Dr. Ron Sumners
April 3, 2005
The Martian student, swooping dangerously low over the United States in his flying saucer, scribbled furiously with his writing tentacle. He had chosen an ideal morning for taking notes, a fine summer Sunday, with all of the natives coming out of their houses and spreading themselves around for his observation. But he was in a desperate hurry. Only one more week until his thesis was due, and without it he didn't have an earthman's chance of passing his comparative anthropology course.
As it turned out though, he didn't need to worry. The report he wrote was brilliant, comparing favorably for accuracy and insight with the best work of our earthly anthropologists. In several Martian colleges, professors have read it aloud as a shining example of what modem scientific methods can do.
"Like so many primitive life forms, the creatures of the third planet are sun worshippers. One day in every seven is set aside for the adoration of their deity, weather permitting. Their rituals vary, and each apparently involves a special form of dress; but all are conducted in the open air, and most seem to require the collection of enormous crowds. Some creatures gather in vast arenas, to watch strangely garbed priests perform elaborate ceremonies involving a small ball and wooden sticks. (The significance of the ball seems to be a solar symbol). Others, no doubt the mystics and solitaires of their religion, prefer to address their ball (a smaller version) themselves with long clubs of metal. They go singly or in groups of two or four, wandering in the green fields. Some, stripping themselves almost naked in their ecstasy, go down to the seashore in great throngs and there perform their rites, often hurling themselves into the waves with frenzied cries. After the ceremonial immersion, devotees have been observed anointing themselves with holy oils and stretching themselves out full length with eyes closed, in order to surrender themselves entirely to silent communication with the deity.
Human sacrifice, sad to say, is also practiced, the instrument of death being a four-wheeled metal conveyance which may be employed in various ways. Often a chosen victim is run down and crushed to death. Even more frequently, the sacrifice is voluntary; devotees enter the vehicles, and either work themselves into a frenzy by traveling at high rates of speed until they dash themselves to bits against other vehicles or stationary objects. Many times, these sacrifices consume large quantities of a liquid that is meant to dull their senses before their sacrifice.
There exists, however, a small sect of recalcitrants or heretics that does not practice sun worship. These may be identified by their habit of clothing themselves more soberly and completely than the sun worshippers. They too gather in groups, but only to hide from the sun in certain buildings of doubtful use, usually with windows of glass colored to keep out the light. It is not clear whether these creatures are simply unbelievers or whether they are excommunicated from sun worship for some offense. We have been able to discover what goes on inside these buildings, which may be places of punishment. But it may be noteworthy that their faces and gestures show none of the religious frenzy with which the sun worshippers pursue their devotions. In fact, they usually appear relaxed and placid, thus indicating minds empty of thought or emotion.”
Was the Martian wrong about what he observed or tragically right?
Sunday is still a holiday to all of us, but for many it has long since ceased to be a holy day. Violation of the day of the Lord is one of the great sorrows of the modem church. Half the churches are near empty, while all the popular places of entertainment are crowded. Our old blue laws have rightly fallen into disuse; they were an outrage to a country built on the freedom of and from religion. When a man contemplates forcing his own convictions down another man's throat, he is contemplating an unchristian act and an act of treason against the principles on which our nation was founded.
So, the unbelievers go on with their games and Sunday is simply a day of rest or play. But what of the believers? It is so easy for them to be tempted into joining the games, first now, and then later as a habit; finally, the uneasy sense of something forgotten on Sunday morning gradually fades away entirely, and faith in God perishes not by conviction but by disuse. Many who do come to church come out of a dull sense of duty rather than a joyous sense of devotion; the life has gone out of their belief. Others listen in comfortable living rooms to a sermon on the radio or television, arguing it is ''just the same as being at church." They have forgotten that one of the first necessities of the Christian life is a congregation, a physical coming together; that the communion is between man and man, as well as between man and God; that solitary worship is hardly Christian worship at all.
It is no use scolding these folks. In the end, a man will love a scolding church no better than a nagging wife and may very well desert both. Nor it is much use begging them, saying, "We know we're a horrible bore and the golf course is much more fun; still, sacrifice yourself to us for conscience' sake!" For the whole essence of a church is that it must not be a horrible bore; it should be joy and fulfillment if it is to truly exist in His name. Otherwise, it will fail and swindle into a dead formality or a stylized entertainment extravaganza and no threats or pleadings will give it much semblance of life.
How do you keep a day holy? By making it unpleasant, restrictive, and boring, or by making it joyous? By making it as much as possible like hell, or as much as possible like heaven?
There are two texts in the bible that may hint at an answer, one in the Old Testament: "God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good," and one in the New Testament: ''The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."
One cannot escape the conviction that certain elements in the churches have themselves unintentionally done much to make the Lord's Day unholy. It took the strict Puritans of England only ten years, from 1650 to 1660, to so disgust the people with legalized religion that they reacted with an immorality that wasn't known before. Perhaps the willful pagan behavior of our own Sundays originated partly in reaction to blue laws. Legislative control and negative virtues.
When religious bigots interpreted the fourth commandment to mean "Thou shalt not enjoy life on Sunday", they alienated the unchurched and turned off a whole generation to the possibility of being touched by the church. The Puritan tradition has given America great things, education and freedom and a concept of ethics in government, yet for many people today the name "Puritan" has become synonymous with killjoy. They made the mistake of thinking that you could make people enjoy God by forbidding them to enjoy anything else.
Question a dozen modern pagans about their childhood and half of them will trace their disdain for the church to endless dull, bleak Sundays in a negatively "Christian" household which made a child's life hardly worth living. The ball games, the dances, the crowded beaches of today's Lord's Day are inadequate pleasures, no doubt. Yet for many, they may be an attempt to restore some gladness and joy to the Lord's Day.
The true meaning of the Sabbath is easy enough to find. ''Thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." On this one day, man returned to Eden. The curse was lifted, Adam's fall was undone somewhat, and all creatures caught a glimmering of the time when everything God made was good. On this one day a man was commanded to not work and enjoy himself.
In the early years of Israel, men celebrated the Sabbath as a feast. With the rise of an organized and legalistic priesthood, however, the day of gladness and rejoicing soon gave way to a day of discipline. The prohibition of work was interpreted with an awful literalness. One could not light a fire, cook a dinner, or use one's false teeth.
In Christ's time, there were 1,521 things one could not do on the Sabbath, including saving a drowning man. Until the Maccabees taught them better, Jewish armies would let themselves be slaughtered on the Sabbath rather than perform the "work" or self-defense. The prohibition on starting a fire is still in force; Orthodox Jews may neither start nor put out a fire on the Sabbath. A group of them recently stoned a fire engine in Jerusalem for putting out a fire on the Sabbath.
In New York, on the East Side, the "Shabbas Goy'' (Sabbath Gentile) is paid to turn on the stoves of the devout Jews, bound by the letter of the law, who dare not light it for themselves.
Absurd? If you are working under law instead of grace, the letter of the law is all you have even if you must go to absurd means to keep it. Jesus came and inserted a flash of common sense that humanity is usually incapable of: "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."
The words of Jesus shattered, for a time, the whole iron prison of prohibitions which had turned a day of joy and love into a day of sullenness and fear. The Christian Lord's Day of the infant church was a feast, a love feast, a common meal of worship. No one thought of the renunciation of pleasure as what God wanted. The Ancient Romans, their own religion long since dwindled to spiritless routine, suspected Christians of perpetrating obscene orgies in their worship, on the ground that Christians obviously enjoyed the Lord’s Day so much!
On this groundwork of joy, the medieval church built the great festivals of the Christian year. People danced in the streets, or paraded in beautiful costumes, or sang songs, and God was the theme of it all. Of course, men fell short, and the Middle Ages slipped back into the usual cruelties, lusts, greed, and fears. Yet still they believed that all of life was God's business. Out of this view of life grew the Christian Lord's Day, in which man, like God, rested from his labors and saw that the world was good.
Unfortunately, man does not long endure the common sense of God!
Side by side with Christianity, and often mistaken for it, there has always existed a dark eastern religion of despair. Perhaps it first came out of exhausted and overpopulated India, where Buddha decided long ago that life was a mess. This view is the very opposite of the Gospel. The Christian gives up his own desires for the love of others; the Eastern Ascetic renounces the world because he thinks himself too good for it.
Pride masquerading as love, it is one of the Devil's best tricks. Self-mutilation and renunciation have masqueraded as Christianity; neurotic hatred of life has masqueraded as Christianity. To this day we find men who call themselves Christians maintaining that anything a human being enjoys must be labeled evil.
The negative Sabbath of modem times seems to have originated in the bitter religious strife of the seventeenth century. In Scotland, at that time, one poor fellow was hauled into court for smiling on the Sabbath. And when the Pilgrims founded their theocratic colony, it seemed quite natural to them to enforce piety by every possible means. People were punished both for not going to church and for going anywhere else.
Every church must wrestle with the temptation of forcing people to come to God. Force is such an easy and obvious means! As long as you can use force, you don't have to interest people, you don't have to inspire them, you don't have to love them or minister to them. By force, I don't mean that we physically make them come to church. The force we use is much more subtle than that. We shame, harass, and cajole until they come to get us off their back. As late as the 1950's, many churches still practiced "Churching" members. People were turned away from fellowship in the church and had to reapply for reinstatement of their membership. I have heard some people say that we need to return to such a practice, but not me! This kind of spiritual blackmail does nothing to enhance the ministry or fellowship of the church. It merely forces a social pressure on people to coerce them into attendance. If that's why they come, they would be as well off at home.
Churches that use this kind of force destroy themselves and their goal. During the early history of our Nation, nonattendance at church was punishable by law. When the public conscience revolted at this, some churchmen resorted to indirect force; they could not insist that men attend, but they saw to it that all other places a man could go were closed. No doubt their intentions were good. But what has the end been? A materialist generation and a secularized Lord’s Day.
Whenever church ruled one of mankind's earthly joys as unholy, they narrowed the scope of holiness. It was inevitable that ultimately everything worth doing should be regarded as purely secular; and that God is seen as the enemy of joy and enjoyment.
So, how can the church recapture Sunday?
The church will never recapture it if they think of church going itself as the goal. God is the goal. If we believe in Him at all, we must believe that every man wants God in his heart far more than he can ever want anything else; that is, every man wants peace and love, answers to his questions, and the promise of heaven. When the church gives, these people will come. When it does not, well, though it speaks with the tongues of popular psychologists and radio commentators, though it makes donations to hospitals and conduct political forums, it avails nothing.
Most of the ordinary people who lose their faith are not overthrown by philosophical argument; they lose faith because they are disillusioned by people in the church. One sanctimonious hypocrite makes a hundred unbelievers. One little knot of gossips tearing a neighbor's reputation apart on the church steps smashes the Lord’s Day to splinters.
We must show the world that there is something worthwhile happening here. It is not much use to ask people to join you in your misery. But people may very well come to join you in your joy!
If church members will behave like followers of Jesus Christ seven days a week, the Sabbath will take care of itself.
Comments