Posts
I talked in my last post about what I thought about Christians who were not Sabbatarians, back when I was a Sabbatarian (an observer of Saturday as the Sabbath). What I said yesterday is that many of us Sabbatarians saw them as clueless, even as we acknowledged that there was a time when many of us were clueless ourselves. And so I wondered: What does it take to make a person question a trend, and then to buck it? Many of us just assume the validity of the customs and beliefs that are around us, without even thinking of questioning them.
Yesterday, I expressed doubt that many of the Sunday-keeping Christians I knew as a boy even read the Bible enough to ask why they keep Sunday instead of Saturday. But, as I think more about this topic, I doubt that this is completely accurate. I wouldn't say that my insight is totally erroneous, but it doesn't cover everybody who observes Sunday---and I'm speaking here of your average person in the pew, who may have reflected on the issue. There are a lot of people who know from their own reading of the Bible---and from church---that there is such a thing as the seventh-day Sabbath. But they don't believe that Christians are required to observe it. They may say that God commanded the Sabbath for the Jews only, or that the Sabbath foreshadowed the rest that believers would have in Christ, or that Paul told the Galatians that they didn't have to observe the Jewish law, or that Christians are not under the Old Covenant, or that they worship on Sunday because Christ rose on the first day of the week, or that Paul in I Corinthians 16 calls for a collection on the first day of the week. And so they can offer a reason that they honor Sunday but not the seventh-day Sabbath. At least the question is on their radar, even if it doesn't make the radar of many other people!
I think that where Sabbatarians have an advantage is that there is no explicit New Testament passage that says, "You don't have to keep the Sabbath", or "You should keep Sunday". That's why there are Sabbatarians who offer a hundred-or-so dollars to anyone who can show them from Scripture that they should keep Sunday. There is no such explicit passage. And the Sabbatarians who make those sorts of offers recognize that there are people who haven't researched the issue for themselves, but rather have trusted their preachers, or have gone along with what others are doing, and so they're trying to encourage people to read their Bibles. But, even if someone takes up the offer and shows the Sabbatarian a passage that could imply that Sunday was important to the early church (such as Acts 20:7), the Sabbatarian would not cough up the dough, for the passage doesn't explicitly say "Keep Sunday".
When I was growing up, I thought that the Christianity of the rest of the world was inadequate, for it was doing things that were not explicitly commanded in the Bible---such as honoring Sunday. But I came to the point where I concluded that even my own version of Christianity---the one I gained from the Armstrongs---was inadequate as well. There were passages in the New Testament---such as Acts 15 and Galatians---which appeared to say that Gentiles did not have to observe certain things that the Jews did under the law of Moses. Granted, there were also passages in which Paul affirmed the law and its authority, even to Gentiles (I Corinthians 9:9). But I had a hard time swallowing the spin that the Armstrongs and their followers placed on Acts 15 and Galatians. Aren't things supposed to become plain when one enters the "truth"? But, instead, Sunday-keeping Christianity did not make sense to me, and neither did Sabbatarian Christianity. Both tried to explain away elements of the Bible that did not coincide with their own positions.
Many of you reading this may ask, "Who cares?" Personally, I do think that there are vastly more important issues than what day a person keeps, if any. But I hope that I communicated something of value to you in this post and the last one---even if you feel that the issue is unimportant. I think that I've touched on important topics, such as why we believe what we do, what prompts people to go against the grain, how different communities explain away things that are contrary to their own worldview, and, for me at least, how it's hard to find anywhere a worldview that is without problems!
