Ten Commandments and the Sabbath Day

The one Commandment that always interests me is the one that forbids working on the Sabbath Day. Often, the rationale given for displaying the Ten Commandments in public is that America is a Christian nation. What I wonder is: What would happen to our economy if everyone in this Christian nation stopped working on Sunday? No matter how Christian Americans are supposed to be, how many Christian capitalists would seriously endorse not working on Sunday? I wonder how George W. Bush would answer this.

Welcome to ILP, Miracle.

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Is working unholy?

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work” (Ex. 20:8-10).

Hi M o B

This is hard to answer if you are unfamiliar with the ancient esoteric psychological ideas. The concern for the seventh day is connected with Pythagoras “Law of Octaves” or the seven steps of a completed cycle which can have for us both a meaning in external life and also one of personal psychology or our inner life.

The seventh day or interval is the period to focus on “perspective” after the six days of labor. The seventh day correctly understood concludes the octave and the new cycle begins without the loss of human spiritual perspective natural without the rest and reflection at the conclusion of the old and beginning of the new cycle or octave.

I must add here even at the risk of a dirty look that “day” doesn’t necessarily mean the 24 hours we normally define it as.

Do most regular Christians look at it like this? I assume many understand the Commandment to mean “God stopped working on the seventh day and so should you.” That’s what it seems like from people I’ve talked to.

I don’t consider what you are asserting as Christin to be Christian. Secuar Christianity and the sects of Christianity I refer to as did Kierkegaard and from who I learned it as Christendom or man made Christianity.

Christendom and its concern for its structure and what we do has no need for the psychology that is the essence of Christianity that concerns itself with what we are in relation to our potential we “feel” as the calling for “meaning”.

Isn’t manmade Chritianity what pretty much runs the show? Don’t most people believe simply that we aren’t supposed to work on Sunday? Am I understanding you, or no?

Yes, Christianity is hidden and must be needed and searched for. Its purpose is to transmit something of an essential quality that initiated from where we are evolving towards as help for mankind. It is hard to get into and easy to get out of.

Christendom in contrast is easy to get into and hard to get out of. I agree that it runs the secular show.

OK, so…

Because most people that I’ve talked to seem to believe that they’re literally not supposed to work on Sunday, and so I assume most people believe it as well, can that Commandment be applied realistically to a capitalist society like America?

Please don’t be cryptic again.

M o B

The purpose of any of the commandments is to help in attaining the good that they lead in the direction of. They are necessary generalities and must be viewed in the context of the higher good they represent.

The same idea holds true in regular societal life. The law where I live in NY states that I must stop at a red light when driving. The good that it represents is an orderly way in which people can share the road.

However suppose I am driving a sick friend to the hospital at 3:00 AM and no cars are in sight, am I suppose to obey this law waiting at the light in this situation where time is of the essence? I believe not since in this case it defeats the good of saving a life. So how to understand the good of the law?

Jesus even spoke of this in Luke 14:

There is nothing cryptic about any of this. It only appears so because the overall meaning and the psychology behind the essence of religion is so profound, it is easy to lose the thread of it by falling into details and defending our points of view at the expense of the deeper meanings they are only a facet of.

Christianity deals with the quality of the process of becoming open to the impressions of life without slavery to preconception. From this perspective, results in life are secondary to the process Capitalist society as it devolves seeks to enslave by creating the impression that winning (results) is everything so “results” are of primary importance with nary a thought towards the quality of the processes that culminate in results. I doubt seriously whether the majority even knows what this means anymore even theoretically.

There is nothing cryptic here. When Jesus asserts that we must develop eyes to see and ears to hear, it means something I believe related to this question of relativity of “results.” But it is politically incorrect to even suggest that people understand the same information differently. Such discussions concerned with how to develop the capacity to see and hear in the spiritual sense must occur in private and away from the thought police dedicated to supporting equality in stupidity through the glorification of literal knowledge void of religious context.

So how does this apply to a guy working at a gas station on Sunday? He’s not healing anyone.

So, let’s look at history. Surely the United States at it’s inception, or some other country if not us, has actually lived under this rule, where no unessecary labor was done on the Sabbath. Did their economies fall apart, or lag far behind their heathen neighbors?