
erly,
strolls.
It
presents us with an
opportunity· to consider the
whys
of
life, not just the
hows.
It
represents a
chance to get one's head on straight ;
a time to achieve a philosophical
orientation in life; to know
where
one should aim in life.
The Etemal Treadmlll
Our routinized, modern "work"
gives us a strong push to materi–
alism, and subtly tells us that the
only reality is grubby, mundane,
earthly and perceptible. If it com–
pletely inundates our life, it cuts us
off from God. Paul condemned an–
cient thinkers wbo did not like to
keep God in their knowledge (Rom.
l
:28), and David noted that it is the
evil
who say in their bearts that God
doesn't see them (Ps. 10: ll)- in
other words, that God doesn't really
exist.
We can often get so bound up in
our work- or our various recrea–
tional activities that we do in order
to rest up for more work- that we
forget what work is all about in the
fi.rst place. An individual can spend
bis life in a corporate treadmiU, if
he's an ambitious type, a contestant
in wbat is properly caUed a "rat
race," and never ask himself why
be's doing it.
lt
is only as we stand off, ponder
the universe and our existence, con–
sider God, His laws and His cre–
at io n , a nd place ours elve s
consciously in the context of the
whole universe, that we can be fully
human. That is one way in which
the Sabbath was made
for man
The
PLAIN TRUTH January 1978