TexanRose
Puritan Board Sophomore
How does one keep the Sabbath while selling online?
I have a couple of shops online selling various vintage and handmade items. The site where I sell is, like most shopping sites, up and running 24/7. However, if I want to prevent sales at a given time, I can put my shop into "vacation mode."
A complicating factor is that I do sell and ship items around the world.
There are a few ways I could handle this.
1. Leave my shops up and running 24/7, the justification being that even if I made a sale on the Sabbath, I wouldn't technically be doing any work until Monday morning, when I would package up and ship the item. Since I am offline on the Sabbath, I wouldn't even be aware of the sale, or thinking about it, on the Sabbath.
*I'm not comfortable with this one, because while I wouldn't technically be doing any work, I would be enabling others to break the Sabbath by purchasing my items; and I would be receiving their funds on the Sabbath.
2. Shut down my shops Saturday night before bed and re-open them on Monday morning. This is what I've generally done in the past. This way I'm not making sales on *my* Sabbath. However, if I sell something Saturday evening to someone on the other side of the world, then I'm enabling them to break *their* Sabbath. Since international sales are less common, this hasn't happened, but it could.
3. Shut down my shops for the whole period of time that the Sabbath is taking place anywhere in the world (which would entail some looking up of time zones and some head-scratching). This way I would be quite sure that I am not involved in any Sabbath-breaking whatsoever. However, I would also be preventing sales that wouldn't have been a violation of the Sabbath in any way.
Any thoughts? Selling things online is a nice way for this broke single mom to earn a little money on the side, but I don't want to violate the law of God in doing so. Sabbath keeping gets a lot more complicated in a global economy!
I have a couple of shops online selling various vintage and handmade items. The site where I sell is, like most shopping sites, up and running 24/7. However, if I want to prevent sales at a given time, I can put my shop into "vacation mode."
A complicating factor is that I do sell and ship items around the world.
There are a few ways I could handle this.
1. Leave my shops up and running 24/7, the justification being that even if I made a sale on the Sabbath, I wouldn't technically be doing any work until Monday morning, when I would package up and ship the item. Since I am offline on the Sabbath, I wouldn't even be aware of the sale, or thinking about it, on the Sabbath.
*I'm not comfortable with this one, because while I wouldn't technically be doing any work, I would be enabling others to break the Sabbath by purchasing my items; and I would be receiving their funds on the Sabbath.
2. Shut down my shops Saturday night before bed and re-open them on Monday morning. This is what I've generally done in the past. This way I'm not making sales on *my* Sabbath. However, if I sell something Saturday evening to someone on the other side of the world, then I'm enabling them to break *their* Sabbath. Since international sales are less common, this hasn't happened, but it could.
3. Shut down my shops for the whole period of time that the Sabbath is taking place anywhere in the world (which would entail some looking up of time zones and some head-scratching). This way I would be quite sure that I am not involved in any Sabbath-breaking whatsoever. However, I would also be preventing sales that wouldn't have been a violation of the Sabbath in any way.
Any thoughts? Selling things online is a nice way for this broke single mom to earn a little money on the side, but I don't want to violate the law of God in doing so. Sabbath keeping gets a lot more complicated in a global economy!