Today is Sunday, and Christians everywhere honor it traditionally as a day of worship, rest and relaxation. “The Sabbath was made for man…” Jesus tells us. And it is a cornerstone of Christian praxis. But we live in a society that seems to go out of its way to profane the sabbath, and to be moving in the direction of treating it as any other day of the week, even though (at least for now) few people are scheduled to work on Sunday. But in the retail area many are, and this is because many so-called Christians think nothing about shopping on Sunday. “Oh well, you know, I’m just too busy during the week, so I have to catch up with my shopping on the weekend.” It is not uncommon for “Christians” to dine at a restaurant after Sunday church service. One could almost argue that profaning the sabbath is de rigeur for modern Christians!
The recovenanting of America will certainly involve a complete reversal of this profane tendency, a recovery of the true glory of the Christian sabbath, the full restoration of its sacrosanctity. Obviously, as Jesus shows us in the parable of the good Samaritan, one can take this too far when one uses the sabbath principle to excuse oneself from humanitarian obligations, but we Americans hardly need worry about taking it too seriously...we are at the other end of the spectrum where as a society we don’t seem to take it seriously at all, so much so that we are at risk of losing the sense of the sabbath altogether.
At its base, the Sabbath principle involves a sacrifice. We are sacrificing the opportunity for commercial gain one day a week in order to devote it to remembering God, our Creator and His purpose for us. Our willingness to do this is a foundational premise of our Christianity, which we value higher than all earthly values. And thus this weekly praxis provides a psychological ground where our commitment is made manifest. The work-rest cycle is part of what God intends for man, and if we forget that we will burn ourselves out as have so many past civilizations that put their feet on their gas pedals and forgot they had brake pedals. This is an analogy for serving mammon rather than God...it is the sin of our age.
But there is one sect at least that bears no guilt in this regard, and that is our old friends the Amish, to whom we frequently find ourselves looking for good example. The Amish, whom our modern world likes to laugh at as Luddites, are beginning to demonstrate that it is they who will get the last laugh, but that’s a subject for another time. Here we are simply looking at the seriousness with which they regard the Christian prohibition of Sunday work.
In researching this issue, I discovered a truly excellent article on this subject which I highly recommend in its entirety to readers: The Amish understand a life-changing truth about technology the rest of us don’t, written about four years ago by Michael J. Coren in an online business magazine called Quartz. Here is the relevant excerpt for today:
The classic example is that the Amish value farming as a job. More than anything else, the ideal Amish person is a farmer. And when the US government local government begin introducing regulations about milk safety in the 1960s and 1970s, all of a sudden [their milk] didn’t meet those regulations. The Amish technique didn’t allow it. [The rules required dairy producers to constantly agitate the milk, chill it to a certain temperature and deliver it once per day to the local milk distributor.]
The Amish sat down and thought long and hard about this. Some Amish communities said: Nope, we’re done. We can’t interface with these English people anymore. And they began to make cheese. Other Amish communities said, No, we want to make sure we stay in milk production. This is really important to us, so we’re going to create some systems a little different from everyone else, but we’re going to create some refrigeration systems that run on propane so it won’t hook up to the electrical grid.
But the Amish said the Sabbath was something they would not change. They would not compromise their day of rest. They worked with local milk wholesalers and arranged to have their milk picked up early Saturday and Saturday night, so they would have Sunday free. They were willing to compromise and they thought about their values.1
Here we see exampled how seriously we should be taking the Sabbath, and how if we really put our minds to it we can fashion our work lives around the Sabbath, rather than vice versa. The Amish may not be perfect, but when it comes to taking Christian values seriously they are very hard to beat, and we would do well to follow them in this regard.
We do not have to wait for the consummation of the recovenanting of America to begin reclaiming the Sabbath. There are some practical things we can do immediately: Do not take a job that requires Sunday work2, do not shop on Sundays, reward stores that close on Sundays with your weekday business. These are a few of the important ways that Christians can restore to our Sabbath the honor and respect it deserves. On the surface it is there for God, and we owe him worship on this day. But as we recalled earlier in this piece, Jesus reminds us that it is ultimately there for us, and if we neglect to keep it holy, we ultimately hurt ourselves. God does not need our worship, but we need to worship God! He is the foundation of our humanity, and if we want a humane culture, we will give Him the central place of honor in our lives and in our hearts that He deserves above all.
2In keeping with the Good Samaritan principle, there are obviously a few exceptions to this. No one probably would like EMT’s to be unavailable for emergencies on Sunday, for example, or ambulance drivers, or hospital staff. But such examples are few and far between, and a truly Christian society would be able to find ways around such things that still preserved the holiness of the Sabbath, just as in the Amish example above.
Remember Thou Keep Holy the Lord's Day
Remember Thou Keep Holy the Lord's Day
Remember Thou Keep Holy the Lord's Day
Today is Sunday, and Christians everywhere honor it traditionally as a day of worship, rest and relaxation. “The Sabbath was made for man…” Jesus tells us. And it is a cornerstone of Christian praxis. But we live in a society that seems to go out of its way to profane the sabbath, and to be moving in the direction of treating it as any other day of the week, even though (at least for now) few people are scheduled to work on Sunday. But in the retail area many are, and this is because many so-called Christians think nothing about shopping on Sunday. “Oh well, you know, I’m just too busy during the week, so I have to catch up with my shopping on the weekend.” It is not uncommon for “Christians” to dine at a restaurant after Sunday church service. One could almost argue that profaning the sabbath is de rigeur for modern Christians!
The recovenanting of America will certainly involve a complete reversal of this profane tendency, a recovery of the true glory of the Christian sabbath, the full restoration of its sacrosanctity. Obviously, as Jesus shows us in the parable of the good Samaritan, one can take this too far when one uses the sabbath principle to excuse oneself from humanitarian obligations, but we Americans hardly need worry about taking it too seriously...we are at the other end of the spectrum where as a society we don’t seem to take it seriously at all, so much so that we are at risk of losing the sense of the sabbath altogether.
At its base, the Sabbath principle involves a sacrifice. We are sacrificing the opportunity for commercial gain one day a week in order to devote it to remembering God, our Creator and His purpose for us. Our willingness to do this is a foundational premise of our Christianity, which we value higher than all earthly values. And thus this weekly praxis provides a psychological ground where our commitment is made manifest. The work-rest cycle is part of what God intends for man, and if we forget that we will burn ourselves out as have so many past civilizations that put their feet on their gas pedals and forgot they had brake pedals. This is an analogy for serving mammon rather than God...it is the sin of our age.
But there is one sect at least that bears no guilt in this regard, and that is our old friends the Amish, to whom we frequently find ourselves looking for good example. The Amish, whom our modern world likes to laugh at as Luddites, are beginning to demonstrate that it is they who will get the last laugh, but that’s a subject for another time. Here we are simply looking at the seriousness with which they regard the Christian prohibition of Sunday work.
In researching this issue, I discovered a truly excellent article on this subject which I highly recommend in its entirety to readers: The Amish understand a life-changing truth about technology the rest of us don’t, written about four years ago by Michael J. Coren in an online business magazine called Quartz. Here is the relevant excerpt for today:
Here we see exampled how seriously we should be taking the Sabbath, and how if we really put our minds to it we can fashion our work lives around the Sabbath, rather than vice versa. The Amish may not be perfect, but when it comes to taking Christian values seriously they are very hard to beat, and we would do well to follow them in this regard.
We do not have to wait for the consummation of the recovenanting of America to begin reclaiming the Sabbath. There are some practical things we can do immediately: Do not take a job that requires Sunday work2, do not shop on Sundays, reward stores that close on Sundays with your weekday business. These are a few of the important ways that Christians can restore to our Sabbath the honor and respect it deserves. On the surface it is there for God, and we owe him worship on this day. But as we recalled earlier in this piece, Jesus reminds us that it is ultimately there for us, and if we neglect to keep it holy, we ultimately hurt ourselves. God does not need our worship, but we need to worship God! He is the foundation of our humanity, and if we want a humane culture, we will give Him the central place of honor in our lives and in our hearts that He deserves above all.
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1https://qz.com/1275194/the-amish-understand-a-life-changing-truth-about-technology-the-rest-of-us-dont
2In keeping with the Good Samaritan principle, there are obviously a few exceptions to this. No one probably would like EMT’s to be unavailable for emergencies on Sunday, for example, or ambulance drivers, or hospital staff. But such examples are few and far between, and a truly Christian society would be able to find ways around such things that still preserved the holiness of the Sabbath, just as in the Amish example above.