Continuing my quest to find some part of the Bible worthy of basing a rational moral system on, I turn now to the Fourth Commandment.

#4 – “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

The first thing to note is that this is the fourth Commandment in a row now that seems to have far more to do with religious practice than with morality. That is to say, many people who fail to observe these first four Commandments can still be seen as acting morally (at least by those who aren’t part of the religious group which gave rise to these Commandments), while those who keep all four of these Commandments are still free to act in numerous immoral ways.

It wouldn’t have to be this way. Compare these first four of the Ten Commandments with this alternative:

“Thou shalt do no wrong! And by wrong we mean: 1) Anything that hurts yourself; 2) Anything that hurts other sentient life forms beyond that required for your own continued existence; 3) Anything that hurts the biosphere; and 4) Anything which hurts future generations.”

This alternative may require a bit of debate, refinement, and elaboration before it can give rise to a full system of morality, but I think it provides a pretty simple and clear basis for such a system – especially compared to what the Bible offers.

The next thing to note is that God defines the sabbath day this way in the next sentence of the Fourth Commandment:

“Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath day of the Lord thy God….”

That would be Saturday. Christians changed that to Sunday (the first day) after Jesus allegedly rose from the dead on a Sunday and they took to celebrating Easter every week in hopes of his imminent return. Paul allegedly gave them the right to make this change and others in the laws of the Old Testament. But Paul obviously wasn’t God, and God clearly said and implied that the laws of the Old Testament were forever. Paul wasn’t even Jesus, who said “Til heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law… Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven….” Unlike the U.S. Constitution, God made no provisions for amendment or revision in His laws. He could have ended any or all of the Ten Commandments with the words “until further notice” – but He did not. How Christians can choose to follow Paul rather than God here is a mystery to me.

Moving on, we see that God for once tries to explain His reasoning behind a Commandment beyond merely saying “Because I say so” or “Because I feel like it”:

“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

As luck would have it, this is a reason we can’t check and must simply take on faith. If God really didn’t make heaven and earth in six days and rest on the seventh (as even relatively few theists seem to believe He did these days), the Fourth Commandment appears to lose its point. One could still justify resting one day out of seven – as a way of reducing consumption and diminishing our harmful impact on the biosphere, say – but the Old Testament God once again doesn’t bother to ground His commandment in such high principles. Instead, the sheer religious nature of these Commandments is once again emphasized, and they further lose their ability to sway objective minds as a result.

One might even argue that by blessing only His day of rest instead of any of His days of work, God is actually undermining the work ethic by honoring inactivity over industriousness and in effect promoting what many might consider an immorally lazy mindset. Not that I would personally argue this, of course, since I feel a tad lazy myself right now.

One might also note in passing that this is one of the few times God actually says to people, “Do this because I did this” or “Emulate me.” The Bible says that Adam and Eve were thrown out of Eden because they had acquired a god-like ability to tell good from evil by eating fruit and God feared that they would eat from the tree of life next and acquire god-like immortality. The Tower of Babel was destroyed to prevent people from exercising god-like powers through a common language. Again and again in the Bible, world philosophy, literature, and even Star Trek, people are warned against the hubris of thinking and acting as if they are gods. For the God of the Old Testament to say here “Rest on the seventh day because I rested on the seventh day” seems to establish a principle (“Do as I do”) that He Himself would condemn in most if not all other areas. As such, the Fourth Commandment seems at least a tad arbitrary and inconsistent with God’s other laws.

And a student of foreign films might object to the wisdom of emulating God here at all in any case by recalling the following words from Italy’s Oscar-winning “Cinema Paradiso“:

“They say that God created the world and everything in it in six days and rested on the seventh. I wish He would have taken a bit more time and done the job right.”

Moving right along, here is the rest of the Fourth Commandment:

“But the seventh day is the sabbath day of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.”

Unlike the murkiness of the previous Commandments, this really couldn’t be any clearer. And Exodus 31:15 underlines the point:

“Whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.”

Does all this clarity finally provide us with a firm foundation on which to base an understandable, workable, and efficient system of morality? No. Instead, this clarity seems to be directly responsible for the Fourth Commandment’s being almost universally rejected and ignored.

The ancient Jews really gave it their best shot, however. In Maccabean times (2nd century B.C.) they went so far as to allow themselves to be slaughtered on the sabbath rather than take up arms to defend themselves. When it dawned on them that this could led to their extinction, they decided this Commandment needed amending. Their Talmud ended up deciding that there were 39 general categories of forbidden works which could be suspended when life or health were seriously threatened. To the extent this makes sense and is moral is the extent to which the original Fourth Commandment is nonsensical and immoral.

Finally, there is, of course, the case of Jesus. When his disciples violated the Fourth Commandment by harvesting corn on the sabbath and he was called on it, he said, “So what? David violated the law, too.” Apparently this “defense” failed to sway his accusers, so he added “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” (Mark 2:23-27) Funny, when humanists put what’s best for man above ancient “God-given” law like this, they get lambasted for it. When Jesus does it, he’s called a wise and learned teacher. Seems to me that there’s far more justification for lambasting Jesus since humanists at least don’t contradict themselves by simultaneously saying they’re upholding that ancient law.

What strikes me as even odder is that so many Christians who first reject God’s making Saturday the sabbath and then reject the idea that it’s wrong to work on the sabbath nonetheless feel that a Commandment vehemently asserting both ought to be posted in all our schools.

As an absolute law to be obeyed, I mean – not as a joke or an example of hypocrisy.

The very idea leaves me suddenly full of the urge to go lock my doors for fear of what they might do next.

That’s a very bad sign for any moral system I’m interviewing, to be sure, but I’ll do my best to keep my fears in check until all Ten Commandments have been given a fair hearing.

If you have anything to say in their behalf, please be sure to pass it along.

I mean, I’d really hate to go through all this work only to discover I need to abandon my faith in locks altogether and have to start bricking up my portals….

Continue to the Fifth Commandment…

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