Selling on Sunday...

Here I go again...

I am going to start with my two favorite words it seems for this blog...Growing up, Sunday was a no-nonsense kind of day. We never thought about eating out on Sunday. No getting gas (unless the sun went down??? explain that one to me?), no watching T.V., no playing outside, and definitely no fun!!! (just a joke) Anyways, we never ate out until after the divorce...I mean NEVER! There wasn't a time I can remember ever doing this. I think my Dad would have rathered starved us kids than to buy something on a Sunday. Strict. Stern. Unmoving. I can remember always trying to slip past my parents bedroom without getting noticed just to try to have some of that one f word (fun that is). I remember one Super Bowl sneaking upstair, during service mind you, and watching a little of the SB! Now, when the sun went down, the TV came on, and all bets were off. Interesting. Very, very interesting.

So being a small, old-fashioned church, this is still an issue. I was reemed last April for selling things at a youth group chili cook off on a Sunday night...harshly. Scripturally speaking, The Wesleyan discipline is vague (imagine that). I had to do some searching and found that in Nehemiah there is a passage where he kept the selling merchants out of the city and scolded the people for buying on the sabbath. That's it. So here are my questions/points:

1. If we are going to follow a Levitical law, why are we not following them all? Why are we just picking and choosing which ones have relavence in our lives and churches?

2. The church I grew up in was legalistic and that is putting it mildly. However, the people of that church may have looked on the outside like holiness people but I know for a fact that they are doing some "illegal" things. Not wrong from a biblical stance per se, but definitely from a legal one. Picking and choosing, eh?

3. A majority (90%?) of the church I am at now go out and eat on Sunday. Enough said...picking and choosing!

4. I could get technical about it and say that the sabbath was on a saturday and sunday is the lords day but I won't. However, I just want to give you this verse to chew on...this was after Jesus and his disciples had...(gasp)...picked some grain on the sabbath...and was questioned by the Pharisees...Mark 2:27 "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

5. What is the real reason behind the Sabbath or the Lord's day? In that passage the NIV study bible puts it like this, "Jewish tradition had so multiplied the requirements and the restrictions for keeping the Sabbath that the burden had become intolerable. Jesus cut across these traditions and emphasized the God-given purpose of the Sabbath-a day intended for man (for spiritual, mental and physical renewal)". Does buying dinner so that I don't have to cook fall into that category? :)

6. I don't think this is an issue for larger churches. It seems to be a small church type of thing that gives them something to talk about. I may be wrong but I have a hunch that I am not.

My final assessment on the issue: Wesleyans and protestant-holiness types are picking and choosing from the Bible to placate their own traditions.

What do you think?