Saturday: Secular Sabbath or Christian Cop-out?
Excuse the cross-posting from my blog, A Wee Blether, but I thought Presbymergent might help me out with my sabbath/technology reflections. Enjoy.
Saturday: Secular Sabbath or Christian Cop-out?
Wow. Mark Bittman’s article in Sunday’s NY Times, “I need a virtual break. No Really.” is a fascinating argument for “secular sabbath” in our technology age. Add that to Weekend Edition’s latest This I Believe essay on “Leaving Work to Watch the Sunset” by Laurie Granieri and you have a rather compelling case against America’s workaholism (and who says I’m out of the US media market).
I’ll mostly stick to Bittman’s Times piece for this post, but do check out Granieri. Bittman writes of his struggles to give up technology for one day a week. He used to be a tech-addict, checking his email last thing before bed and first thing after waking, until he made a pledge not to use any gizmos on Saturday. That means no computers, no email, no ipod, and no cell phone. And you know what? He survived!
Not only that, Bittman now flourishes on Saturday. Though he continues to struggle with the practicalities, Bittman concludes:
I would no more make a new-agey call to find inner peace than I would encourage a return to the mimeograph. But I do believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life - or at least my version. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.
Bittman’s secular sabbath journey should perk the ears of Christians. Not only are we as inundated with technology as everyone else, we’re commanded to take sabbath. Oh, and it’s not one of those Bible verses that’s real easy to reinterpret and read past–it’s a freaking commandment! Do not steal. Do not kill. Keep the sabbath.
The best and most challenging book I’ve read on sabbath is Marva Dawn’s “Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting.” In it, Dawn argues for a pretty strong sabbath keeping. She explains that at sundown each Saturday night, she lights a candle and prays to mark the beginning of the sabbath. She then, with a quite strict definition, does not work until (I think) sundown Sunday night (or it might be Monday, let me know if you’ve read it). Dawn often has sabbath dinner parties because they’re not work but rejoicing in the relationships God encourages. She studies the Bible and prays. On the sabbath Dawn does not check email–heck, she doesn’t even read the paper. Dawn writes that to make her transition to sabbath keeping, in early days when she thought of something about work, she would write it down and slide it under her locked study door so it would not bother her until the next day. Now, though, she’s progressed and rarely needs to do so.
What I find fascinating, however, is the relative quiet in the mainline church about sabbath keeping. Theology of sabbath may be more spoken of today compared to twenty years ago, but in many ways it’s still taboo in mainline denominations. We’re living in a world where a NY Times article on secular sabbath makes the most-emailed list in hours, and mainline Western Christianity fails to encourage the keeping of a commandment.
All this said, I don’t think making prescriptions for no email one day a week is necessarily the answer. I don’t think turning off a cell phone for a day will solve much of anything. I don’t think reading the newspaper in paper form rather than online is going to make a big difference in my life. I differ with Bittman’s complete no-tech day not out of principle but out of practice.
I try–hard–to take a full day off from work, a sabbath each week. Often this will mean I stay up Friday night writing Sunday’s prayers so I don’t have to look at them on Saturday. But come Saturday morning, I’m online bright and early–ok, maybe not early–to check email, play scrabulous, read the paper, blog. For me, the distinction is in between work and play. Writing prayers for corporate worship is work. Emailing friends, chatting on the phone, scrabulousing, is play. Play connects me to people, is personally fun, and is part of a larger giving glory to God and enjoying God forever. And as long as these online connections don’t negatively affect my in-person relationships, I think I’m doing alright. Sure, I’d read more novels if I didn’t read blogs on Saturdays, but I think reading blogs is a healthy leisure activity and I can barely afford the novels I read as it is.
So at the end of the day, Bittman may be on to something, but his complete sabbath from technology seems a bit extreme. I might just be rationalizing, or fooling myself, or plain wrong, but at least I can blog about it.
Comment by David Williams on 7 March 2008:
I realize this probably puts me in the minority among pastors, but I tend to view Sunday as a sabbath day. Yeah, I’m doing a whole bunch of stuff…leading worship, preaching, teaching, and meeting. But I *like* these things. I’m tired at the end of it, but it’s a good spent tired, like you might get after a hard 10 mile hike through the woods.
Comment by Sarah Glass on 9 March 2008:
Thanks for the post– I ended up reading Mark’s article and found it to be a good read. Like your post, it speaks to the very fundamental human need for space to be, which is so at odds with the way in which our culture has structured its values. Not to say that there are those that don’t value the act of “being,” especially in more recent years, but I can say fairly confidently that I didn’t have many friends growing up who didn’t have at least ONE parent that basically devoted their life to their work out of a sense of need to get ahead. My father, someone who by no means was not present in my life, nonetheless devoted many weekends and late evenings to his work in order to make sure that as the owner of a medical practice that he would be able to “stay ahead” and provide “happiness” for his family. I can recall nights when he would come home at 9pm from working alone in the office. For him, it was part of his work ethic, something that you had to do to be successful, something that he didn’t really think twice about. However I watch him today and realize that it didn’t come without a price. There are a lot of things that he didn’t get around to doing as a result, and I watch him trying to catch up today on the dreams he may have held dear years ago, perhaps trying to use the time he has now to make up for time that he sacrificed himself and his space for what our society told him that he needed to provide as the head of household.
I am by no means saying that I don’t honor that choice in my father; what I am saying, however, is that I see in many of my friends a recognition of the costs of that sort of values system, and many of my friends have rejected that as a result, opting for fields of study and for vocations that allow them space to be. I am sure that we will all find our own challenges down the road to protecting that space, and I definitely see in Mark Bittman’s article the underlying fact that we tend to rely on things that we do not need disproportionately, but I would hope, that for some of us at least, religious or not, that space is possible to create and maintain.
I know this is rambly…. thanks so much for the post, though… this has been on my mind and its interesting to see others thinking through this stuff too.
Comment by Steve Chastain on 14 March 2008:
I thought the Times article was an interesting example of natural revelation. Good stuff. Great post Adam. Here are some more thoughts specifically on the technology issue. My wife and I have generally tried to unplug during our Sabbath. I don’t think we’re militant about it, but we do aim to have computers and cell phones off. I understand Adam’s work/play distinction, but here are a couple other factors to consider. How do we make the Sabbath “set apart”? I blog and email every day - some for work, some for fun - and, as David’s comment reveals, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Choosing not to be in cyberspace is a way for us to make Sabbath special. Second question - is all play restful? For me, blogging, while enjoyable recreation, often gets me spun up, agitated, distracted. I enjoy it, and it certainly feeds my mind, but I can’t honestly say it feeds my soul. Also, I may be talking and thinking a lot ABOUT God, but I’m probably not entering communion WITH God. Finally, while I recognize the value of E-community, it is no substitute for face-to-face, life-on-life relationships. For us, this issue has been easy to observe: when we spend a lot of time on the Internet on Sabbath, we’re not interacting with our kids.
And here’s the potential Pharisaical hypocrisy of my comment: it’s 1:30 am on a Friday night, and I’m staying up late after a youth event to write this because I don’t want to be doing it tomorrow on Sabbath!