Saturday, October 3, 2020

That "awkward foreign body" of the 7th Day Sabbath

 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God... Exodus 20:9
 
“One thing is certain:  it is no insignificant problem logical man finds himself facing from the moment the Sabbath enters upon the arena.
That is the Sabbath commandment, to him a most awkward "foreign body" defying all common rules of rational philosophy…How much more reassuring it would be, to the most independent spirits among us, if we could just have a slightly modified formulation of the fourth commandment to grapple with.   
 
For instance:  "Remember the day of rest."  Full stop.  Or still better:  "Remember a day of rest".  Or why not simply?  "Remember to rest".   
 
That would seem quite a roomy way of putting it, would it not, and comparatively inoffensive to all sensitive souls.  You would not even have to be a good humanist in order to find that reminder meaningful and harmless.   
 
Any logician with some mysterious preference for the indefinite, the vague and reducible, would feel that this was a commandment he could manage to handle. And men with a passion for Western self-sufficiency would be quite happy, too. 
 For a commandment of that kind would be nothing more than what any sensible man could manufacture all by himself.” 
Carsten Johnsen. Day of Destiny ch.7