Christians, the Sabbath, and Moral Diversity

 Jesus The Progressive Rabbi

The way Christians deal with the Sabbath Commandment offers insight into how different groups read and interpret the Bible. Let’s have a look at what some are doing or not doing based on different views.

Christians are divided about the commandment to honor the Sabbath by keeping it holy (Exodus 20: 8-11).

The Old Sabbath

Most Christians in the West do not observe either the Sabbath or the principle of a day of rest. Jews who keep the commandment observe the Sabbath (Shabbat) from sunset on Friday evening until Saturday evening. Some Christians also observe the Friday-Saturday Sabbath. Perhaps the most well-known of these are the Seventh Day Adventists—here’s what they say (Adventist.org):

God wanted to show us how important the Sabbath was to Him and how important it is for our own well being. The least we can do is take one day a week off from work and secular activities to focus on our Creator and the world He created for us. 

The Bible tells us that the Sabbath isn’t just any day off. We are asked to refrain from pursuing our own business or our own interests and instead look toward the joys we can find in God and the world He created for us.

The explanation of the Adventists is positive. Indeed, people could benefit from a day of rest as I wrote in Living Well. However, the seriousness of the Sabbath can be seen in the threat to life itself.

In Numbers 15: 32-36, a story of a man caught picking up sticks on the Sabbath reveals the high risk of violating this commandment. He was placed under guard while Moses talked to God about the penalty. Perhaps ironically, based on the law written in stone, the man was stoned to death. As Friedman and Dolansky (2011) note, the 24-hour time period of the Sabbath was a sacred boundary and like boundaries of physical space such as the temple, the boundaries should not be violated.

Sunday Christians

Most Christians have set aside a day of week for worship. Observant Christians consider Sunday the Lord’s Day and remember his resurrection on Sunday morning. However, until recently, Christians treated the Lord’s Day like a Sabbath in that they refrained from nonessential work. Christian families did not shop or engage in sports. And some communities had “blue laws,” which set limits on which businesses could open. Blue Laws were also called Sunday Laws. According to Britannica, they may have been called blue because an old Connecticut version was printed on blue paper. One US restaurant, Chick-fil-A, still closes on Sunday to honor the Lord’s Day (businessinsider). So, Sundays are not the Sabbath and most Christians do not appear to feel the need to keep this one of the famous Ten Commandments.

Jesus and the Sabbath

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Jesus was a Jew. I say that because I think Christians forget that Jesus kept the Jewish law. However, the Gospel writers report times when he violated what the Jewish teachers of his day decided on allowable practices on the Sabbath (e.g., see Mark 2: 23-28). His progressive teaching focused on the importance of the Sabbath to people’s well-being. He didn’t do away with the Sabbath but he certainly offered a new perspective.

How Christians Interpret Scripture

Many Christians appear to interpret scripture based on their current culture and understanding of what Jesus said. The interpretation of the Sabbath Commandment is a prime example. As Western cultures became more pluralistic, Christians became less rigid about a weekly holy day yet, some do remain rigid about other commandments or teachings. Consider the following observations.

1. The majority of Christians ignore a literal reading of the Sabbath commandment. Only a minority observe the biblical Sabbath of Friday to Saturday. At first glance, it would seem most Christians avoid a fundamentalist view--that is, applying a part of the sacred text based on a literal reading of what the text says.

2. Most Christians decided Sunday would be a holy day. Thus they established rules to mark it as holy or sacred. It was as if they took their cue from the commandment about the Sabbath—to have a holy day when one should not work. However, for the most part, these Sunday rules have disappeared in western cultures. Most Christians appear to feel free or liberated from any idea of a rigid holy or sacred day.

3. Some Christians appeared to go overboard. In my childhood, conservative churches had Sunday School plus morning worship for many hours on a Sunday morning and again on Sunday night. There was no rest for the righteous and Sundays were not a day of fun for children. Today, for most Christians in the West, Sunday is a day off. Observant Christians do attend a service on the weekend but the time spent at church has diminished in recent decades.

4. Christians have different opinions about which laws from the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) should be observed. The observance (or nonobservance) of the commandment about the Sabbath shows that not even the famous Ten Commandments are considered binding in a literal sense.

5. I’ve heard many evangelical Christians say Christians should keep the moral laws of the OT but not the ceremonial laws. In this view, Jesus did away with the need to follow ceremonial laws like animal sacrifice.

6. Many Christians believe in freedom from the Old Laws because they accept the teaching of Paul who wrote to the Romans (6:14) “You are not under law, but under grace.” Of course, there are rules in the New Testament (NT) too and Christians vary on which ones to keep and which ones to ignore. For example, Christians disagree on a woman’s role in ministry based on how they interpret NT texts. Christians also disagree on rules about tithing, tattoos, birth control, military service, modest clothing, and same-sex relationships.

7. Some Christians follow Jesus example of creative interpretation of the scriptures. As Enns (2014) points out, when Jesus’ disciples were caught picking grain on a Sabbath, Jesus referred the accusers to a story about the respected King David illegally taking holy bread. Thus, the focus on human need became the primary way to interpret rules.

Moral Diversity—A Challenge

What it means to consider Jesus commandment about how to love one’s neighbor is a task still being worked out by Christians.

A Christian approach would seem to be a form of humility that allows wide latitude and avoiding self-righteous claims of being holier than others in the way one acts morally.

In my view, Christians ought not to ignore social justice and a consideration of right actions towards our fellow humans; however, deciding on the right course of action does require judgment. And judgments will vary even by those desiring to sincerely do the right thing.

It is this diversity I tried to capture in the various moral matters I wrote about in A House Divided: Sexuality, Morality, and Christian Cultures.

Cite this post

Sutton, G. W. (2021, May 24). Christians, the sabbath, and moral diversity: Jesus the progressive rabbi. Retrieved from https://dividedchristians.blogspot.com/2021/05/christians-sabbath-and-moral-diversity.html 

About me

I am a psychologist interest in moral psychology and other topics connected to the psychology of religion and spirituality. I no longer provide clinical psychology services.

References

Enns, P. (2014). The bible tells me so: why defending scripture has made us unable to read it. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Friedman, R. E. & Dolansky, S. (2011). The Bible now (p. 132). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Sutton, G. W. (2016). A House Divided: Sexuality, morality, and Christian cultures. Eugene, OR: Pickwick. ISBN: 9781498224888

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