Sunday School: April 25 – May 1

“We honor the Sabbath as a sign of our commitment to the Lord.”

Do we though? I thought we did it to rest. This raises a question, is our culture getting the Sabbath Day correct?

I don’t think so. The initial thought was “define culture”. You may be in a position to have Sunday off from full-time employment, but that is not necessarily true. Our society is great at saying, “You need to rest” to the primary producers – but horrible at actually setting it up. We saw this with the COVID-induced caregiver crisis on so many fronts.

This also begs the question – do we have to “do right” to the Sabbath day by having it at a specific time every week, or is it more of a “be right” situation – where everyone needs a recognized day of rest because the Lord did.

I know it’s not either or, but what’s closer to the spirit of setting aside a day of rest:

Resting from our labors so we can free up time to take on the Lord’s to do list.

I know when I went to church, it was a huge hassle to get the girls and myself ready, deal with both of them during Sacrament meeting (I spent most Sundays wandering out into the Relief Society room with one or sometimes both of them because the baby was too young for sitting still and eating crayons, and the oldest needed to wander). Then there was the Primary situation (and usually I hid in the Nursery or Primary and/or dealt with the child that needed non-Primary time) – not restful. Also, I was trying not to shame myself/assume my community was judging me poorly because I was “that” mom with non-conforming/quasi-conforming rambunctious kids.

I did enjoy the cultural “afternoon nap” most Sundays – I needed it

…ask some class members to take the role of Israelites who grew impatient waiting for Moses to return and decided to make a golden idol. What feelings might have led them to idol worship? Other class members could try to persuade them to stay true to the Lord and His prophet.

Since my current understanding of God is rather nebulous, it is hard to define what is “God” and what is an “Idol”.

In general, I think our idol (at least in Western society) is whatever line of thinking/doing leads us to think about “us” without thinking about “others” with equal care. A variation on breaking the 2 Great Commandments as it were. I see over and over, the great temptation to create our own “idol” out of ourselves at the expense of everyone else (and the connections) around us. I am NOT saying “Ignore Yourself” or “Ignore Your Needs”. I am saying, “BALANCE” your needs and the needs of those around you (that you know and don’t know) and value their perspectives as greatly as your own.

For me, that means I am learning to see my needs as equally as important as those around me, instead of the default “sacrifice everything – because that’s what “Good Women” do” that is a product of my culture.

When people read the Old Testament, they are sometimes surprised at the strict punishments the Lord prescribed for sin.

I suppose it’s hard to do this and maintain strict, literal interpretations of the scripture but I really wish we’d stop doing this. Did the Lord impose strict punishments for sin or did people claiming to speak for the Lord impose strict punishment for sin? I can read the OT and think, “Humans sure have come a long way in our quest to become more tolerant and compassionate.” Mostly because I see what’s written in the OT as people personifying their set of ideals. The OT seems harsh because our ideals have become less harsh.

I think that it is important to realize that the Old Testament was a broad list of things to do “Honor Parents, Do Not Kill (Usually)” – but also a legal code for a small-ish community. My sister (who works in insurance) pointed out the other day how funny it was that some of the Old Testament read like her insurance policies (loosely). Since their culture had no effective separation between church and state, there is some “thus saith the Lord” that is really authority we normally define as “thus saith the Insurance Agent” or “thus saith the Social Worker” or “thus saith the Police Officer”.

Note that I have not recently read the scriptures associated with this lesson.

As a missionary and as the father of missionaries I always felt the same way. Even God rested on the seventh day, but not missionaries. I do believe that giving the missionaries more of a an actual rest day would do wonders for their mental health. I get that Sunday is a good day for contacting people and a day when religion might be more at the forefront of people’s minds so maybe in the spirit of “it doesn’t matter which day as long as there is a day” it could be another day of the week (other than p-day, which is not a day of rest).

I have also experienced the long days at church with meeting after meeting in the past. I have experienced people deliberately scheduling extra meetings on Sunday because of availability and not wanting to interfere with Saturday or a weeknight (I once got a lot of glares for suggesting that a Saturday was more sacred than Sunday because a meeting which was probably more Saturday appropriate was scheduled on Sunday). More annoying to me is scheduling a meeting later on Sunday not attached to the block so I also spent more time traveling (go to church, go home, go to church, go home – not all of us live a block away).

I worked at a Jewish school for a few years along with some other non-Jewish teachers and I got to know some Jews of varying stripes (orthodox, conservative, reform, etc. – it’s not always easy to label them) pretty well. Their general attitude (and more especially so the orthodox and conservatives) toward the Sabbath is very hard to put into words, but it’s far from what we Latter-day Saints understand/believe. To them the Sabbath is a special day apart from the other six and it truly is a delight, not because they follow certain rules or do not “work”* but because it is really for spiritually, mentally and physically recharging. The closest I can come to putting it into words is that the Sabbath is a day of peace but that doesn’t do it either. I’m not professing to fully understand it myself because I haven’t lived it, I’ve only observed it. But I can say we as a people (and Christians in general) do not get it.

I should also point out that the ten commandments and Jewish law in general were not really unique to the Jews or ancient Hebrews. Their laws seem to fairly closely resemble others of surrounding/neighboring cultures of the time and before and after their time. Some better known examples might be the codes of Hammurabi or Justinian, but there are many with laws such as “do not murder” and “do not steal.”

*There are multiple Hebrew words for work depending on the kind of work it is. The word in the 10 commandments is one that indicates creative work (work that produces or creates something). There are therefore acceptable kinds of work that can be done on the Sabbath under Jewish law, and of course that also varies by which type of Jew one is (orthodox vs. reform, etc.). The very most orthodox may argue that turning on a light switch creates light and is therefore work under this definition. (The solution to that is to turn the light on before the Sabbath begins and don’t turn it off.) I doubt very many SS teachers know that, much less teach it.

As a missionary and as the father of missionaries I always felt the same way. Even God rested on the seventh day, but not missionaries. I do believe that giving the missionaries more of a an actual rest day would do wonders for their mental health. I get that Sunday is a good day for contacting people and a day when religion might be more at the forefront of people’s minds so maybe in the spirit of “it doesn’t matter which day as long as there is a day” it could be another day of the week (other than p-day, which is not a day of rest).

I have often thought my mission wouldn’t have been quite the disaster it was if I actually had been able to take a break. And where I served Sunday was a day when everyone was at the beach and not at home, so we just wasted time tracting in empty neighborhoods.

But if we had a day of rest to recharge, it would have been great. Maybe even an hour or two in the evening to recuperate, or even let us have some entertainment other than watching “The District” training videos and reading Jesus the Christ? Or even a week off each year. People need breaks. Working 12-16 hour days with no breaks for two years just is not healthy.

My experience was much like yours Arrakeen. Under the model in my mission the only healthy option to deal with all the expectations was to check out mentally and not care, just do your own thing guilt free. I’m not one to do that, so many aspects of the mission were hard for me.

Adding breaks and capping the hours per day/week to something more reasonable would make a world of difference in the mental health of missionaries. There’s a point of diminishing returns and there’s a point where pushing even more will reduce returns. I think giving missionaries days off (not the preparation day days version of days off, actual days off) would increase morale and an increased morale would translate into being more productive.

I maintain that we really can’t understand the NT if we don’t understand the OT – and skipping this part (which does include offerings, sacrifice and atonement) puts a hole in that understanding.

We mostly use the OT to prooftext our beliefs. Sometimes it’s singling out a verse, stripping it of all context, and using it to justify some practice or belief. Every religion appears to do that with their religious texts. We also follow in the footsteps of most Christian religions where we look to shoehorn Jesus into everything in the OT. Maybe that’s what Christians are supposed to do? It does get the conversations back to focusing on Christ.

I can’t say that they deliberately avoided those chapters. From their perspective I imagine that there’s too much material to cover so they pick the narrative that they want to tell and they stick to it. The narrative appears to mostly be covenant people, covenant path, and extracting the same lessons that we always recycle when the subject is touched on in the reading.

The goal of our Sunday School classes doesn’t appear to be to take a scholarly approach where we learn something about the context, the people, and how they interpreted scripture; the goal appears to be to indoctrinate.

On the other hand, I think many members believe that apart from animal sacrifice, what went on in the temple in ancient times is exactly what goes on in the temple today. It would be difficult to justify that belief from a study of the OT alone. I’m not sure leaders/the correlation department are in a hurry to correct faith promoting misconceptions.