Unpop Culture

If you have not yet seen the “Swagger Wagon” music video (an excellent and hilarious piece of hip-hop marketing), check it out! If you like the song, you can download a free mp3 here .

Sabbath Study, Part 40 When Cap started studying the Sabbath during the summer we got married, I dreaded the result. Like most Christians I knew, I “kept the Sabbath” by going to church on Sunday mornings and then used Sunday afternoons to finish homework, do last-minute chores, or just chill out with a movie before the week began. When Cap’s study led him to believe that keeping the Sabbath involved a bit more than obligatory church attendance, I wasn’t thrilled. To be quite honest, I didn’t want to think about God all day long . That would be boring. At the time, I was halfway done with my Master’s Degree in English Literature, a task that required more work than I could give. Despite constant labor, I still went to bed every night with many assignments unfinished. Days upon days of often unrewarding work, with no end in sight, made me exhausted, stressed to the point of physical ailment, and regularly depressed. I spent Sunday afternoons frantically catching up on homework, though t

Sabbath Study, Part 39 The first half of our conclusion to this Sabbath study (see the previous post) detailed the first three “Sabbath principles.” Here are the final four. Fourth, the weekly Sabbath has changed from Saturday to Sunday. Within the realm of orthodox Christianity, this is almost universally acknowledged. Christ’s death and resurrection inaugurated a new era of Sabbath application. There are some who argue that the Christian Sabbath is on Saturday. I have not found these arguments to be convincing—or, in the long run, Scripturally credible. Fifth, the weekly rest should, in at least a general sense, look different from the other six days of the week. We do ourselves a disservice to call Sunday a day of rest while treating it like any other day. In a more specific sense, the weekly rest should involve both corporate and private worship; it is a “holy convocation” (i.e., a large, formal assembly), as well as something to be observed “in all your dwellings” (see Lev. 23:3)

Sabbath Study, Part 38 For the last several months, we have studied the doctrine of the Sabbath (i.e., what the entirety of the Bible has to say about the Fourth Commandment). During this time, I have attempted to explain why I think the weekly rest is far from an outdated command—and why it is a source of abundant grace and soul-satisfying pleasure. Properly viewed and obeyed, the Fourth Commandment can greatly benefit the Christian’s life. So what about application? What exactly does a Sabbath rest look like? What are we allowed and/or forbidden to do during this day? Christian authorities have not been in complete agreement over the answer to these questions, and I won’t pretend to have unlocked all the secrets to a proper application of the Fourth Commandment. I think it is best to answer the above questions with a short list of principles rather than a list of specific steps. Application points can be debated, but I think the Biblical principles are more clear-cut…and they can lea