Conversation with a Seventh-day Adventist

I worked at CVS on Saturday for 10 hours. The night pharmacists (whom I worked with for 2 hours) is a Seventh-day adventist. According to his tradition, he is not allowed to work from sunrise to sunset on the seventh day (sabbath day) in order to "keep it holy." I made a comment that we don't know what day is the seventh day (since I was not present during the creation of the world). He disagreed. He claimed that since the naming of the days (way back when....Roman times I believe) they have not changed. I realized that this was not going to be worth discussing, but I still disagree on several levels about this seventh-day thing. 1) I don't believe the world (and everything on it) was created in 7, 24 hour days; 2) the naming and order of days came long after the creation of the world and I do not know what day they started on (the naming process that is); and 3) who cares....the whole sunrise/sunset/sabbath thing is very legalistic and based in Jewish tradition...the important thing is to take a minimum of 1 day a week to be holy and reflect on God (preferrably this is done on a daily basis).

The other thing this pharmacist said that irritated me was, "I do what my Bible says." He said this as a defense to his seventh-day/sabbath belief. I would like to have questioned him further, but realized that would only make things bad. I was curious the last time he recommended stoning someone for adultery, or any of the other ridiculous laws of the Old Testament. I have a distinct feeling that he (and possibly his church) is doing a bit of choosing which laws to follow and which to ignore as being out-dated.

I was most bothered by this because we hold the same foundation belief (ie Jesus was God's son and savior of the world), but do not have any type of fellowship. Because of his strongly held views (seemingly legalistic), and my more open-minded/liberal viewpoint, we won't ever be on the same religious page. It is sad, but then again, this is the reason we have so many denominations and independent Christian churches. For the time being, we have to agree on the foundation and agree to disagree on the details/laws/dogmas.

That's all for now. I'm gonna leave my rotation site now and go get ready to bowl tonight.