BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PROPERTY RENTAL AND SABBATH ISSUES

Transcription

1 BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PROPERTY RENTAL AND SABBATH ISSUES The practice of renting is not one that comes up very frequently in the Bible. There are regulations concerning how one conducts business in general (Deut. 25:14; Deut. 19:14; Prov. 22:26), but mostly they are concerned with sales rather than rentals. There is one passing reference to a rented house (Acts 28:30), but no regulations mentioned in regard to it. The practice of leasing, in which greater authority over the property is given to the lessee by the owner than is given in a rental, is not mentioned at all in the Bible. Today, a lease is understood as... a conveyance of possessory rights to real estate, it is a hybrid sort of contract that involves qualities of a deed. (Wikipedia). The closest that can be found to a lease situation in the Bible is the sale of land to fellow Israelites, which because of the return of land to the original families during the Year of Jubilee, was not a permanent sale. Leviticus 25:14-16 covers this transaction (all citations from NIV unless otherwise noted): 14 If you sell land to any of your own people or buy land from them, do not take advantage of each other. 15 You are to buy from your own people on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And they are to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops. 16 When the years are many, you are to increase the price, and when the years are few, you are to decrease the price, because what is really being sold to you is the number of crops. Since the land was not being permanently sold, this comes reasonably close to what we would call a lease. The only regulations that govern such a transaction regard the repurchase of the land before the Jubilee (Lev:25:25-27). There is, however, no mention of the Sabbath within the regulations about the sale of property, which because of the return at the time of Jubilee is really a lease. This is possibly because the Bible does not address selling land to resident aliens at all. Leviticus 25:14 specifically is about the sale of land to Israelites (KJV says neighbor ). Since God claims that the land is really His (Lev. 25:23), it is possible that the Israelites were barred from selling any of the promised land to foreigners, there is no reference specifically preventing them from doing so. One can make the case either that the sale of land to resident aliens was acceptable, or was not possible, by comparing the passage above (Lev. 25:14-17) with what we discover in Leviticus 25:47-53: 47 If a foreigner residing among you becomes rich and any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to the foreigner or to a member of the foreigner s clan, 48 they retain the right of redemption after they have sold themselves. One of their relatives may redeem them: 49 An uncle or a cousin or any blood relative in their clan may redeem them. Or if

2 they prosper, they may redeem themselves. 50 They and their buyer are to count the time from the year they sold themselves up to the Year of Jubilee. The price for their release is to be based on the rate paid to a hired worker for that number of years. 51 If many years remain, they must pay for their redemption a larger share of the price paid for them. 52 If only a few years remain until the Year of Jubilee, they are to compute that and pay for their redemption accordingly. 53 They are to be treated as workers hired from year to year; you must see to it that those to whom they owe service do not rule over them ruthlessly. If you wish to make the case that land could be sold to resident aliens, it rests on the inference that only the wealthy could afford slaves. It would be difficult, though not impossible, for a resident alien to become wealthy enough to purchase slaves without having property. It is possible that a merchant could become wealthy and need a small number of slaves for household duties, but most slaves were for agriculture, which required land, implying that resident aliens did purchase land in Israel. The opposite case, that resident aliens could not purchase land in Israel, comes from the fact that the sale of Israel slaves to resident aliens is specifically mentioned and regulated, and separately the sale of Israeli slaves to Israelites is mentioned and regulated. However the regulations for the sale of land specifically mentions the sale to Israelites, but neglects any mention of sales to resident aliens. From this one can infer that land sales to resident aliens were not possible However, we cannot tell with certainty from the text, or from the SDA Bible Commentary, whether resident aliens were allowed to purchase land. Either case rests on a certain degree of speculation. If it is assumed that resident aliens could not purchase land in Israel, then the Sabbath issue is not a factor in such transactions, because the Israelites were to keep the Sabbath whether they were on their own land or leased land. If, however, resident aliens were allowed to purchase land until the year of Jubilee, then the absence of any clause regulating their Sabbath activities is significant, especially in light of the fact that other regulations did bind them: they had to return the land in the year of Jubilee; they had to allow the land to be redeemed before the year of Jubilee; they had to treat Israelite slaves differently from foreign born slaves; and other such things. But since it is not known if resident aliens could purchase land or not, we cannot use this passage as proof that people who lease from Adventists are bound to honor the Sabbath on the leased property. Even if you consider that resident aliens could not purchase Israelite land, this does not guide us today, because we do not live in a theocracy where God disallows us from permanently selling the land, as was the case in Israel. Leviticus 25:23 states, The land must

3 not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. When a church or school is sold, we walk away without control over its use, and it will not be returned to us in the Jubilee. That is a consequence of not living in a theocracy, and there is nothing in the New Testament, written after any semblance of theocracy had long since passed, that sheds any further light on how the Sabbath relates to either the sale or lease of property, either to believers or non-believers. The closest anything in the Bible comes to regulating leases is the temporary sale of property until the year of Jubilee, but this does not address the current situation because: 1) the Jubilee system is no longer functioning; 2) the Sabbath is not mentioned in those regulations; and 3) we do not live in a theocracy any longer. Since the regulations regarding the sale of property are insufficient as guidelines for today, attention must now be turned to the regulations regarding the Sabbath itself. The injunction within the fourth commandment that concerns us is that not only are we not to labor, but anyone in our household is also to receive a Sabbath rest. Exodus 20:10 tells us:... but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. It is interesting to note that there is a difference of opinion on the meaning of where a stranger/alien/foreigner must live in order to come under the injunction to keep the Sabbath. The literal Hebrew translation is gates, which could mean within the gates of the household or the gates of the city. The NIV reads foreigners residing in your towns, and thus takes the latter view. This seems more likely than household, because if it were limited to the household, then resident aliens who maintained separate homes within Israel would not be prevented from profaning the Sabbath within their homes, or (one assumes) even from conducting business in public. Because Nehemiah forbade men from Tyre to conduct public business on the Sabbath (Neh. 13:16-18), it seems likely that the commandment was intended to encompass not only the household of the believer, but the whole territory of God s people. This was enforceable only because the Israelites lived in a theocracy, where the beliefs of the alien were not a factor in the required behavior. This is not the case today, even in places where Seventh-day Adventists are the majority of the population. In a democracy, each person s liberty to live as a Sabbath keeper is on a par with everyone other person s liberty to ignore the Sabbath. Seventh-day Adventists are so opposed to the secular enforcement of religious beliefs that we established the Religious Liberty Department of our denomination (5T 714; 2SM 375; TM ). In Israel, it was entirely appropriate for God to demand that

4 resident aliens honor the Sabbath on His land. Today, because we do not live in a theocracy, Adventists oppose the governmental enforcement of any religious behavior on society, to such a degree that we even oppose the secular enforcement of our own beliefs on those who believe differently. This makes it impossible for us to enforce the NIV position of requiring non-believers within our towns to honor the Sabbath. If, however, one takes the KJV rendering, we are confronted with the phrase,... stranger that is within thy gates, it is possible to view the injunction more narrowly, and interpret the phrase to mean, within my household. This is more manageable, and seems to make more sense for us on a practical level. Because we do not live in a theocracy, and don t have the authority to enforce the Sabbath on our neighbors, the concept of what is within our gates is reduced to the individual household, where the residents maintain control of the activities and have responsibility to the fourth commandment. We are instructed to keep the Sabbath in our homes, and when visitors are present, we are not to allow them to dishonor the Sabbath within our homes. This is true whether the residence is owned or rented from someone else; it is spurious to argue that because a person does not own the structure where he/she resides, he/she is not obliged to keep the Sabbath on the grounds that the property is not my gates. The person who controls the space is called, as a believer, to keep the Sabbath and to require all within that space to keep it as well. Property other than homes, which is under the control of our church (at any level), is under the same injunction. Ellen White confirms this repeatedly when writing about out institutions (MM 164; 7T 106; 7T 121). Again, whether we own the space that we occupy or rent it from someone else, we are enjoined to keep the Sabbath during those hours. But if we sell property, we no longer enforce anything on that property, because it is no longer within our gates. God clearly calls the new owner to Sabbath observance as well, but the duty to obey is not on the shoulders of the previous owner. The only time we have the right to enforce the Sabbath on another is as the right of a property owner to compel a visitor on his property to either comply with the owner s wishes or leave. If we sell the property, it passes out of our control, and the right to enforce behavior on that property ceases to be ours. Absent the controlling authority of a theocracy, the responsibility of Sabbath observance falls to the property owner, and the sale of the property transfers the responsibility to the new owner. Of course, Sabbath observance ceases to be an issue only when the control of property is completely transferred. When there is only a partial transfer of control, Sabbath observance is still an issue. Ellen White makes an observation which is instructive, when speaking of people who enter into business partnerships with unbelievers:

5 If, for the sake of gain, he allows the business in which he has an interest to be carried on on the Sabbath by his unbelieving partner, he is equally guilty with the unbeliever; and it is his duty to dissolve the relation, however much he may lose by so doing. Men may think they cannot afford to obey God, but they cannot afford to disobey Him. Those who are careless in their observance of the Sabbath will suffer great loss.-- Review and Herald, March 18, In the case of a church leasing part of a building to another entity, the church retains partial control of the property, and therefore retains responsibility for guarding the Sabbath on the property, since property partially within our control remains within our gates. Because of this understanding, in the Minnetonka Church has included a Sabbath clause in the lease with Nasha Shkola. Similarly, we have an agreement with club Tonka to rent part of our space part of the time. Even though we are not in the building on Friday nights, and would not have our own Sabbath rest disturbed by them if they were there, we refuse to rent the gym to them during Sabbath hours, because it falls within our gates. These two situations demonstrate that the Minnetonka Church takes the Sabbath seriously, and declines financial gain rather than violate the Sabbath within our gates. The question then is, when leasing a building out in its entirety, all the space all the time, what is the responsibility regarding the Sabbath? Does this constitute entering into a partnership, such as described by Ellen White? Notice how she defines a partnership: as a business in which he has an interest. That suggests that the person in question expects to realize monetary gain from the success of the business partnership. Leasing a building is not the same as entering into a business partnership, because the owner of the building does not have a financial interest in the business of the renter. That business may prosper or fail, but the rent is still due, and therefore there is no real interest in that business. A lease may be thought of as an arrangement in which the owner of a property grants ownership to another entity for a specified period of time, in return for specified considerations. Within American jurisprudence, it... represents a conveyance of possessory rights to real estate, it is a hybrid sort of contract that involves qualities of a deed. (Wikipedia) At the end of the lease, ownership reverts to the entity which holds the deed. Of course, there are limits on the ownership rights of the lessee; for example, he cannot demolish the building without the permission of the entity granting the lease. Other rights might be limited by the lease, and are negotiated between the parties crafting the lease. In a situation where a building is being leased exclusively to an occupant who controls all activities within the entire structure all the time, it is clear that this occupant is responsible to God to keep the Sabbath. However, to call the person who owns that structure into

6 responsibility to enforce this on the occupant, even though the owner no longer controls the space, is a situation not specifically covered in either the scriptures or the writings of Ellen White. It is clear that every person is called upon to observe the Sabbath, and to require that it be observed in any space that they control. It is equally clear that if space is shared with another party, the partial retention of control requires that we either observe the Sabbath in that space, or disassociate ourselves from the party who will not honor the Sabbath. It is also clear that while a theocracy could enforce Sabbath observance even on property that had been sold to a foreigner, we are no longer in a theocracy, and neither the scripture nor Ellen White require us to control Sabbath observance on property after it has been sold. On the matter of property leased entirely to another entity, Both the Scriptures and Ellen White are silent, and we are left to ourselves to consider the implications of such leases. Is it to some degree under our control, and therefore necessary to include a Sabbath Clause? If so, does this apply to all properties, or do we have to distinguish between homes, hospitals, schools, and commercial enterprises? Or, does the lease of property in its entirety transfer the responsibility for Sabbath observance in its entirety, as it would if the property were sold? Since these questions are not made clear in either the Bible or the writings of Ellen White, people of good will and honest hearts are likely to disagree. This being the case, the decision for whether to insert a Sabbath clause into a lease transferring complete control of a piece of property to the lessee is one which rests with the entity issuing the lease of the property. If it is a case of space that we occupy entirely, the answer is clear that we keep the Sabbath there. If it is a case of shared space, there is guidance given by Ellen White. But since neither she nor the Bible addressed total occupancy situations, we must be very thoughtful and prayerful not only when making this choice ourselves, but in judging the choices made by others who lease property to non-sabbatarians.