Sabbath-Breaking or Starvation

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Parakaleo

Puritan Board Sophomore
I came across this quote from D. L. Moody a week or so ago:

But someone says: 'Mr. Moody, what are you going to do? I have to work seven days a week or starve.' Then starve! Wouldn't it be a grand thing to have a martyr in the nineteenth century? 'The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.' Someone says the seed is getting very low; it has been a long time since we have had any seed. I would give something to erect a monument to such a martyr for his fidelity to God's law. I would go around the world to attend his funeral.

I thought of it as an earnest, poignant call to Sabbath-keeping and I used it in a discussion I was having with someone who has a looser view of the Sabbath. His answer came back:

On Moody saying we should starve rather than violate the Sabbath, this has been refuted by Jesus Himself when His disciples picked grain and He healed/saved life on the Sabbath.

This objection raises a really interesting point that has got me thinking quite a lot. I know it's a far-fetched example, but say there was a man who was fired for refusing to work seven days a week and, despite his best efforts working six days a week, he actually starved to death for lack of provision from his work. Would such a man be a martyr, as Moody says? Or, would he be a fool for not understanding that works of necessity are lawful on the Sabbath?
 
Blake,
I wonder whether the meditation is worth the investment, it is so far outside the conception of what real life looks like. You have to add tons of facts to the story to begin to make it rational.

In conformity with AS's musing (above), we have this text:

Ps.37:25, "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."

Under what circumstances of a faithful man could the hypothetical be realized? Any man who literally worked on the proposition must be a slave. Or else his starvation has to be explained from that: he is in so parlous a condition that gleaning a head of grain takes his last scrap of energy. In other words, there has to be more to the story, more context that explains the extraordinary situation sufficiently.
 
I wonder whether the meditation is worth the investment,

Perhaps not. It is all but impossible to imagine a man who can feed himself by working seven days a week but can't by working six.

Even if Moody's statement is ill-formed for that reason, is not the advice generally sound? "Prefer death at all times over violating what God has commanded." Maybe the question I'm getting at, and what my friend picked up on, is whether this advice can rightly be given in reference to the Fourth Commandment, which has exceptions for those works of necessity or mercy?
 
Since we know that God stills wants us to observe a day as unto Him, should be able to make ends meet! Would they be tithing rightly, or has right budgeting priorities also?
 
Maybe the question I'm getting at, and what my friend picked up on, is whether this advice can rightly be given in reference to the Fourth Commandment, which has exceptions for those works of necessity or mercy?

I say it's appropriate for any commandment, including 4C. Who can't fast for a single day, assuming it ever were so bad a scene?

The real problems, on which we should be declaiming, are the "not remembering" and "not hallowing." People aren't abusing the allowances as much as they are using them for a write-off of their neglect. An unbelievable hypothetical is--at best--an exception that proves the rule.

Odd, we don't hear much defense of casual homicide, given there are exceptional justifications for taking another human life. We do hear occasionally that unless a person is a pure pacifist, he doesn't really believe in the 6C. Either way, these are failures to take the moral law seriously.

And the same applies to mocking the 4C by an appeal to extremes.

:2cents:
 
Not knowing the context, or even being familiar with Moody, the quote strikes me as Moody being facetious. It seems more plausible that he was answering a fool according to his folly.

In any event, as noted by Bruce, it is hardly a good starting-point for a good theological discussion.
 
I'm not likely to make a shift in my understanding of a commandment on a quote from an ex-shoe salesman. Just saying.
 
I think Mr. Moody is just trying to make a point that we should be willing to suffer in order to obey the Law. Whether its truth telling, obeying authority lawfully, etc. We live in an age of excess. We are so unwilling to give more than we can. Just look at the offerings at our own churches.
 
There may not be a case for starvation in this example, but I can tell you that now that the sabbath has been effectively abandoned by most of the retail industry, there is a very real persecution of those who are sabbath keepers among the lower socioeconomic classes, as rotating rosters give them little control of their allocated work days. Those who say "I am unable to work on Sundays" for any reason, will not find themselves hired as these are the first questions asked in interviews.

This is certainly the case at my work place. Availability is key to hiring casual staff. In the gracious providence of our great God, my wife and I are among the very few staff that do not work weekends, (this is partly because of the higher cost of wages) the regular staff get no say in the matter and are at the mercy of the roster.
 
I came across this quote from D. L. Moody a week or so ago:

But someone says: 'Mr. Moody, what are you going to do? I have to work seven days a week or starve.' Then starve! Wouldn't it be a grand thing to have a martyr in the nineteenth century? 'The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.' Someone says the seed is getting very low; it has been a long time since we have had any seed. I would give something to erect a monument to such a martyr for his fidelity to God's law. I would go around the world to attend his funeral.

I thought of it as an earnest, poignant call to Sabbath-keeping and I used it in a discussion I was having with someone who has a looser view of the Sabbath. His answer came back:

On Moody saying we should starve rather than violate the Sabbath, this has been refuted by Jesus Himself when His disciples picked grain and He healed/saved life on the Sabbath.

This objection raises a really interesting point that has got me thinking quite a lot. I know it's a far-fetched example, but say there was a man who was fired for refusing to work seven days a week and, despite his best efforts working six days a week, he actually starved to death for lack of provision from his work. Would such a man be a martyr, as Moody says? Or, would he be a fool for not understanding that works of necessity are lawful on the Sabbath?

One can ask someone for food. One does not have to starve.
 
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