Sabbath-Keeping (Stream of Consciousness)

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Hebrews 4:9,10 (NIV)

When Adventism began they were all farmers. The Hasidim in Brooklyn, New York, all are self-employed and all shut their businesses down on their Sabbath Day. When ancient Israel was founded the entire nation could decide to shut down on the Seventh day. They could decide if they wanted to let the farm rest one day a week. Now only those who own their own business have the leisure of opening their business or not on the seventh day. Of course, some think it vitally important to avoid working on the Sabbath even if it means that you work below your potential or, in drastic cases, don't work at all because all the jobs you are qualified for require you to work on the Sabbath.

I once shared the Adventist obsession with avoiding working on the Seventh day at any cost with a Reformed Jewish woman and she said that the Jewish parent is greatly concerned for providing for their family. If the need arose to work on the Seventh day they would do so. After all, how can you tell your child that there's no bread on the table because daddy refused to work on Saturday and now we have to grin and bear it?

What if Sabbath keeping were more than 24 hours of no work, no play and no--you fill in the blanks? What if it was the spirit of the Sabbath that you were in need of and not the letter of the 24-hour Sabbath day? What did Jesus mean when he said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath? Did he mean if you need to work occasionally on the Sabbath in order to provide for your family or for yourself, that you could and it would still be alright with him? Or does he insist that you trust him and go through whatever you have to go through so you don't work on the Sabbath day? In a vague way, thinking that you will fall out of grace with Jesus because you occasionally work on Saturday or Friday night in order to keep your job and your livelihood sounds like legalism to me. Insisting that you must refrain from gainful employment on the Sabbath sounds like righteousness by works to me. And you know, that's the ugliest abomination of all--to think that by doing or not doing something you are saved or not saved.

What of opera singers or musicians or politicians who have significant or important events or meetings on the Sabbath day, are they sabbath breakers or are they good professionals by doing what they studied and sacrificed for all their life, even if it's on the occasional Sabbath? I recall that Faith Esham sang in operas on the Sabbath day and that Herbert Blomstedt conducted symphonies on the Sabbath day though he never rehearsed during the Sabbath Day. Were they blessed for it or was it Adventism on the edge?

But what about gasoline station owners or attendants. Can you imagine if every gas station owner or employee took up strict Sabbath keeping? What would happen in a crisis where you had no gas but had to fill up in order to get to the hospital or to deal with some other emergency? You couldn't very well tell that person, "you should have filled up before the Sabbath when the gas stations were open."

What about ministers, don't they break the Sabbath by working at being ministers on the Sabbath day instead of staying at home with their families and preaching to them? You know there's a lot of minister's kids who leave the church or were never really in it when most thought they were just because they were in church on Sabbath morning. Occasionally a minister and his family should take a holiday from the rigors of church on Saturday and spend a day in nature getting in touch with each other and with God.

What did the writer of Hebrews mean by saying that we should enter God's Sabbath rest and cease from our own work? For some people the effort put into keeping the Sabbath entails more work than not keeping it so fanatically or literally. Did the writer mean a literal 24 hour rest or was he referring to a spiritual rest that transcends time and space? Can you rest even while driving at 70 miles an hour on a Sabbath day getting to and from church events with all the stress and risks involved in that mad dash to get to church on time for the first minutes of Sabbath School? The best place to spend the Sabbath, again, might be with your loved ones or close friends instead of in the complexities of a structured and rigid religious environment.

Can you break the Sabbath even while you're sitting in church trying not to think about the sexy Adventist in the seat in front of you? Do you move your seat and keep on moving it till you run out of sexy Adventists or out of seats at a given moment? As someone said long ago, "Adventists are the best temptation of all." Not that one invites temptation, but then again, one cannot be totally oblivious to the best that one's local church has to offer, if only visually speaking. What does one do on the Sabbath day in that case with so much eye candy on display in their Sabbath best? One grins and bears it and hopes for a better day, or for a church with plainer people and not as sexy.

Can anyone really say that s(he) has kept the Sabbath? The very thought of 24 four sacred hours spent in total connection to God sounds like an ideal that is beyond our own power to achieve. By connecting to the source of infinite power it is then not an ideal, but a reality. But how does one know that the connection has been made and that one has, in fact, truly kept the Sabbath day in all its purity and devotion? One can refrain from thinking non-Sabbath thoughts as best as one can, or doing non-Sabbath things, i.e., shopping and working out at the gym, but does that constitute true Sabbath keeping? Some may think their efforts amount to Sabbath keeping when, in fact, they are nothing more than formalistic or legalistic exercises that occur but one day a week. Would it not be more spiritually fulfilling to observe the spiritual nature of the Sabbath all week long and all day long, as often as one was able to take a moment for religious reflection?

If the Sabbath is more than just a 24-hour phenomenon, if it is an Endless Sabbath, a virtual Sabbath that has its power supply in the actual seventh day, but that, nevertheless, comes in and out of your waking consciousness as many times as you have need of the spiritual nourishment that true Sabbath-keeping provides, then it could truly be said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.

Someone told me once of a neighbor who was so concerned that he'd not keep the Sabbath holy that once he got home from church and had a light meal, he'd go to sleep so as not to provide opportunity for breaking the Sabbath. Of course, one smiles, because in going to bed for the purpose of the not breaking the Sabbath, he was, in fact, breaking the Sabbath. But at least the man's heart was in the right place. Or was it?

Then there are different styles or intensities of Sabbath keeping. Years ago I heard a friend say that when he moved from the Northeast to California he didn't feel comfortable with his Adventist relatives on Sabbath afternoon activities. They'd invite him to go on a yacht and enjoy the water in the San Francisco bay. He would routinely opt to stay home or look for churches with Sabbath afternoon programming instead of joining his Adventist relatives in their preferred Sabbath afternoon activities. The poor have no such problems as they don't have yachts, or oftentimes even a car to get them to church and have to rely on public transportation or their own two feet. Being poor solves a host of problems while creating others.

After I've read my bible and sung a Sabbath vesper hymn on Friday night and washed the few dishes I dirtied in preparing dinner for one, and feeding Callisto, my retriever, I then look for the least offensive DVD I can watch. I was surprised that last Friday night, I enjoyed and lived to tell the tale of watching Pedro Almodovar's Volver with Penelope Cruz. It was a family-oriented movie, but of course, not for every family. But for my family of one, and of course, Callisto never complains as to what I watch, it felt just right for my progressive Adventist Sabbath. I even got a timer to turn on the TV and the DVD player during the Sabbath so I wouldn't have to break that old Judaic injunction about not turning on the light.

Happy Sabbath, however you keep, or try to keep, the holy Seventh day.

Silent Witnessing at the Apple Store in SoHo (NYC)

During a self-directed walking tour of lower Manhattan (New York City) I stumbled upon the Apple Store in SoHo. Curious about what such a store could offer, and in need of a rest, I wandered into what quickly turned out to be a type of free Internet cafe. I wasn't sure how long one could use a computer so I set about to try different computers for no more than five or seven minutes.

Having not had access to a computer for almost a week, I accessed Adventist blogs I normally visit when at home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I briefly visited progressiveadventism.com & spectrummagazine.typepad.com. I was careful to not spend more than five or seven minutes at each of the half dozen Apple computers I visited. As is my custom when visiting these sites and similar religious sites in public Internet cafes or restaurants, I left each blog on the screen as I walked away, hoping that the content might catch a curious person's attention, and hopefully expose them to either Christianity or Adventism, as the case may be. There was no way that I could subsequently find out how long anyone stayed at each of these Adventist blogs.

I then visited each of my own web sites or blogs, starting with my oldest blog, http://www.perfectfuturo.com/, so see how it would look on an Apple laptop. I then proceeded to visit the rest, but probably from the same computer. At each laptop I visited, no more than six, I left the page on the screen in case the next user in this busy showroom was vaguely curious about the pictures or titles of the blog posts. This is the probable order in which I visited the rest of my blogs:

Design your Future - Diseñe su Futuro
Desperate Christian Housewives
Christians on the Verge of a Cosmic Meltdown - Cristianos al Borde de un Desastre Cósmico

I can't be sure if I left all four at different computers, as two of the six Apple laptops I sampled were devoted to the aforementioned Adventist blogs. I left the Apple showroom after spending no more than 30 minutes.

When I returned home to Ft. Lauderdale, I accessed the website that informs me what websites were visited, from what country and for how long. I want to make it clear that the Apple showroom was very busy and that it was hard to find an empty computer for very long. I previously noted that I spent no more than seven minutes at each of the six computers I sampled. I was pleased to learn that one of the Apple laptops I had left with the following blog,
http://realjesuscristo.blogspot.com/, was up for a total of 26 minutes, 7 seconds. A total of 8 pages were viewed. the Exit Page was http://perfectfuturo.com/FutureTales.html.

Of course, time has a way of slipping away while browsing, but the pressure from walking showroom clerks walking around the showroom makes it unlikely that I spent no longer than 10 or 12 mintues at any one computer. There is always the slim possibility that I may have stayed longer than the 30 minutes I thought I spent in the store, or that the computer in question was vacant for a total of 26 minutes, 7 seconds, which is unlikely, as I mentioned earlier that the store was very busy.

Some modern or progressive Adventists feel that old style evangelism such as giving out religious leaflets or books or "street evangelism" consisting of walking up to a stranger and asking them if they knew the real Jeus Christ and then telling them about the saving experience of knowing and loving Christ, is passe or out-of-fashion. Nevertheless, who knows who might learn of either Christianity or Adventism by visiting Internet cafes or showrooms such as the Apple Store and after viewing a web page you intended to view anyway, of a religious nature, you simply leave the page up in hope that in this vaguely voyeuristic age of blogging and Internet websites and profiles, someone will be nosy or curious enough to take note of the previous user's web site. This is similar in some ways to what some shy Christians or Adventists, no doubt, have done by leaving Christian literature in public places, after having read them themselves, in hope that someone who accidentally, or perhaps not so accidentally, picks up the literature in question, might find something that they perhaps had no idea they were looking for.

How important whether in printing evangelistic literature or publishing religious blogs, to ask for the Holy Spirit's guidance before committing words and ideas to print or cyberspace pages.

We may never know the results of our mildly passive attempts at evangelism until the Next World.

When You Don't Want to Love Your Neighbor

But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Matthew 5:44 (NIV)

If one feels, even out of "good motives," that one needs to do good works, whether as gratitude for the the gift of salvation, or out of fear, both are variations of salvation by works. It is Christ's Spirit of righteousness working in us supernaturally to do the impossible--doing what is good for selfless reasons--that is the genuine article. That solves the problem of the times when you consciously attempt to maintain a loving relation to God through prayer and bible study and working with Jesus, but still wind up doing things, whether accidentally, or intentionally, that are against his law. If salvation depends on your efforts, whatever the motive, love for God or out of fear, then some have a greater advantage since it's easier for some people to live a more upright life than it is for others.

If you have to repeatedly keep yourself from turning on the television to watch secular programming, out of boredom, during the Sabbath, you are living by works, and not by faith. On the other hand, if you naturally have no desire to turn on that TV or DVD player or secular radio station because it doesn't agree with you on the sabbath, then that is the genuine righteousness by faith in Christ, not in yourself and your effort to keep God's law, whatever the motive. The same goes for being faithful to your mate, or paying tithe, or loving your neighbor who hates you for no reason you can think of. If you have to grin and bear it as you make an attempt to "love your neighbor as yourself", you are not experiencing genuine righteousness by faith. And believe me, it shows. Your less-than-loving neighbor will see the phoniness of your efforts to love him in spite of his hatred for you.

If you are not genuinely able to love your neighbor, it's better to walk away and not interact with him as long as humanly possible, instead of smiling one of those phony, painful-to-watch smiles that do more harm than good.