Comments on: Saturday: Secular Sabbath or Christian Cop-out?

By: Steve Chastain

Steve Chastain — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:36:10 +0000

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!

By: Sarah Glass

Sarah Glass — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:58:24 +0000

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.

By: David Williams

David Williams — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:12:32 +0000

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.