We were not made for the capitalist subjection that characterizes our lives. The gift of the Sabbath serves us in the present by contesting work’s overlordship and disrupting the social controls by which capitalist hegemony maintains itself.
“I was only imagining it. Being freed.”
The Sabbath commandment is a word of freedom and of resistance to an economic system that is destructive to ourselves and our planet.
The ongoing government shutdown comes with significant personal cost to government workers and harm to the public good. It is a tragic reminder of the dignity of government work and its contribution to the common good.
Not merely a time for ‘leisure’ or ‘recharging’, the notion of sabbath involves deep concepts of justice.
The Apostle Paul’s charge that those who are unwilling to work should not eat has often been taken in support of a callous form of conservatism. However, understood rightly, it reveals the way Christ speaks to all areas of life and labor.
In a recent video (Humans Need Not Apply) CGP Grey challenges us to imagine a future in which the majority of human work will be performed by ever-more finely-calibrated machines (coordinated by ever-more complex software). Lest we doubt it, he suggests that the seeds of this future are already with us.
There is a famous anecdote in which a man, after death, wakes up surrounded by all the pleasures of life: food, sex, and leisure. An angel approaches him and says “Welcome, enjoy all the pleasures you have ever wanted.” The man basks in all the pleasures available, but after a few weeks of uninterrupted ecstasy, he grows bored. So, the man approaches the angel and says “Is there anything I can do, any work?”