He won't play ball on Sunday

[Herald]

Aren't we allowed to play games on Sunday because technically games are leisure activity and are not a real job? We only pay pro players because we want to watch them play because they're good at it. It's not like they're working.

I think sports are allowed on Sunday.

David,

Just out of sheer curiosity. This is your first post in this thread. Did you read the OP? Did you read the link that James provided in the OP? Have you read the entire thread? Did you read Rich's last post?

 

[ColdSilverMoon]

How is electricity not a necessity on the Lord's Day? Do you then support Hospitals using generators on the Lord's Day, shutting down all manufacturing facilities that would take the rest of the week to "warm up"? Electricity is a work of necessity.

A person can reasonably go a day without eating, a person in your hospital hooked up to machines cannot reasonably go a day without electricity.

Actually they can. All those things you mention are a convenience rather than a true necessity. It's a matter of scale: turning out the power on Sundays would be a massive inconvenience but we would survive, just as all the people survived for thousands of years before the late 19th century. So ultimately there is a certain degree of contradiction in everyone's Sabbath keeping as long as you are trying to raw absolute lines defining what is strictly acceptable and unacceptable for every person.

I think Rich and Bill are pretty much right on when they note that observing the Sabbath is more a matter of a desire to honor God and obey His Law than anything else. If our hearts are right on the matter then appropriate actions will naturally follow...

I'm not sure that's exactly what I said Mason. I don't think we can remove matters of the heart from obedience but how I "experience" the Law is not what is normative. One of the problems I have with perspectivalism is the idea that how I agree with or enjoy the Law is just as important with what the Law actually teaches.

What I was trying to drive at is that I'm still very much sinful and my conscience needs a lot of training. I don't always keep the Law as I ought but realize I am saved by grace. I don't therefore sin all the more so that grace may abound but I pray for a sanctified heart so that I'm not so prone to love my own flesh and to love more the things of God.

Rich, I agree with you. My point is that when we elevate God's Law to normative then obedience to the Law naturally follows. I wasn't saying you or Bill are advocating perspectivalism. I agree with you and Bill and Joshua that when we love God's Law and embrace it in its entirety then keeping it appropriately and completely follows from that, though I also agree that sanctification allows us to keep it more and more as we should.

My point is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop a set of rules that applies to every single Christian concerning the Sabbath. I'm not advocating playing "line games" and believe it is a real danger. On the other hand, I do think that Sabbath-keeping is, at least to a degree, a matter of individual conscience when it comes to particular activities.