Weekly Reaction #7 - Red Flags and Reoccurring Solutions

I try not to be too cynical. Honestly, I think it is a bad habit that too many people my age practice. Not only does it make for a negative way to live life but it also makes one’s worldview narrow. Something I have loved about the honor’s class this year and last year is how my worldview has been challenged and, in some ways, altered. This being said, I was having trouble reading some parts of this week’s reading without being cynical. Maybe it is because the general topic we have been digging into this semester tends to have so many opposite and often biased opinions. Maybe it’s because I need to reevaluate how I read some of the books in this class. It might really just be me.

There were two things that caught my attention as “red flags.” First, Wirzba writes in chapter one, “As such, the Sabbath is a teaching that has the potential to redirect and transform all our existence, bringing it  into a more faithful alignment with God’s life-building and life-strengthening ways” (p 20). I have been taught to be wary of single, simple methods that promise to transform my life or our society. After all, the problems in my life (or our culture) have so many different aspects and solutions that one method of solving them seems improbable. Before I actually state my real opinion on Sabbath Living, the book makes it sound like an ideal which ironically is something that it also warns about in chapter 6. Wirzba writes, “Friedrich Nietzsche argued persuasively that much of our philosophizing and theologizing amount to inventions of ideal, supernatural realms so that we despise and seek to rise about the world as we commonly or naturally experience it” (p 79). I would almost go as far to argue that much of Wirzba’s description of a Sabbath Living that will “transform all our existence” is much like the Platonic ideals that he warns against.

The second red flag I came across was Wirzba’s description of the food industry, specifically the meat industry in chapter one. He describes the absolutely squalid conditions of livestock who will eventually be horribly and painfully put to death for the benefit of the masses. He also talks about the danger that the human workers are in as they work around the dangerous, heavy machinery in the slaughtering houses. Now, all of these things have been or unfortunately are still disgusting truths about some parts of the food industry. But, my problem here is that he only presents one side of problem. I tend to be distrustful of information that seems biased and only shows one extreme. After all, if one extreme is interesting enough to write about there is another opposite extreme that also deserves attention. Of course, this book was written almost ten years ago and I believe that the food industry has taken great strides in improving animal comfort and worker safety over the last ten years. So maybe the one extreme was all that existed at that time.

Well, now that you think I am thoroughly cynical and pessimistic, I would like to share what I do think about this Sabbath Living. From what I could gather, it meant living in constant praise and gratitude to God in everything we do. There should be no difference in the way we live Sunday and the way we live the rest of the week. In fact, the bottom line of this concept concerns how we live. Now, to me, this is not necessarily a new idea. I feel like that it is something I have been taught since being a child whether it was from the example my parents set or the sermons that my pastor preached. We are called to live every aspect of our lives in constant rest in the Lord. This comes back to what I wrote about last week. What matters is not what we do but who we are being because who we are dictates what we do. This is something that my pastors have preached about and I never quite understood until recently. As much as I talk about my wariness of this fancy Sabbath Living, living with God at the center of every part of my life and goals is something that I strive to achieve because I know it will ultimately transform my life whether that means in the next couple years or for eternity.