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Hi, This is something I have touched on a little before but I was thinking about today.
Today I was over at my mother in laws house and we were talking about going out of town together to visit family. She said she didn’t want to ever go on Sunday and that she wanted to go on Monday. I asked why and she said that she thought it was breaking the sabbath to drive on Sunday to go out of town, and even just getting gas is wrong. She then said that she felt horrible she went camping with us on a Sunday before in the past. She said that you can’t ask for the Lord to protect you on Sunday if your out driving or breaking the sabbath and something could happen. And how would you feel if something bad happened on a Sunday?
( I kind of got the impression that she was sort of saying that if something bad happens it’s your fault and maybe it’s God punishing you but maybe not. I don’t read minds well)
Now, I thought it was just my parents that thought like this but I am starting to wonder if everyone or a lot of people think I like this. Maybe it’s just me but when I think about God this way I feel a little discouraged. Maybe my mother in law has got it right and I am totally wrong… I don’t know. I just wish I knew about this sort of thing for myself or for sure.
It also reminds me when my mother used to say that other people were not blessed because they weren’t mormon. My whole life I grew up thinking that only mormons were special, blessed, and loved by God. Then when I was 18 and out of the house I watched a show “It’s a Miracle.” I was shocked! I know this may sound stupid but I just didn’t realize till I watched that show that God does love and protect other people that are not mormon. It was amazing to me to hear about the miracles and stories that showed how God had protected them.
So my question is do you think a lot of mormons believe or think this way or no? Also, how have you made good decisions about things in your life and not make them around or based on fear?
It’s part of the Mormon theology to believe you are special and get extra blessing because, well you are so special. All decisions for me are made and based on logical reasoning.
Fear is not an option.I no longer think in terms of “sin” (or as Brian might say, God and I are on the same team). So I no longer think in terms of “commandments”. So the idea of “breaking” the Sabbath doesn’t really have meaning for me personally (though of course I understand it as a teaching device). But I believe deeply in the holy principle of Stopping. And in our tradition, Sunday is the Stopping (Sabbath) Day of I Am your God. So-oooooooo, I act largely toward and about Sunday the same way I always have. I stay home. I do restful and different things including forging relationships with humans. I stay away from downtown. Generally.
And I delight in the joy of others on Sunday as they ride motorcycles, work in the stores, and eat out or play. I have no judgment or indignation or concern or anger about them. They are happy, and I am happy.
Now if I could just be that authentic in the chapel, I would have Staying LDS down pat already.
I also LOVE the concept of the Sabbath and dedicating a day of rest. Therefore, generally speaking, I “keep the Sabbath day holy” and try not to do things that require others not do so. However . . . I also agree totally that “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath” (or whatever the exact quote is), so I have no problem traveling on Sunday – especially if it’s in order to do something that I feel is part of keeping the Sabbath holy – like visiting family and friends, or the homeless, or the widowed, or providing service of some sort, etc.
I also have a diabetic son and a wife who gets ill if she doesn’t eat regularly. If my family accompanies me on a visit to one of the units in our stake when I have a speaking assignment, and if that unit is an hour-and-a-half from our home, and if my son starts to feel a low blood sugar level or my wife starts to feel ill and needs food . . . I have no problem “picking ears of corn to eat as we walk through the fields on the Sabbath”. That means I have no problem stopping and buying some food in those situations.
The HPGL in a unit I was visiting recently mentioned in the HP Group meeting lesson that his wife sometimes gets very tired and has a hard time preparing meals – and that he is a lousy cook, and she hates the food he prepares. Therefore, when she feels this way on Sunday, he will take her to a restaurant after church to show his love and support for her –
because she is more important than a general rule. I really love that principle. Do many LDS believe this way? I think some take it to this level. Sundays. Sometimes people need to go on vacations that are over six days long. Babies are born on Sundays. It is near impossible to keep that 100% commitment every Sunday of your life. Most people have to drive to church and I’m sure even car accidents happen when families drive to church. It is not a magical day where nothing bad will happen to you as long as you are only going to church related meetings and doing spiritual things.
My In-Laws are pretty TBM but they aren’t too over the top with the perfection of Sunday activities.
How unfortunate to still harp on yourself for going camping on a Sunday sometime in your past. Either she has some serious problems with not being able to forgive and forget or she is trying to prove something to you, like a need for guilt for not keeping up with her definition of a righteous Sunday activity.
I don’t base decisions around fear because it is too draining. If you are constantly worrying about your past and your future you have no energy to make reasonable decisions in the present. Don’t let her get you down. Do what you feel is good and don’t over analyze your decisions. It can turn you kind of nutty.
DH is sometimes gone for five full days and nights a week … for multiple weeks in a row. We do family activities on Sundays, they include driving and spending money most days. Our In-Laws aren’t happy about it but …. it’s the best for our family.
My general rule for the sabbath is that I try to avoid things that require others to work. Mostly because I like the thought of as many people having the day off as possible. But for personal activities camping, cycling, hiking Sunday is the best day for those. There is a wide diversity of sabbath observance among church members. It falls across no particular lines or patterns, in my observation, except the randomness of individual styles of belief. Some regular members are far more “strict” and specific than the highest leaders of the church. And of course it goes the other way around too. Once we are free to see that our particular needs are only our particular approach to this broad concept, we are free to explore and find practices that make our sabbath holy. Keeping the sabbath day holy, that can be an expanding and rewarding experience. Breaking the sabbath can also be enlightening at times. Trying another’s perspective can too. Knowing when to choose and being open to the experience is the key.
There really is no single, correct way to practice Sabbath day observance. As far as whether one particular type of action or practice breaks the sabbath, that’s hard to say. The examples given by the Savior are probably good models to try, and he seemed pretty set against the pharisee and their micro-details.
The Sabbath is one of those soft commandments in my view — subject to a wide amount of interpretation. Here is my take on this. I took my Young Men on a camping trip that had them out on a Sunday. I got permission to hold the sacrament out in the woods from the Bishop. It was the most spiritual blessing and preparing and administration of the sacrament I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard SP and Bishops being really militant about no activities spanning or cutting into the Sacrament — as if it’s law. But the spirit I felt on that canoe trip on Sunday, (even though when we got home that evening at 7pm) showed me there’s a definite Spirit of the Law on this one. If it’s good for spirituality, then I don’t hestitate to interpret the commandment more liberally than most other LDS believers.
I also believe my non-member family comes ahead of the Sabbath Day rule. They were deeply hurt by my marriage in the temple which excluded them, and so I try to make myself available on Sundays for non-member family events. I’ve never regretted it. It’s kind of like the situation in the Bible when Jesus visited Mary and her sister. I think it was the sister who was bustling in the kitchen and the Savior suggested that she had her priorities in the wrong place since Jesus was with her — her time should have been with Him.
I feel the same when my non-member family time conflicts with the Sabbath. I will not always have them with me, and they too are a sacred part of my life, and I have chosen the better part when I visit them or participate in activities that might be considered non-Sabbath by many LDS people.
I grew up with the same mentality as mentioned in the original post. If we dared drive anywhere, fly anywhere, or do anything not related to church, some horrible consequence, car accident, plane crash, etc. may happen, and it would be because we did not keep the Sabbath Holy. For some reason as I grew up, I learned to associate fear of death with not keeping commandments. I’m not really sure why, as my parents didn’t go around saying we would die if we did this or that. Anyway, after I was married and my DH had started his disaffection, I ended up in counseling by myself with a non-church counselor. It was one of the best things I ever did. I explained to him my fear about the Sabbath, and he basically helped me get the courage up to just try something, anything, on the Sabbath, and see what happened. So, I went out and put gas in my car on a Sunday. I grew up with the same mentality as mentioned in the original post. If we dared drive anywhere, fly anywhere, or do anything not related to church, some horrible consequence, car accident, plane crash, etc. may happen, and it would be because we did not keep the Sabbath Holy.
I think the source of this is the Book of Mormon’s emphasis on righteousness being the key to nations retaining their freedom from war and slavery [ie “prospering in the land”], as well as the belief that chastening comes to people who don’t obey God. Also, promises of protection for people who love God and keep his commandments. Also, there are promises that if you pay tithing you won’t be burned at the second coming, or that your “days will be long” if you obey your parents. There are also instances in the BoM where severely wicked people were struck down and incapacitated if they persecuted the Church or God.
However, my experience is that these things don’t happen much in our time. Perhaps I’m lulled into a false sense of security. But the Sabbath Day has been probably my weakest-living commandment my whole life. And I’ve never really had any negative consequences come from being loose in its interpretation. In fact, at times, I’ve felt my life has been blessed, particularly when my family or my personal, self-actualization is at stake.
Conceptually, there is a HUGE difference between a “people” prospering in the land (which makes sense when everyone is sharing with each other) and “individuals” prospering in the land. We conflate two and mutate the Gospel too much, imo. Our bishop gave this rule of thumb: you can make purchases on Sunday if you are traveling and you are outside your own county. I tend to agree. I do find value in keeping the Sabbath day holy, but my way of doing so differs from my parents and some of my siblings. IME, everyone has to define this for him/herself as an adult. For example, we have a pool. We do swim casually on Sundays, but we don’t go to the gym. We don’t have pool parties on Sundays or do rough play, but we relax and spend time as a family (after church). My mother was a bit scandalized by this. She said they always joked with the kids that there were alligators in the pool on Sundays (I don’t remember this, just a “no swimming on Sundays” rule growing up). I have a sister who doesn’t allow the TV to be turned on if it’s Sunday and requires Sunday dress all day. My parents would say that’s going too far and they’d be bored to tears if they did that. So, everyone has to come up with their own way.
Personally, I think however you choose to do it that works for you, the point that matters to me is 1) family time, 2) recharging batteries by relaxing, moreso than on Saturday, 3) service and fellowship opportunities.
I;m with you on the pool. When I was workign long hours, the pool on Sunday was a major focal point of family time. The rule was that it had to be family and the kids couldn’t invite their friends. It works for us. Personally, I think a major reason for the Sabbath Day commandment is to make sure people are available for Church services — at a bare minimum.
However, there have been times I’ve not gone to Church due to huge spikes in my work that would’ve had me stressed and doing all-nighters during the week. Staying home from Church on those days and working was good for my mental health, and in my view, the right thing to do during that period of my life. It was infrequent, such as once every four months or so, but it put me in a much better frame of mind and ensured I was able to get the necessary rest during the week.
Sorry I’m a little late to this discussion. Personally, I disagree with the idea of traveling long distances to visit family to be breaking the sabbath. Visiting family members has long been an approved sabbath activity. The brethren have given no qualifiers on how far away the family members live. Plus, Robert Kirby said (paraphrasing) that truly blessed Mos have family members that need visiting in Orlando, Las Vegas, San Diego, Cancun, etc. 
Growing up, my family seemed to vacillate between spending money and making people work as activities that constituted sabbath breaking. This inconsistency caused me problems later. In one instance, I incurred the wrath of my MTC district leader for buying soda out of a vending machine on Sunday that someone apparently forgot to switch off the night before. I justified it by stating that it was a machine I was giving money to, I wasn’t making anyone work at that point, and they’d come by and collect the money on another day of the week. Now that I travel a lot for work on Sundays, there’s just no getting around needing to spend money and make people work on the sabbath. I need to be at the client site on Monday morning or I’ll lose my job.
Sometimes sabbath observance can cause some weird beliefs/practices that strike me as rather Pharisaical in nature. For example, I had one caffeine-addicted mission companion who made me get up in the middle of the night to drive to a convenience store so he could buy some cola at 12:01 am, since it was technically Monday at that point. I explained to him that we weren’t supposed to be out of the apartment past curfew, but he had a splitting headache and felt breaking a mission rule was less serious than breaking a commandment.
🙄 To me, it is a great concept to pick a time and make it “holy,” a time of resting from labor, and of dedicated that time to spiritual contemplation and personal reflection. I think it is even more vital in today’s fast paced culture where we often have little time for that very (mentally) healthy activity of doing … nothing. How long we spend, not even what particular day we set that time aside on, none of that matters as much as making it quality, spiritual, family, and restful time. Take time to fix a nice meal and enjoy it with family and friends, go on a drive, take a hike, or spend it quietly at home reading the scriptures. Craft it consciously so that it helps you connect with the divine.
Our definitions and practice could, and probably should, change over time depending on the other aspects of our life. The sabbath is for us (for us to rest and also to serve others). God can take care of himself. He’s a big boy/girl/being
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