So far this week, I’ve been dancing around this third gift of Sabbath: clarity. It’s been woven throughout my other posts—or, if woven is a word that implies too much subtlety, I’ve barely been restraining my desire to get to this point in my thoughts. And since I’m so eager, why wait any longer?
Capitalist Distortion
As with rest and gratitude, capitalism distorts the clarity offered by Sabbath. As you sit at home, rest tainted by a suspicion that you should be working, gratitude directed toward corporations that graciously enable your labor or profit from your isolation, a certain kind of clarity becomes attainable.
You realize that what you really need is for things to return to normal. You need a return to your regular paycheck, regular expenses, and regular opportunities to consume unethically sourced, produced, and priced goods. You need a return to your predictably exhausting work. You need a return to the usual slow death of exploitation that is far more comfortable than the terror of realizing society is on the edge of collapse…and you need society to remain just how it is, because any disruption could be catastrophic, as we’ve just realized.
Faithful Clarity
That clarity, however, is a result of work done by capitalist projects of mass media misinformation and the encouragement of economic insecurity. If we embrace faithful rest, experience faithful gratitude, we can recognize that any catastrophe that lies on the other side of capitalism’s demise is only a catastrophe from a perspective deeply shaped by capitalist desires.
The clarity granted by Sabbath reveals that a system that treats rest as nothing more than the renewal of labor and the opportunity to turn leisure into profit is hardly a proper order for God’s beloved creatures.
The clarity granted by Sabbath enables us to discern that a system that twists gratitude into the appreciation for the opportunity to be exploited and monetized is no proper order for those God molded from the vibrant soil and called good.
The clarity granted by Sabbath allows us to clearly grasp that a system that encourages us to accept as necessary the sacrifice of millions of people’s well-being so that financial gambling and the unchecked destruction of ecological systems around the world can go on without serious interruption…that that kind of system is evil.
You might think, if you don’t hold to that Sabbath clarity, that capitalism produces all kinds of wonderful miracle drugs, or that it has connected the world in a network of communication and mutual understanding.
But capitalism hasn’t done that. Particular people have, and much of their work is done despite the pressure of capitalism. All capitalism does is commodify and monetize the creativity, commitment, and compassion of beautiful human creatures, while pushing those beautiful human creatures to brutally devour the rest of creation as efficiently as possible.
Then it takes credit for their labor, as if brilliant people couldn’t possibly make the world better if they didn’t have someone standing by, figuring out how to make people pay more than they can afford while paying laborers less than they can live on. Of course, when I say “it” takes credit, I actually mean that centuries of scholars, teachers, politicians, and, more recently, news hosts, have given capitalism credit for the labor that sustains it.
As this pandemic continues, and you find some opportunity to make a Sabbath of your time in shelter, I hope you find this faithful Sabbath clarity.
Tomorrow, I’ll try to wrap this week’s thoughts up. For now, I’ll leave you with something of a benediction.
Rest as one who deserves to breathe clean air and to labor in ways that give you life and bless your community. Be grateful to those who take care of you and your community, rather than those who only give you just enough to make them a thousand times as much in return. Embrace Sabbath clarity, the reorientation of the world to the care for that which God called good, and ask where that clarity might lead you…to whom it might lead you, and carry that clarity it out past the time of rest, back into the “normal” time we’ll be told is imminent.
Questions for consideration/discussion
What could you create if you weren’t worried about making rent, paying a mortgage, or paying off student loans?
Who would you support if you didn’t have to scramble to take care of your most immediate loved ones, not to mention yourself?