*Originally published May 4, 2016

Will someone please explain to me why so much ink has been spent, so much airtime has been used up, so much money has been blown through, and so many lives have been tormented because of a barely-mentioned behavior in the Bible? All this has gone on while sexual immorality of straight clergy and laity and while defrauding of the vulnerable goes unchecked, while domestic violence is hushed up and people go to “bed” without a bed and with an empty stomach?
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Maybe what we should concentrate on is not making idols or working on the Sabbath. Both just happen to be part of the Commandments. Not only are we not supposed to work, we aren’t to require work by our children, servants (I wish I had one to give off work for the Sabbath), and even the immigrant (Exodus 20:8-9). No small infraction, Exodus 31 says if you violate the Sabbath, it is more than a day of fasting in repentance. The person is to be put to death.
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How about this for a less painful solution:

Whereas God commanded us to keep the Sabbath (it’s in the Bible);
Whereas breaking of the Sabbath is rampant in the United Methodist Church; and
Whereas those who break the Sabbath are to be put to death; therefore, be it
Resolved that the United Methodist Church replaces the Bible with The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church,

so we won’t have to follow those parts that are too hard and require too much spiritual maturity, and because if we follow the teachings of the prophets and Jesus, it will prescribe our lives to an inconvenient degree.