Why I keep only nine of the Ten Commandments

Those of us with children know from experience that kids can sometimes ask the most penetrating of questions.  Mine sure have, that’s for sure!  And as they have grown to adulthood they still ask questions that ol’ Dad doesn’t always have ready answers for.  I think they do it just to watch me squirm. 

Sweet daughter, who now has grown kids of her own asking her penetrating questions (which she so richly deserves), asked me a few months ago, “Dad, if you are such a faithful believer in the Lord why do you only keep nine of His Ten Commandments?”  Of course, she was referring to the command

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the LORD thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates: For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.  

I tried to give sweet daughter the standard comebacks I have been indoctrinated with over the years, such as there is a verse saying believers came together on the first day of the week and broke bread (for that matter there is a verse that says believers met every day and broke bread together), that the Lord Jesus arose from the dead on the first day of the week, etc.  But as I listened to myself I noted how absolutely feeble those answers sounded when placed opposite a command of God he himself burnt into stone.

The more I pondered her question the more I was driven to I ask myself “specifically who does history say it was that changed the rest and worship day from the seventh day of the week to the first?”  It did not take long with a computer and Goggle to come up with a guy named Constantine the Great, a Roman emperor during the third century AD.  On March 7, 321AD he single-handedly decided that all the religions of the empire, of which there were many, would unify in working Mondays through Saturdays, and take Sundays (the day of the sun god) as the day of rest and worship.  That’s it!  Done deal!  So from then on, for Christians, Jews, pagans, et al, it was Sun(god)day—the venerable day of the sun.  And if anyone resisted the order of the established church or emperor there were all sorts of unpleasant things that awaited him. What’s new? 

Now it seems great Constantine claimed to be a Christian since he had some sort of vision that led his army to a victory somewhere.  But at the same time he carried the title of pontifex maximus, a title emperors bore as heads of the pagan priesthood.   He also went about sporting the Apollonian sun-rayed diadem, and had coins struck with his face appearing on one side and pagan gods on the other with inscription “committed to the invincible sun.”  To his credit (?) he authorized bishops of the then Roman (Catholic) church to determine doctrine (what is believed and taught) and dogma (a system of doctrines), whereby he assigned himself to enforcement throughout the empire of such doctrine and dogma.  Towards the Roman church he was friendly.  And the Roman church was friendly to him in return.  But to Christians who did not go along with “the program” i.e. those who tried to follow Scripture, they found themselves cross-wise with the empire—a bad place to be.   

So to sum it up, that’s the kind of guy who is basically responsible for why I go to church on Sundays, and keep only nine of God’s Ten Commandments.  All I can say is, “go figure.”

Gene Pool