The Benefit Of The Sabbath

Almost everyone needs to work to some extent just to survive, even if only by hunting or collecting food out in nature and storing water.  With or without professional work in any historical or contemporary sense, there is still a need to labor in order to live unless someone else can labor on your behalf, or unless the correlative connections between nature, food, water, and energy change--both of which are rather unlikely.  The increasing intensity and disparities of the modern workplace might prompt some to reflect on how to restructure society so that so much of the normal human's life is not spent on just working for pay or for other resources necessary to live.

Some call for a four day workweek to replace the traditional five days workweek, while others might wish to abolish the societal need to professionally work altogether.  There might even be people who would work every day of the week to provide themselves with better financial security who would eagerly give up as many days of work as they could if they realized they could survive without them.  In this cultural context, it is actually idiotic for such people to oppose the idea of having at least one day a week where one does not engage in any unecessary physical labor, whether for pay or for some other reason (and idiotic otherwise because there would only be assumptions and personal preferences to stand on).

The entire point of the Biblical Sabbath, which as with so many other parts of Christian theology has been misunderstood by Christians and non-Christians alike, reduces down to this, to ensuring everyone has time for leisure, recovery, and more direct reflection.  This day--not necessarily a specific recurring day of the week but a single day out of every seven that one devotes to abstaining from work, and not necessarily excluding literally all physical or mental effort, or else no one could do anything at all on the Sabbath, not even think or walk around or heal others as Jesus did (Matthew 12:9-14)--is something that springs very naturally from the idea that there is more to humanity and life than the physical professional labor that for so much of the historical record has been a practical necessity.

The benefit of the Sabbath is something that almost everyone wants but the Sabbath law in the Torah is something almost everyone subjectively finds repulsive.  The latter part is likely because working on the Sabbath is assigned capital punishment (Exodus 35:2), though not working does not mean engaging in no activity of a physical or mental kind and there are both Biblical and logically necessary exemptions (which I have addressed previously to some extent and will do again).  Of course, it is not as if the strictness of the death penalty for Sabbath violation or the convenience and deep personal freedom of not having to work at least one day a week are what make the Sabbath laws philosophically invalid or valid.  That would have to do with whether Christianity is actually true in part or in full, which is not a matter of anyone's preferences or longings.

Moral obligation is not about pragmatism, but about doing whatever one is obligated to do because one should do so rather than because it is convenient.  Either morality objectively does not exist or there are obligations that are objectively binding no matter the annoyance or personal dislike one might harbor.  If the Bible is true, then execution for doing unjustified work on the Sabbath is just, yet the core idea behind the Sabbath not only aligns with something many already subjectively want today even if only for arbitrary emotionalistic reasons, but also is ultimately about human freedom to do more than work for a living or struggle to survive (though saving one's own life, the lives of others, or the lives of even animals is a Biblical exemption on the Sabbath).  The benefit of the Sabbath is something few could have a comfortable life without even on a subjective or practical level.