I was born and raised in a tradition that held to a very conservative way of understanding the Lord's Day (I'll be using "Lord's Day" and "Sabbath" coterminously, despite the distinction made in the previous post). In other words, we refrained from shopping, eating out, or working on Sunday. Also looked down upon, though not a universal practice, was watching television, doing homework, or engaging in recreational activities such as playing sports in the park.

It seems that within Christian circles, that general understanding of what it meant to observe the Sabbath is not at all the majority view. This has caused me to question to a great extent what, in fact, it then means to rest and observe the Lord's Day.

As of yet, I have no answers. I had a discussion on this with my family some time ago. I tried to reason things out logically with them. Typically, my family has held to the conservative, traditional understanding of observing the Sabbath. However, we used to sit down quite regularly on a Sunday afternoon and watch sports on television (mostly NASCAR). Thinking this through, I presented to them this thought: if we do not go out to eat on Sunday or we do not go shopping because we believe it is wrong not only to do so, but also to make others do so, how then do we justify watching television? There are many people working at the television station to bring us the programs that we tune into on Sunday.

They had to agree, though they thought I was being way too legalistic about it. And to be sure, arguing in that way is the road to legalism. In the class discussion yesterday, it came up that we should avoid having the what to do/what not to do discussions about the Sabbath, because the commandment is about resting, not figuring out what you can and can not do. I disagree to an extent though. If you figure out what it means to observe rest, you will come to conclusions in your mind and what you will or will not do on the Lord's Day.

Mikey left a great comment to yesterday's post. To quote:

I think we in the North¹ have severely messed up what it means to have 'rest' in our lives. We have somehow confused the concepts of resting with 'not consuming goods' which is very messed up. Christians need to be champions of rest - of living lives that breathe in and out - which sadly I don't see very much in the church. Intentional rest is one of the hardest things for me to do, and I know it will take me years before I can do a good job of it.

I agree with Mikey. We need to explore what it means to have intentional rest.

A couple of years ago, I posted a quote authored by Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical, Rerum Novarum. I think it is relevant to this discussion. Speaking of the rights and duties of workers, he says,

From this follows the obligation of the cessation from work and labor on Sundays and certain holy days. The rest from labor is not to be understood as mere giving way to idleness; much less it be an occasion for spending money and for vicious indulgence, as many would have it be; but it should be rest from labor, hallowed by religion. Rest (combined with religious observances) disposes man to forget for a while the business of his everyday life, to turn his thoughts to things heavenly, and to the worship which he so strictly owes to the eternal Godhead. It is this, above all, which is the reason and motive of Sunday rest; a rest sanctioned by God's great law of the Ancient Covenant--'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy' (Exodus 20:8), and taught to the world by His own mysterious 'rest' after the creation of man: 'He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done' (Genesis 2:2).

I hope those are some things to ponder, both for all of you and for myself. I'm going to leave the discussion here for now, but will pick it up again in short order. I think these are things worth considering. Please engage me on this some more, as it is a discussion that is frequently on my mind.

For reference, the painting is Samuel Hirszenberg's 1894 oil on canvas, The Sabbath Rest.

¹Mikey is South American, so I found his usage of the word "North" interesting. Most would have put "West" here instead, I think.