Sunday.....Christianity.....Set Apart

Our son is athletic and soccer probably would have suited him very well but he never had the opportunity, for in this area of Pennsylvania, Sundays were for soccer practice. After leaving a Lord's Day worship service a few weeks ago we passed a little league baseball field where about nine young boys were being put through their paces by their coach. My guess is that there were one or two boys that did not go to practice that day because of their parents belief on the Lord's Day. If you are interested, two excellent secular books on the progression, or rather regression, of the American Sunday are The Peculiar Life of Sundays by Stephen Miller and Holy Day, Holiday, The American Sunday by Alexis McCrossen. You are not going to hear this topic too often in discussions. For one thing most Christians today would agree that a perfunctory observance of the day is quite enough, and if you can find someone to defend the more historical and, what I believe Biblical, definition, it would be a party pooper topic to begin with. Following the Reformation of the 16th century, the Protestant churches in the countries from continental Europe held, what I believe to be, an odd view for they often simultaneously upheld the set apartness of the day and then ignored much of that what that set apartness meant, but this is only my take on what I have read. A century later, the English and Scottish Reformed were another matter and that was passed on to the American colonies only subsequently, over the centuries, to disappear or remain in a defenseless, sometimes convoluted-sometimes legalistic, 20th century American Sunday. Anyone who knows me, knows my love and respect for R. C. Sproul. He is, once again in my opinion, the premier influence, for good, in the Christian church in America. Unless there has been a change in his doctrine, which I doubt very much, he will probably be sitting in front of the television screen watching the Pittsburgh Steelers often this fall. His belief on Sundays obviously permits this and I find myself disagreeing with a man who properly makes me look like a worm next to him. But no man, neither Luther, Calvin or Sproul will have been proven right on everything, although each and every one of them will indeed be proven faithful and correct on their proclamation of the Gospel. It is my inclination that if America ever returns to setting this one day aside for the things of the Lord, it will be after calamity and they would not even consider the doctrinal implications of what they would be doing but merely clutching to Christ only on that one day where they would have no other earthly enjoyments to distract them. Why doesn't the New Testament say very clearly Remember to keep one day for the Lord? Then again, why doesn't it say You are no longer to keep one day for the Lord? It's possibly because if it did say the former, we would turn it into legalism as was done in the Old Testament. We have remembered that the day can be turned into legalism but what we have forgotten is that the Commandment is a blessing! Gordon H. Clark, in tackling this issue in his book What Do Presbyterians Believe says concerning Legalism,  ...the faults of those who were too strict do not exonerate those who are too lax; and no one can deny that this age errs on the side of laxity. Perfectly consistent with the rest of my Christian life, I am inconsistent in my own setting apart of the Lord's Day. For the best part of 30 years I worked every fourth Lord's Day. If I chose to leave that job I would have a hard time using the electricity in my house. I don't write political blogs on this day. I bend often to the demands of compassion to the needs of others on this day. I fall short in my own belief and am no example to anyone, but the joy and the peace that even my meager efforts give sustains me. I only hope, in this blog, to generate scriptural meditation on the issue.