According to a recent poll, 37% of Americans want to prevent evolution from being taught in public schools at all. It is this sort of statistic that leads me to believe we are very close to having the Ten Commandments replace the Bill of Rights as the major document in American Political Discourse. Thus, we’re spending a few days looking at them.

We’re up to number four!

The Fourth Commandment

Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.

This one is pretty confusing actually because it hinges on trying to figure out what “sabbath” means and what “keep it holy” means.

Let me see if I can decypher this for you.

First, in ancient Hebrew, “shabbath” meant “a day of rest and refreshment for the body and of blessing to the soul.” It does not specifiy which day of the week it means, which is why some Judeo-Christian religions choose Saturday, some choose Sunday and some choose Friday.

Basically, to my way of thinking, this means it doesn’t really matter which day it is so long as it is always the same day for you and so long as you take it easy. It doesn’t say “go to church and be bored” on that day, just refresh yourself, get enough sleep and be damn glad you got a day off.

“Keep it holy,” in this context, means “keep it religious.”

So, basically, this commandment says “Hey, bro, take it easy for a day and if you are going to break a commandment, this would be an especially bad day to do it.” Indeed, by breaking a commandment on the sabbath, you have, in fact, broken two commandments. This is like the Hate Crime legislation of the Ten Commandments.

The good thing about this is that it doesn’t specify how you are supposed to be religious. Sure, commandment one specifies that there is only one big G god, but after you’ve taken care of him (say “Hi big fella” or something - he likes that) you can spend the rest of your day worshipping Bast, Peyton Manning or, hell, your own poop. He don’t care!

Really, this commandment is the first one that gives us humans something. Every time we have a day off, it is because God is cool like that.