OK, here goes. A Christian guy I work with recently worked a weekend. He clearly knew he wasn’t required by his employer to work the Sunday but he did. He is always saying how the Bible is to be taken literally and the reason we aren’t killing and raping en mass is because of the Bible and the Ten Commandments.
My question is does the Bible not say that one sin is no worse than another? How can this Christian justify breaking a commandment for the sake of double-time-and-a-half overtime?
I have a feeling we’re going to have five responses before I even get this posted (especially seeing how my Internet connection is lagging), but here goes.
Most Christians believe that Jesus’ death abrogated all of the Old Testament laws. They are now under a New Testament of Grace. As such, Christians no longer need to observe the Sabbath (which is from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, not Sunday anyway). Only Seventh Day Adventists and Jews for Jesus still celebrate the Sabbath.
The Ten Commandments are still seen as an encapsulation of important Biblical ideas, or something like that. To be honest, I’ve never been able to fathom the Christian fascination with them. I think it’s only because they know that they’ll never be able to post John 3:16-18 in public school classrooms like they really want.
I’m not sure offhand if the Bible says whether one sin is worse than another. FWIW, the Talmud specifically states that some sins are worse than others. One may break the Sabbath to save a life, for example.
Yes the Bible says that to God all sins are the same, but I would like to keep it in context and I need to remember which text that was. But since I will be leaving shortly will have to give a short answer. Tomorrow I can answer more indepth.
Some 1st day keepers do not adhere to the idea of a Sabbath day of rest as a literal 24 hours of not working. Also some believe that as long as there is a day of rest within the week, any day will do.
But there are those who believe that the day is important. Some rationalize this as Sunday, even to the point of calling it the Sabbath by saying that this is to honor his resurrection. Your coworker may belive one of the above and therefore to him he did nothing wrong but miss church on Sunday morning. He might have made up for it by attending another service in the evening. Of course I do not know his situation, maybe he just really needed the money to feed his family, I am not here to judge.
Oh by the way, I am a Seventh Day Adventist and do keep the Sabbath from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. But I am not saved by doing that. I do it only because I love Christ. Christ himself said “if you love me, keep my commandments”. The love comes first then with that love you want to follow him and do what he asks.
If the only reason your co-worker isn’t killing and raping is because of the Bible, I think he’s got bigger issues than whether he goes to work on Sunday.
Could have fooled me. And here I was, thinking regular old Jews were keeping the Sabbath, too. 
Deb2World, I have a question. How to Seventh Day Adventists keep the Sabbath? Do you use electricity and drive your car, etc.?
Trickie
Sorry to take so long to get back to this, but sometimes real life has a way of interfering. One text I found is the one that says "Whoever breaks one commandment is guilty of breaking them all. But I will reiterate that since I do not know what your workmates motive was, I am not in any position to pass judgement on him.
Kyla
Thank you for asking how we keep the Sabbath.
To answer specifics that you asked, yes we do turn on lights and drive our cars on the Sabbath. Meals are prepared ahead so that all we have to do is heat them. Friday night is usually devoted to family worship. Saturday morning we attend church services. In the afternoon we spend time with the family, in doing good for others, or there might be an afternoon service at the church. Some churches have a vespers to close the Sabbath.
Maybe a good way to answer this question is to tell you how I spend the Sabbath. I will admit to rushing into the Sabbath, especially in the winter months. If I have to drive home from work during this time, I try to take a scenic route so that I can slow down and allow the spirit of the Sabbath rest to fill me. The secular music is turned off and hymns are played in the CD. I then attend Choir practice on Friday night. When I get home I study my lesson that I teach the next day and have Bible study. At 9:30 I am at church where I teach a Sabbath school class to the 7-9 yrs old. Worship service starts at 11 am. At the congregation I attend, we do not like to rush our worship, so we do not end until after 1:00 sometimes going until 2, 2:30. On Sabbath afternoon I try to balance church with family. Sometimes I will stay for a potluck and fellowship with other congregation members. There are times where I spend it with my family where we will have a meal which might be at home or a park. There are other times where I attend a rest home to participate in a worship service for the elderly. Sometimes Sabbath afternoon is spent listening to a concert in the church.
From your answer, I assume you are Jewish. I would love to hear how you keep the Sabbath.
Specifically, all commandments except the prohibition against murder may be disobeyed in order to save someone’s life. As far as some commandments being more important than others, only two commandments are given with a specific incentive, namely, that you may have a long life. They are the commandment to honor your parents, #4 of the Big Ten, and an obscure little commandment in chapter 22 of Deuteronomy against killing mother birds.
[aside] Actually, check out Deut. 22. It’s a fascinating text, ranging from employers duties’ regarding worker safety, to punishments related to, uh, unlawful carnal knowledge. Plus the prohibitions against cross-dressing and wearing mixed fabrics (Fashion police!).[/aside]
Other scholars have their own opinions about what is important. Upon being challenged to quickly explain the Law, the Rabbi Hillel supposedly responded, “Love thy neighbor as thyself; all else is commentary.”
Getting back to the OP, though, I’m pretty sure trickie’s coworker was not in a life-or-death situation, so if he regularly states that people should obey the Bible, including the Old Testament, he is guilty of hypocricy, if nothing else. Hypocracy, if I recall correctly, was something about which Jesus had a few choice words to say. On the other hand, drawing from the teachings of my favorite rabbi, Miss Manners, the issue is something between him and God. Pushing the issue in his face, while it might make you feel good about yourself, isn’t likely to either change his beliefs or ingratiate yourself with him.
Sorry to hijack a bit, but deb asked…
I’m Orthodox, so that is reflected in all of this. Also, people’s individual customs may vary slightly, even among the Orthodox - this is just my practices.
The Sabbath (or Shabbos/Shabbat depending on your Hebrew accent) starts a few minutes before sundown on Friday. At that time, all “work” (a lousy word for it, but there isn’t really a good English word for the concept) stops. (“Work” is way way too complicated to explain here, but I’ll try to give a brief summary of some can’ts: no using electricity (lights that were on can stay on, but no making or breaking electrical connections), no cooking, no driving, no laundry or most other household tasks, no writing, no tearing, and lots of other stuff.)The woman of the house lights at least two candles and says a blessing over them welcoming in the Sabbath. Generally, the men go to synogogue for the evening prayers; women can go if they want but tend to hang out at home. (I’ve noticed that at college, the girls go too. I would guess that this is because they want to socialize after synogogue and still sleep in in the morning, which they can do since they have no obligation to pray communally, as the guys do.) After those who’ve been at synogogue get home (about an hour plus walking time after the Sabbath started), everyone sits down to dinner. (Dinner, along with everything else cooked, was prepared beforehand - imagine preparing two smallish Thanksgiving dinners every week and you get some idea of the amount of work done on Thursdays and Fridays.) Two songs welcoming in the Sabbath and praising Jewish women are sung (the second one is the final chapter of Proverbs, if you’re curious), a blessing is made over wine or grape juice by the man of the house to consecrate the Sabbath, a blessing over two loaves of bread is said, and then an unhurried meal is eaten. Unless people are vegetarian, it’s nearly always a meat meal (meat and dairy aren’t served at the same time). Generally, there’s some singing of Sabbath songs. Then people hang out, read, chat, etc., before going to sleep.
The next morning, everyone wakes up, dresses in nice clothing, and walks to synogogue. (This, by the way, is why religious Jews will tend to live in the same neighborhoods - they need to be in walking distance of the synogogue.) Services (which consist of prayers and the reading of the weekly portion of the Pentateuch, which is covered on a yearly schedule) last about two hours. There is usually, although not always, a short speech from the Rabbi, but this is not the focus. After synogogue, there is usually a communal snack-and-social time, after which people go home (or to the houses of friends) and repeat the procedure for the previous night’s meal, except without the two songs at the front end. In the afternoons, people nap (a popular option), read, hang out with friends and family, go on walks, or perhaps go to religious learning classes.
The Sabbath ends an hour after sundown with a short cermony involving wine and a candle that makes a separation between the holy time and the ordinary.
Mostly, it’s a very family oriented time, and also a time to unplug from the rest of the world. No email, no phone, etc., make for a pretty unstressful day.
Oh, and Punoqllads, all prohibitions except for murder, idolatry, and Really Really Bad Sex-Related Stuff can be broken to save somebody’s life, including your own. (RRBSRS is pretty much incest and adultery.) This means that in the unlikely situation that somebody puts a gun to my head and says eat this pork/wear this garment containing linen and wool/steal this book or I’ll kill you (or this innocent bystander or whoever), I’ll eat/wear/steal it. If somebody (as has certainly happened to my ancestors) says bow down to this idol/convert to this religion or I’ll kill you, I have to die rather than do it.
The title of the thread, BTW, reminds me of a song by Uncle Moishie, a kids singer popular among the Orthodox: “Ain’t gonna work on Saturday, ain’t gonna work on Saturday. Double, double triple pay! Ain’t gonna work on Saturday - it’s Shabbos Kodesh” (the holy Sabbath). Ahhh, it takes me back to my youth
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*Originally posted by GilaB *
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Welcome to the boards, GilaB. We can always use another frummie on the boards!
My kids love Uncle Moishy!!
(BTW, for those that aren’t in the know… Uncle Moishy is a somewhat popular kids Jewish singer. He sings songs and makes videos geared toward Orthodox Jewish children.)
Zev Steinhardt
[quote]
Most Christians believe that Jesus’ death abrogated all of the Old Testament laws. They are now under a New
Testament of Grace. As such, Christians no longer need to observe the Sabbath (which is from sundown Friday to
sundown Saturday, not Sunday anyway).
[quote]
So what gives with this? Is it written somewhere that all of the old testament laws are null and void and why would we stop at not having to observe the sabbath? Or is it just the more obscure laws such as not using your ox and ass together that should be ignored?
Is it at all possible to be a Christian and not take the Old Testament literally? I started to read the Bible thinking there had to be more to life than what I was experiencing but I found if I had to take what was written as fact I would have to ignore all reason and sense. Genesis is just too much for a reasonable thinking person to accept. To have that much faith in the creation story you have to ignore all practicality and logic or be in prison or on skid row.
If we could go with the Jesus story of “Love and Peace” I could maybe swallow Christianity. I try to be a good person and usually am but as a Christian once told me “there are a lot of good people in Hell”.
My question therefore is do you have to believe in the Old Testament to be a Christian?
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*Originally posted by trickie *
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Welcome to the boards, trickie. I asked this very question a while back. The thread is here.
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What, precisely, about Genesis is too much to accept? Surely you can’t mean Genesis in toto. Surely, there is some part that is believable, isn’t there?
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Why? Why do you have to “ignore all practicality and logic” to believe that God created the world? You don’t want to believe it, fine. But don’t tell me that I don’t have any logic. After all, you can’t disprove it, can you?
(Keep in mind: I’m not shifting the burden of proof. I’m not arguing that God created the world. I’m arguing his point that to believe in God creating the world requires an abandonment of logic).
Zev Steinhardt
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What, precisely, about Genesis is too much to accept? Surely you can’t mean Genesis in toto.
Surely, there is some part that is believable, isn’t there?
To believe only parts of the bible would make me at best a hypocrite. The bible is supposed to be without error, does that mean no inconsistencies too?
I don’t mean to imply that you(zev) are not a logical person but that a reasonable thinking being would have to question the creation story. Who was there to write it down? It’s just common sense questions that can not be answered in a common sense way without putting the burden of FAITH in it. Faith is not logical(I’m starting to sound like Spock).
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*Originally posted by trickie *
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Well, that depends on who you ask. I’m sure you can find a belief that states that parts of the bible are allegorical and/or fictional. I don’t think you have to fall for the all-or-nothing fallacy.
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A logical assumption for any story or set of facts. Of course one should ask questions.
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Come on. Surely you could come up with something better than that! No one is claiming that the Bible was written down in real time.
I’m not so sure that I agree with you on that. True, things taken on faith cannot be proven, but that does not mean that they aren’t logical if you start with certain assumptions.
There are many things in the scientific community that are not proven, yet it is logical to believe in them. Dark matter, for one, is something that can be inferred, but of which no direct evidence exists.
Zev Steinhardt
[quote]
Come on. Surely you could come up with something better than that! No one is
claiming that the Bible was written down in real time.
[quote]
This is a good example of what I was getting at. There are conversations quoted in the bible. How could the authors of the Bible know what was said between God and the only living person at the time? It’s illogical.
[quote]
I'm not so sure that I agree with you on that. True, things taken on faith cannot be proven, but that
does not mean that they aren't logical if you start with certain assumptions.
There are many things in the scientific community that are not proven, yet it is logical to believe in
them. Dark matter, for one, is something that can be inferred, but of which no direct evidence exists.
Zev Steinhardt
[quote]
I can’t argue with that logic.
I’m new here and I think you all have pretty much debated the whole creation thing to death, but to keep it simple,“in my opinion” creation according to Genisis is illogical and way beyond reason. I cannot come up with a better “how did we get here” story as that too would be illogical. Faith is a powerful word and I do think to have it you must lay down all reason and self expression.
Trickie
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by trickie *
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OK, I’ll give you two classical Jewish answers.
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God dictated the Pentatuch to Moses. God was present at each and every one of those conversations and could quote them verbatim.
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The conversations listed mentioned in the Bible are not quoted verbatim. They simply touch on the main points of the converstaion.
It’s very simple. If you believe that God created the universe, then there’s nothing in Genesis that is impossible (since an all-powerful God could do anything). If you don’t believe that God created the universe, then Genesis is simply fiction.
The problem in all this, of course, now rests in the fact that you can’t logically prove that God does or does not exist.
Zev Steinhardt
P.S. You’ve got to learn how to use the “quote” tags!
Thanks for your time and patience Zev, I’ll practice the Quote tag thing too.:o
Bye the way, do you believe in God?
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Not a problem. I’m always up for a good debate.
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Here’s the basic idea:
{quote}
Item you want quoted
{/quote}
Except replace the curly brackets with regular ones .
Yes, I do.
Zev Steinhardt