MV Fall 2024

24 Oct

WHAT’S YOUR SECRET?

In

When he was alone with his disciples, he went over
everything, sorting out the tangles, untying the knots.
(Mark 4:34, The Message)

Jesus was a master storyteller. The Gospels made us aware of lessons that come from listening to what Jesus was explaining to those around him, including his disciples. It was the parables and their lessons that made me a Christian.

Jesus spoke to many, but disciples were treated to something extra. We read that “He went over everything, sorting out the tangles and untying the knots,” Mark reports.

Wouldn’t we wish to find out what he was sharing with them in the privacy of their seclusion? What were those secrets he unveiled? What were the issues he raised with them?

Moreover, wouldn’t our own Christian attitude today be different if we knew what and about whom he was talking about? What if among his different explanations, Jesus was teaching them how to embrace and love those who did not look like them and us, who did not believe like us.

Perhaps some of the Twelve asked him about the issues, predicaments, and all that stuff we are experiencing today—in XXI Century version—yet have no easy answers to give. Perhaps He talked to them about the future, as he explained the secrets of our human lot—whether then or now?

Perhaps He talked to them about being responsive to the cries of the voiceless as Jesus enlisted them to join a band of those whose task is to “repair the broken world?”

Then, at other times, he would sit among the “extraordinary sinners,” pagans, even … women. Consider specific examples of two tax collectors—Matthew and Zacchaeus—a Samaritan woman, and a few prostitutes. With him came a new reality and a mega change.

Often, I ask myself about my own faith community as to why we are being so selective in addressing world’s issues, which we seem to have lots to complain about.

During my days when I was living and working in Poland, my church was engaged in combating social pathologies. This did not sit well with some of the clergy. I remember a pastor raising his hand in a Q&A session and asking: “What could I do with 150 drug addicts and parents who came to my church last Friday night seeking help? Our church is not about that,” he said.

Perhaps the church was not prepared to do that, but the church, as a healing community, is about being responsive to the plight of those who are seeking a better way of life.

In this context, perhaps a lesson of listening to Jesus, which I must do, speaks loud and clear in a more modern encounter with what I would describe as “repairing the world.”

There is so much one could list, and we, as Adventists, are able to provide chapter and verse of what is wrong with our world. We do this through a fascinating story of the great controversy between good and evil. The media pregnant world of today craves the excitement brought by a Batman, a Spiderman, or the Man of Steel, one after another.

I would propose that we connect ourselves more with the flesh, blood, and bones of human experience, away from a virtual, digital experience and more with humanity in a one-on-one manner.

Our family would sit at a kitchen table, and, as it happens in many homes, we talked about the current affairs. It was my grandmother Janina who often kept us in wonder. She would recall the days of her youth and concluded with a comment: “Those were the ‘golden years.’ I wish they returned.”

Those were the “golden years!” And people were kind toward each other.

Our parents were more respectful about changes. The war was over, though the post-war reality was slowly settling-in after the years of WWII. Together with my siblings—living in a new reality—we would challenge the grown-ups: Golden years? Really? When? We would ask.

Frankly, I wish today was at least gold plated, even for a moment.

Every generation considers, even for a moment, that theirs is a reality to keep a bit longer. But …

For me, my present reality (now noted as post reality) is inscribed with the words by Coldplay, describing a heartbreak, yet giving a richer relevance. They sing: “Once upon a time, we burned bright, now all we ever seem to do is fight.”

Rajmund Dabrowski is the RMC communication director and editor of Mountain Views. Email him at: rayd@rmcsda.org

24 Oct

SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING SOLID

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In 2016, Pastor David Jeremiah released a book: I Never Thought I’d See the Day! Sounds like something you or I could probably write, now doesn’t it? The times in which we find ourselves living are indeed far different from those of the not-too-distant past. As Bible-believing Christians, however, we should not be taken totally off guard by the state of the world.

In 2 Timothy 3:1-5 (NLT), we read:

You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.

If that were not found in the Bible, I suspect we could expect to find it in a present-day newspaper. I believe the same could be said about Apostle Peter’s words (2 Peter 3:3): Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days, scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires.

While I wholeheartedly accept that these forebodings apply to our age, I believe it is also important to keep our times in perspective. Take our political climate for example. The rhetoric seems to be getting more vicious and personal with each election season. Candidates, it seems, are not content to focus on their political differences with their “opponent,” they seem driven to debase, discredit, and belittle them at every opportunity.

In a 2016 column in the Los Angeles Times titled “Lies, insults, and exaggerations: A U.S. presidential campaign tradition,” Alexia Fernandez wrote the following: “The presidential campaign of 1800 gave the American public its first taste of how outrageous and fierce candidates could be in pursuit of the highest office. Thomas Jefferson, who lost the 1796 election against John Adams, campaigned formidably against the incumbent. He paid the editor of the Richmond Examiner to print anti-Federalist and anti-Adams articles and praise his own campaign. Written attacks by Jefferson supporters claimed Adams was a “hideous hermaphrodital character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

Adams’ campaign retaliated, calling Jefferson a “mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

What’s that expression … “the more things change, the more they stay the same?” And didn’t Solomon tell us That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9, NKJV).

I’m not sure it is much comfort to realize that the world has always been in a mess and we have no right to expect our age to be any different. Be that as it may, how should we as Bible-believing, Christ-following, Holy Spirit-filled Seventh-day Adventists function amidst all the turmoil around us?

I firmly believe that in this age of change and uncertainty people are searching for something solid that they can hold on to today, tomorrow, and all the tomorrows to follow. Thankfully, we have that solid footing that will steer them, and us, in the right direction. People are living in fear these days, and if they do not have a relationship with Jesus, they have every right to be afraid. As believers, however, we know that “God has not given us a spirit of timidity and fear, but of power, and love, and a sound mind” (see 2 Timothy 1:7).

This is certainly not a time to water down our deeply held beliefs. Joe Crews, the founder of the Amazing Facts Ministry in his must-read book Creeping Compromise, said that the church always stays a certain distance from the world. The problem he noted is that the further the world gets away from God, the same applies to the church.

This is a time for us to be more determined to truly live out our faith by knowing and claiming God’s promises found in His Word. We should be earnestly praying each day for the Baptism or Infilling of the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us on our journey. This is a time for us to be more bold in our witness and share our faith which can and should serve us well in these troublesome times. All about us are people whose hearts are “failing them from fear” (Luke 21:26). Oswald Chambers put it well when he said, “Let your faith be stronger than your fear.” Again, when our focus is on the condition of the world, dread is a reasonable response. When our focus is on our Lord and Savior, and His anticipated return, however, such a response makes no sense at all.

Some reading this might come away thinking I’m saying we should accept the fact that we cannot change the state of the world and we should just throw up our hands in despair. Well, maybe yes, and maybe no. I do believe we can positively impact our families, churches, and communities. But as for the whole world, I suggest we would be better advised to throw up our hands in prayer.

Richard Neibuhr summed up what I am suggesting in his famous “Serenity Prayer.” Many are familiar with the first verse, but many others do not realize there is a second verse. Apparently, the prayer has appeared in various versions, and even its authorship and date of origin are in question. Nevertheless, I invite you to consider how you might apply it to your life:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will make all things right, if I surrender to His will,

That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.”

Sounds wise to me. Amen?

Ron Price is a member of the Piñon Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church in Farmington, New Mexico. He has authored three books in his PLAY NICE in Your Sandbox series, created a small group study in conflict management, and is the co-founder of the Institute for Biblical Peacemakers. Email him at: rprice@BiblicalPeacemakers.org

23 Oct

A CALL FOR COMPASSION OR FOR CONSPIRACIES?

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A few months back, a fairly controversial Adventist speaker came to my home state of Maine and delivered a couple eyebrow-raising presentations that garnered some attention around the Adventist world. Speaking of the COVID-19 crisis, and how the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists refused to lend official support to those who tried to opt out of getting vaccinated, he said one thing in particular that caught my attention. The COVID-19 crisis, he proposed, “was the single largest evangelistic opportunity in our lifetime, and we fell in line with the papacy.”

We did so, he insisted, because the General Conference failed to give official support to its members who lost their jobs by refusing to get vaccinated. Instead of officially standing up for each member’s religious liberty, the Adventist Church caved to neo-Marxist pressure—and thus failed to reap the gains of non-Adventists around the world who’d be impressed with a truly Protestant denomination that stood up for the rights of its individual members.

It’s not my interest to analyze or critique the views of the speaker—nor to assess the steps or missteps of the General Conference (then or now). Neither am I trying to rehash old debates and discussions about COVID-19 and the efficacy, or non-efficacy, of any particular approach to treatment.

What I find interesting, however, is the underlying assumptions that the speaker presented, and the (perhaps) competing perspectives on how Adventists should act during postnormal times and moments of crisis. There’s also divergent—perhaps even dichotomous—opinions on what actions are off-putting to an onlooking world, and which ones are evangelistically attractive.

For example, the General Conference, in explaining why they gave general support to the public health measures promoted by health officials (even while making it repeatedly and abundantly clear that they also respected and supported the choices of individual members), cited the need to “lov[e] our neighbors as ourselves” as a reason to follow vaccination recommendations.

To be clear, whether one agrees or disagrees with the efficacy of such measures is besides my point; the stated goal, at least, was to be good neighbors, trying to practice Christ’s second greatest commandment and to put others’ potential wellbeing above one’s individual rights.

At the same time, implicit in this stance, was the fear that to dogmatically assert one’s individual rights in such an instance would be to potentially undermine our witness in the world.

This particular speaker, and the dozens—and perhaps hundreds—who “amened” his presentation, felt the exact opposite about what constituted a good evangelistic witness. It was not through actions that could be perceived as loving one’s neighbor that could yield the biggest evangelistic returns, but standing up for and asserting one’s individual rights that could greatly impress the onlooking world.

Of course, underlying the whole presentation was an eschatological assumption. We’re living in the last days, and just about every crisis that comes along is an opportunity for the governments of the world to chip away at individual liberty.

So, taking a stand and asserting one’s individual liberty, is a prophetic and God-ordained work—an implicit resistance against the satanic forces that are trying to suffocate freedom of conscience. To fail to stand up for religious liberty, as the speaker defined it, is to turn one’s back on our prophetic calling, and to neglect to prepare people to receive the “seal of God” and resist the mark of the beast.

Thus, it’s not only a failed evangelistic opportunity; it’s a failed evangelistic mandate (which, obviously, trumps any governmental mandates).

Again, I’m not trying to be critical of any individual or institution. I just think this episode illustrates two paths that Adventists can take when it comes to how we relate to and navigate through postnormal times. We can prioritize love of neighbor, works of justice and mercy, and empathy; or we can give more emphasis to individual rights, our prophetic interpretations—and what we perceive to be our calling and responsibilities in light of those prophetic interpretations—and last-day timelines.

This isn’t at all to imply that these two paths have to be mutually exclusive. But far too often, they seem to be for many Adventists.

When crisis strikes, many times Adventists become more known for blanketing a community with The Great Controversy than saturating a community with blankets. We tend to make sure that no good crisis goes to waste, leveraging people’s fears and scarcity for our eschatological ends. In many ways, in such instances, we relate to people in crisis as objects to be “sealed” rather than people to be helped and loved.

And even when we do lead with works of love, it’s often just a set up in preparation to blitz them with what we really care about: the truth (about the end-times).

Again, this may sound like a false dichotomy—or overly-critical. I wish to be neither. But if I’m inching close to cynicism or negativity, it’s because I find myself so incredibly jealous for love serving as the primary position from which we operate. I desperately want Adventism to be known—especially in postnormal times—for its compassion, mercy, generosity, and care, rather than its conspiracies and uncompromising assertion of individual liberty (motivated chiefly by beliefs about what will supposedly happen in the future).

What was it, after all, that Jesus told his disciples would indicate they were his followers? By this all will know that you are My disciples, John recorded him as saying, if you have love for one another (John 13:35). Warning people about impending disaster, or fighting for individual rights, isn’t necessarily in opposition to loving well, of course. We don’t need to set up false dichotomies.

But if the people we’re supposedly trying to love consistently feel like we’re not loving them well, there’s a decent chance we’re not.

Truly, postnormal times are incredible opportunities to let our lights shine. But let that be the light of love—not simply a litany of prophetic proof-texts. Let’s reach out to our neighbors with a genuine and selfless love, free from ulterior motives and hidden agendas, and treat others as we would want to be treated.

If that creates a curiosity about the religious commitments that motivate our behavior—which it often does—then that’s an extra bonus, and we can humbly bear witness to the hope that’s within us. But if it doesn’t open up those avenues, we should honor people’s agency and not try to force them to take a medicine they don’t realize they may need.

Though experience has taught me that many of us choose the path of conspiracy over compassion, that’s fortunately not always the case.

Being Love

I remember a conversation I had with a new friend of mine quite a few years ago that was both unique and surprising—so unique that I still remember it to this day. We had connected at Dartmouth College because we were both doing Christian ministry on the campus, and when he asked me what specific faith community I was a part of, his response to my indication of Seventh-day Adventism caught me off guard. “Oh,” he said with a grateful smile on his face, “you guys are the ones who run ADRA.” He then added, “You do really good work around the world.”

As I said, his response caught me off guard. I had never encountered a response like that when I’ve told someone I’m an Adventist—nor have I had someone respond like that since then. Most of the time, people have either never heard of us, they think we’re Mormons, they immediately identify some traditional practice we’re known for—the Sabbath or vegetarianism—or they increasingly identify us as the people who send out a “strange” and unsolicited book via mass mailing.

But imagine if everyone, when they heard the name Adventist, immediately thought of people who just want to help other people. Imagine if in times of crisis, we were known as the people who love—rather than people who are quick to push “conspiracy theories” about those crises in an attempt to try to leverage people’s fears, anxieties, and deficits for what we perceive to be our eschatological mission.

Imagine!

We can still speak of our prophetic understanding—which can be, when done wisely and in the context of God’s love, extremely relevant and clarifying. But we definitely shouldn’t push that button unless and until we first overwhelm people with the unadulterated message that we are for them, we love them, we want what’s best for them, and our service to them isn’t contingent on them joining our team or receiving our “seal.”

So how should Adventists act in postnormal times, and what should we be known for in times of crisis? Just the same as always: By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

Shawn Brace is a pastor, church planter, and author in Portland, Maine, and a DPhil Candidate at Oxford University. You can subscribe to his weekly newsletter at shawnbrace.substack.com. Email him at: shawnbrace@gmail.com

23 Oct

OPPORTUNITY THE WORLD NEEDS

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I first encountered the term “post-Christendom” in a college course on postmodernism. I had no idea what it meant, but I was intrigued. Eventually, I discovered the same definition everyone else has who works in the fields of theology, missions, education, cultural studies, political science, social services, government, and general church work:

Post-Christendom refers to the dismantling of the veneer of Christianity in Western civilization—assumptions about the role and place of Christian beliefs, notions of Christian-influenced morality, and the Church as a community institution—as the accepted religious shape of a given society and its culture.

In other words, post-Christendom refers to the ongoing practice of Western societies to move away from Christianity as the assumed leader of morality or a leading influence on culture and government. The biggest impact post-Christendom has had on our lives has been the increasing reality that Christian identity is no longer considered axiomatic in our larger society and culture. Living in a post-Christendom society inevitably means learning to live without the comfort, security, or ease of the forms and expressions of Christianity that previously made it easier to live unbothered as a believer.

Adventism, Normalcy, and the Problems of Living in Postnormal Times

Why am I talking about the concept of post-Christendom? The reason is because people are now living in what can only be called the “postnormal” and having the same experience with postnormal times as I first did with post-Christendom times. Like it or not, the last few years have been anything but normal. In fact, they’ve been downright strange and even a little bizarre. I’m not going to address any of the odd events that have occurred in the United States or throughout the world for the last four years, because that level of strangeness can be absolutely overwhelming on certain days! Instead, I want to address some of the postnormal that has been happening in the Seventh-day Adventist Church that has now come to define much of the spiritual background of our lives.

Since 2020, these postnormal times have witnessed a blossoming of independent Adventist movements and “supporting ministries,” whose sole purpose seems to be to angrily snipe at the organized Adventist Church for its apparent apostasy, while still wanting to be identified as part of the organized Adventist Church. You know it’s not normal when other independent ministries start to express discomfort with this new breed of “Adventist” independent ministry.

Likewise, the presence of anti-trinitarian groups in Adventist circles is not new to the denomination, but the rise in a militant style of anti-trinitarianism is something novel. This “Adventist” anti-trinitarianism not only tries to take over local congregations but also whole conferences (and their headquarters!)—which isn’t so much alarming as it is strange.

What is stranger still, however, is the phenomenon of Adventist church members allying themselves with odd theological and social bedfellows. Adventists who tend to describe themselves as progressive or liberal are increasingly joining forces with mainline Protestant groups and organizations. This is nothing new, though what is a little unusual is how much self-proclaimed social activists within Adventism are starting to also embrace the liturgical life of these denominations, given their historic disinterest in liturgy.

But even more odd are the self-identifying conservative and moderate Adventists who are now flirting with the secret rapture, the role of Israel in end-time events, and the seven-year reign of the antichrist as acceptable Adventist beliefs, or at least an openness to Adventism being wrong about the end-time apostasy of other churches.

Perhaps the strangest thing of all are those Adventists and independent groups who are now claiming Ellen G. White always believed that Christians need to turn the United States into a theocracy, with the organized Adventist Church slipping into apostasy while the American evangelicalism of the culture wars is considered the true remnant. Talk about postnormal times indeed!

This situation can easily feel overwhelming and discouraging. The polarization of Adventism seems to be increasing by the day and it’s unclear what the solution is. Talking about the problem is of no help either. Different factions within Adventism have drawn up their doctrinal, lifestyle, missional, and authorial reasons for this polarization, including who is to blame (and in some instances, who ought to be expelled from the Adventist Church). The only thing these disparate perspectives can agree on is that there is a problem and that these are not normal times!

Besides, we know what the true problem—dare I say crisis?—actually is, because it has been with us for a long time: lovelessness. We are judgmental and ungracious to ourselves and each other, and we generally distrust our leaders, pastors, and teachers. We are also suspicious and fearful of each other, both from the clergy side and the laity side, and we often actively undermine each other in subtle, passive, and indirect ways—which ultimately undermines our mission and witness. Like my original confrontation with post-Christendom, it can feel good and reassuring to go back “to when things were normal” and even strive to reclaim a semblance of that normalcy. But if time tells us anything about normalcy, it is that one can never go back to when things were normal and made sense (and they probably never existed anyway). All you can do is move ahead.

Constructing an Adventist Theology of Hope

The requirement to move ahead (because there is no other option) brings us back to the issue of Adventism in postnormal times. How are we to move forward? What we need is an Adventist theology of hope. I’m not talking about Jürgen Moltmann’s famous book Theology of Hope, though this is an admirable example of hope as the tenor of theology and faith. I’m talking about the very bones and sinew of Adventism! So many Adventists approach their denominational identity and mission devoid of hope. Some of us focus on doctrine, others health, still others church policy and tradition, while yet still others highlight any number of marginal hobbyhorses. The problem with this approach is not that it creates competition between all these good and important aspects of the mission, though it truly does, and we have been reaping the limiting and stagnating effects of this for well over a century. The real problem is that none of this can give any hope for the mission, because all of this is the fruit rather than the root of Adventist mission and identity.

A theology of hope, I believe, has four core elements: a foundation, an orientation, a life, and a structure. The foundation of an Adventist theology of hope must be the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus, the God-man, is the only reality that can sustain the Adventist Church, because Jesus is the only one who has died for us, conquered death, and strode forth from the grave robed in everlasting life. Such a rootedness in Jesus’ resurrection inevitably lifts us out of empty searching for meaning and purpose and sets us on he who is meaning and purpose itself. Consequently, the orientation of an Adventist theology of hope must be the second coming of Jesus. He who came the first time to die for us is the same one who will come the second time to finish the work of salvation he began in us, and who has preserved that work with his ongoing heavenly ministry for us.

But an Adventist theology of hope can only be nurtured and lived out of a living connection with the crucified and risen Lord Jesus who is coming again. This kind of theology of hope can never be sustained by wishful thinking, hoping things turn out well, or trying to live your life the best you can. Rather, it is only by the grace and fellowship that is daily given to us by the Lord and Rabbi to whom we belong and who calls us his beloved. Finally, such a life and connection with the risen Jesus can only be maintained by structuring it around what I call missional gospel practices: fasting, prayer, Bible reading, giving to the poor, Sabbath, sharing your faith, hospitality, spending time in nature, being with your family, serving, practicing forgiveness, resting, and trusting in God.

Conclusion: Living as an Adventist in Postnormal Times

An Adventist theology of hope will enable Adventists to live boldly and robustly in postnormal times. Such an Adventism would be relevant, not by someone else’s standards but by its own standard. The reason this is true is obvious: an Adventist theology of hope gives us the courage to reclaim our identity, mission, and unity, practice Jesus’ commands to care for the poor and oppressed in society, proclaim the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and joyfully embrace the responsibility to share the three angels’ messages with the world in preparation for the soon return of King Jesus. Like the early Adventists who were energized by their friendship with Jesus and invigorated by a theology of hope to get involved in missions, hospitals, schools, and relief work, the sky is the limit for twenty-first century Adventists who will do the same.

Nathaniel Gamble is the RMC Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Director and pastors four churches in Colorado. He is currently finishing his PhD from Calvin Theological Seminary and is married to Alexandria. Email him at: nathanielgamble@outlook.com

23 Oct

DIFFERENT DAY, SAME GOD

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One of my favorite places to get dessert is CRUMBL Cookies. It’s a cookie chain that serves giant fresh baked cookies in a brilliantly bright pink box. The unique thing about this business is that the entire menu changes. Each week, five flavors of cookies change entirely. For example, one week the menu may offer a Chocolate Covered Strawberry cookie, but within seven days, that flavor will be traded out for Lemon Poppy Seed. Customers never know what flavors will show up each week, nor do they know when a certain favorite flavor of theirs will return to the menu. It’s a genius business model if you really think about it. The ever-changing menu keeps customers curious and coming back regularly in anticipation to see which flavors are offered in the limited span of six business days.

CRUMBL Cookies is very similar to life in that you can always count on one thing … change. If only every change we experienced in this life were as sweet as fresh baked cookies. There are many changes happening in our world, whether it be changes in society, the economy, with technology, in politics, in religion, the list goes on and on. Sometimes it seems like the entire menu changes weekly. But it makes me wonder if the changes that are happening in our world today can lead us as Christians to a place of curiosity and anticipation rather than fear and anxiety. It makes me wonder if the changes that are happening in the world around us can lead us to a place where we say, “Different Day, Same God.”

Like all things, this brings me to go look at the Word of God. This subject of change   brings me the old solid Bible story of David and Goliath:

Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle?” Am I not a Philistine? And are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me (1 Samuel 17: 8).

Goliath makes a solid point here. Why would the guys in the Israelite army line up for battle, day after day, morning and evening, for forty days, just to run away?! I guess I can’t blame the Israelites, because with single man combat, the Israelites are no longer looking to God or their full army for help. Instead, they start comparing themselves to what’s in front of them, Goliath. When they compare, they see they have big odds stacked against them! Their struggle is very real! So, they keep lining up, and running away, lining up, and running away.

But what if the army of Israelites had compared their circumstances, their surroundings, and, ultimately, their giant to their God? What if we compare our circumstances, our surroundings, and, ultimately, the giants we are facing in our world to our God? I recently heard a song that sang, “The only remedy for big odds, is a big God.” It makes me ask the question, “Are we as Christians comparing our big odds to our big God?”

Next up in the story, a shepherd boy named David, the youngest son of Jesse, heads out to deliver bread and cheese to his brothers who are “fighting” in battle. That’s right, before there was DoorDash, there was David.

David happens to show up right as the Israelites are lining up for battle and that’s when he hears Goliath talking trash about his God. He also hears about the reward for the one who kills the giant: you get wealth, a wife, and waived from taxes! What a deal! People hear David discussing these matters and bring him to King Saul.

Which brings us to the passage that I believe is the heart of the story and the heart of this article.

But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine (1 Samuel 17:34-37).

This passage often gets skimmed over, but it is the cornerstone of this Bible story. Forever, I heard this story growing up, and the emphasis was always on David and how much faith he had in God. The title we give this story is, “David and Goliath.” The songs we sing about this story go something like, “Only a boy named David.” Forever, I thought David was the main character of this story and the main point was to have courage and faith like David did. But this passage changed everything for me.

This passage reveals that

God was the one who made the first move.
God was the one who first rescued David from the Lion.
God was the one who rescued David again from the paw of the bear.
God rescued David first.
God loved David first.

David is just an eyewitness of the Living God, and THAT makes David look at his current situation and say, “Different Day, Same God. Different Giant, Same God.”

It’s God’s faithfulness that gives David the courage and confidence to … go to the frontlines,

To boldly speak truth to the giant;
To run towards him;
To kill him with a stone;
To stand over him in victory; and
To, ultimately, reverse the entire story for the Israelites.

The story even ends with the Israelites doing a victory chant and chasing after the Philistines.

Talk about a plot twist. I think God loves a good plot twist.

The point of this story is not just “Try to have the SAME FAITH as David,” but that “We have the SAME GOD as David.”

I used to think of the Bible as stories about

Abraham having faith in God.
Joseph having faith in God.
Moses having faith in God.
David having faith in God.
Daniel having faith in God.

And I used to think the main point of these Bible stories was that I need to try to be like these characters and have a lot of faith. That’s not a bad message by any means, but the problem was that once the Bible ended, it’s done. That’s where the God stories stop. That’s where the powerful God stops, because all of those Bible characters are dead and done, including God.

But when reading through the Bible, I realized it is not just a bunch of separate stories of humans having faith in God, the Bible is one BIG story of God being faithful to humanity.

Which means, when the Bible stops, God keeps going.

Which means, when our world throws us curveballs, God keeps working.

Which means, when our world keeps changing, God remains constant.

Which means, when it’s 2024 and we are surrounded with new challenges, our big God is still in it with us.

It means He’s NOT just the God of Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, and David …

He’s the God of Mollie,
The God of Rajmund,
The God of you, Reader!
The God of each and every one of you.

He is so in love with us, ready and willing to walk, talk, and do life with us.

Fellow Christian, our God is the God who is and who was and who is to come. He’s got the whole world in His hands. So instead of looking at the changes and challenges that surround us in this world today with fear and anxiety, let’s confidently be in a place of curiosity and anticipation. Let’s be curious and excitedly anticipating how God is going to work this time, how He’s going to come through this time, how He’s going to win this time.

When we realize that our God is big and faithful, this gives us the confidence to live confidently in an ever-changing world, with ever changing battles, with ever changing giants. So whatever change or challenge we face, whether good, bad or ugly, we can confidently say,

Different Day, Same God
Different Struggle, Same God
Different Job, Same God
Different Battle, Same God
Different Economy, Same God
Different World Leaders, Same God
Different Life Chapter, Same God
Different Giant, Same God.

Mollie Dupper is the associate pastor at Boulder Adventist Church. Email her at: molliejdupper@gmail.com

23 Oct

MEMOIRS OF A SANDWICH

In

I am a sandwich.

Well, metaphorically …

I guess I could more accurately say that I am a member of the “sandwich generation,” a loose term for the segment of the population who are simultaneously caring for their aging parents and supporting their own children, even if only financially. And I am in good company with about a quarter of the U.S. adult population joining me in this passage.1

To continue with the taxonomy, I also lie within the largest group of this segment deemed “middle-aged” with around 70% of this group between the ages of 40 and 59.2  Within the North American Division (NAD) of Seventh-day Adventists, we comprised almost half of the membership as of 2022.3

So, what is important about this classification other than comprising a significant number of the Adventist population? We were also “sandwiched” between two worlds: analog and digital.

Many of my peers and I remember the days when every electronic had a tether or a dial. As children, we had the role of being the human TV remote, physically going to the TV to change the channel. There was no such thing as auto dial, and you painfully watched the rotary dial on phone slowly track its way back to set before whirling it to the next number in the sequence. And one of our most valued possessions was our bicycle and the freedom and adventure it brought.

Then suddenly, in retrospect, the proverbial technology roller coaster completed the slow clackety climb to the analog apex of the track’s big drop and into the fast-paced digital world we rushed. The familiar “schwack” and “ding” of the typewriter was replaced by the jarring sound of the dial-up modem. Telephones became mobile and were no longer terra-firma bound. You could write to people all over the world and transfer knowledge in a split second rather than with costly phone plans and slow mail service.

So, you take this constantly changing physical and technological world of our youth and the constantly changing requirements of our adulthood, and I am not sure if my counterparts and I have ever really known “normal.”

So here is the rub … for us, everything is “normal.”

We were familiar with times of being relatively “unplugged.” We were also young and adaptable and growing along with this fledgling digital technology. We were certainly a sizable number of early engineers and are a large portion of the continued producers of what we are experiencing now in this period being labeled “Postnormal Times,” or PNT for short.

This concept of PNT was popularized by Ziauddin Sardar, a British-Pakistani scholar, writer, and cultural critic. It is identified as a departure from society’s previous social and governing structures and is characterized as a period of interconnected systems, unpredictability, instability, and contradictory values, beliefs, and realities.

If I were to be honest, I feel as though the twentieth century was one big postnormal time, from the roaring 20s to the female workforce during WWII to the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s to the punk rock subculture emerging in the mid-1970s. And the twenty-first century has certainly followed suit with the growth of social media, COVID, and now the integration of AI in our daily lives.

So, what has this all meant for my fellow Adventist sandwiches? My sandwich peers are half of the Adventist population and are “in line” and currently taking the leadership reins from the previous generation in the Church. Unfortunately, in a 2011 global survey of former Adventist church members commissioned by the General Conference (GC) Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, found that around 35% of middle-aged members leave the church.4 These departures are for a multitude of reasons but included losing touch with the Adventist Church, feeling shame to not being able to live up to perceived standards, anger over treatment from the church, and more.5

So how does the Church address these problems in these continued unstable times and keep this group engaged and supported, and, ultimately, retained in the Church?

My fellow sandwiches all face some similar challenges to varying degrees. Probably one of the most basic struggles is the financial burden of supporting essentially three generations. The Church may not be able to address this issue with each individual’s circumstances, but there are benefits to being part of a supportive community in terms of hearing of employment opportunities, caregiving assistance, financial gifts from church members for significant needs, and an eager prayer community.

There is also trying to balance career responsibilities and caregiving duties that weigh on sandwiches. The stress of caregiving can take a toll on the mental and physical health of this generation. Many benefit from access to mental health services, respite care, and support groups to manage stress and avoid burnout.

Building and maintaining strong social support networks is essential. What better place to encourage from and build upon a positive support network than the Church. These networks can provide emotional support, practical assistance, and a sense of community, helping to alleviate some of the pressures of caregiving.6 What can be more Christ-like than that!

And since sandwiches manage three plus generations in their spiritual and church lives, ease of accessibility to the community is crucial. While the Adventist denomination may have initially been slow to adopt the new digital advances, it certainly has its presence on them now, from live-streamed Sabbath services to online publications and most churches and related clubs on social media.

While we can mostly agree that being present and in-person in our Church community provides the greatest spiritual and personal gains, a more hybrid approach in the Church can give those with demanding schedules greater ability to be active and engaged in the community, rather than just having to “opt out” until their lives allow for more mental, emotional, and physical space to participate. Flexibility for sandwiches is key.

So, while we wait for His second coming to eliminate the struggles and stresses of all, putting focus on all-encompassing access and tailored support to the Church community is paramount to continuing our commission in the name of Jesus and continuing to build a supportive, thriving Christian community in these ever-changing times.

Liz Kirkland is the RMC communication assistant. Email her at: lizk@rmcsda.org

 

1  Blazina, C. (2022, April 8). More than half of Americans in their 40s are ‘sandwiched’ between an aging parent and their own children. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/08/more-than-half-of-americans-in-their-40s-are-sandwiched-between-an-aging-parent-and-their-own-children/

2  Parker, K., & Parker, K. (2013, January 30). The sandwich generation. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/01/30/the-sandwich-generation/

3  Coppockm. (2023, April 12). Age Statistics in the Adventist Church – Adventist Research. Adventist Research. https://www.adventistresearch.info/age-statistics-in-the-adventist-hurch/#:~:text=In%20essence%2C%20while%20there%20are,80)%20comprise%20only%2012%25

4  Trim, D. (2011). Foundational Research. Retrieved August 18, 2024, from https://www.adventistresearch.info/wp-content/uploads/NR2017TED_2.pdf

5  Ibid.

6  Cohen, S. (2004). Social relationships and health. American Psychologist, 59(8), 676–684. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.59.8.676

23 Oct

MAKING SENSE OF THE CHAOS: ARE WE LIVING IN POSTNORMAL TIMES?

In

An era in which old orthodoxies are dying, new ones are emerging,
and very few things seem to make sense.
– Ziauddin Sardar

There is tension in today’s world between the order of the old age and the chaos of the current age—a sense that we are in a transitory phase and either headed toward rigid regimentalism or post-legal anarchy where law is no longer applied consistently or predictably and where traditional media objectivity is degraded to the point that people no longer trust it to sort out what is occurring.

This in-between time we are currently experiencing is what British-Pakistani scholar Ziauddin Sardar calls “Postnormal Times” or PNT. He describes PNT “as an era in which old orthodoxies are dying, new ones are emerging, and very few things seem to make sense.” 1

According to the Centre for Postnormal Policy & Futures Studies, “PNT is a product of the forces shaping our globalized, networked world: accelerating change, uncertainty, and ignorance.”

Previously, people received news and opinions as distilled in printed publications and a few short news programs. Lay opinions were shared privately between friends and, if publicly, in carefully curated “letters to the editors.” Investigative journalists reviewed subjects that they thought were important, and they knew that deference was the key to maintaining their sources.

Today, opinion drives the news, which rages through society in massive, repetitive torrents. Consumers pick their favorite flavor and load up on it exclusively, sharing their views to unlimited audiences from their phones that they take with them everywhere. To capture even a fraction of its prior audience, which is now massively diluted, the media actively attempts to drive its listeners to anger against their opponents. There is no longer a shadow of balance in most news programs, with many openly stating that to platform opposing views is tantamount to committing violence. Ordinary people present their opinions without any editorial filter in raw and emotional ways.

This chaos has not gone unchallenged by those who wish to curate public dialogue. During the 2020 election cycle, views that opposed “the science” of vaccines were actively blocked on social media platforms. Those who dared to share the “discredited” Hunter Biden laptop story were called “conspiracy theorists.” As people were compelled to “stay home” during COVID, their primary means of communication was through highly filtered and funneled popular social media platforms. At the same time, government organizations tried to tell the corporate platforms what they should allow people to say about the most pressing issues of the day, and what they should disallow. Independent platforms sprung up to counter the censorship. Still, they were quickly delisted from the Apple and Google app stores and considered dangerous.

The censorship regime, as a counter to the chaos, gained tremendous power until Elon Musk purchased Twitter to allow a platform for free speech. This was considered a dangerous move, with Musk derided as some sort of free speech anarchist because he refused to censor political speech or scientific opinion that went against the narrative.

The formerly dominant media enterprises faded into the background, and Twitter, now X, became the primary source for finding current news as it was happening. If the media will not release the photo or name of a suspect in a mass killing, somebody on X will. Suppose a cable news channel refuses to show a political candidate’s speech. In that case, it will be carried live on many social media platforms. If the media does not describe all sides of an issue, a quick search will reveal endless perspectives. Information is democratized, and this itself is ironically considered by some in the established media as a “threat to democracy,” which they alone define and defend. View counts show that independent media on YouTube often meets or exceeds the number of people watching traditional media outlets online. Many people search for news by the story. They don’t have time to wade through what’s next if it doesn’t interest them.

So, is this sustainable? If PNT is to be applied, probably not. We’re definitely living through a time of accelerating change and uncertainty. So many people are now involved in sharing ideas with vast audiences that pop into their heads, and ignorance is increasing as well.

However, just as the printing press threatened the Medieval hierarchy by making it possible for one person to have their exact idea quickly spread throughout a region, the Internet posed a threat to the established order on an international scale.

Musk’s latest battle with the Brazilian government exemplifies this tension between old rigid information management and modern chaos. The government is asking him to stop certain forms of speech, and he’s refusing to do so, potentially subjecting him to fines and criminal penalties.

I would propose that we are at a crossroads between chaos and consistency. This was the status quo before the rule of law became the norm in the West, and faithful maintenance of a constitutional order that risks causing inconvenience to the enforcer is a human anomaly. It is hard to see exactly what will happen next. Still, perhaps the first step is to recognize that we are, in fact, at a time of chaos when the old ways of sharing information are closing, and a new set of rules will emerge. This is a time when few things seem to make much sense and concepts like the rule of law and constitutional principles of freedom of speech and free exercise of religion may be turned on their heads in service to the political expediency of a few.

And seeing this and knowing that these foundations are in danger of shifting and fracturing, what can we do? According to Sardar, PNT cannot be “controlled” or “managed” but only navigated. A taxonomy of unknown events can help organize these ideas.

The Postnormal Zoo

There are three major types of PNT categories identified in the “Menagerie of Postnormal Potentialities.” 2

BLACK SWANS are events nobody could accurately predict and can be devastatingly troubling or very positive. They are named after a type of bird that was thought not to exist until it was discovered in Australia. It is hard to think of retrospective examples of these deus ex machina-type occurrences because, if you were to examine them, in most cases they’d appear as if they had been products of the Black Elephants or Black Jellyfish described below.

BLACK ELEPHANTS are extremely likely and widely predicted events that most people ignore. Like the proverbial “elephant in the room.” According to Vinay Gupta, they are “high probability and high impact as seen by experts if present trends continue, but low credibility for non-expert stakeholders.” Examples of Black Elephants would be the recent pandemic or economic or climate change issues. People who do not actively follow them often initially consider them Black Swan events.

BLACK JELLYFISH are postnormal phenomena that are not easy to foresee but can escalate rapidly or instantaneously as jellyfish blooms can happen in the ocean. This is often characterized by “things we think we know and understand but which turn out to be more complex and uncertain than we expect.” It can be thought of as small things that dramatically increase in scale to the point where they are dominant. In a way, social media is a Black Jellyfish—the Internet has been around for decades but the emergence of many “super-empowered individuals armed only with smartphones” going to war against the established media could be considered a Black Jellyfish event. An even more striking example is the rapid expansion and increasing dominance of Artificial Intelligence.

There is a good analysis of how the war in Ukraine is a postnormal event3 where the war has primarily been reported in a decentralized manner on social media through memes, videos, and social media posts. The established media is working backward to assemble that information into stories rather than providing primary reporting on what is happening on the ground using war journalists.

It’s hard to tell what will happen next since this is a transitory phase. Granted, PNT categorization may be highly subjective and controversial, but PNT analysis might provide a helpful method of organizing our understanding of current events in some sort of taxonomy instead of viewing them only in terms of a chaotic cloud.

For people of faith, trust in the unwavering goodness of God provides an eternal thread of hope and order in the midst of an increasingly chaotic world.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God (Psalm 90:2, KJV).

Recalibrate:

  1. What are the main characteristics of “postnormal times” as described in the article, and how do they differ from previous historical periods? 
  2. How can understanding the concept of postnormal times help us navigate current global challenges and societal changes more effectively? 
  3. What role does faith and spirituality play in making sense of the chaos and uncertainty of postnormal times, according to the article? How can these perspectives provide comfort and guidance?

Michael Peabody, Esq., is an attorney in Los Angeles, California. He has practiced in the fields of workers compensation and employment law, including workplace discrimination and wrongful termination. He is a frequent contributor to Liberty magazine and edits ReligiousLiberty.TV, an independent website dedicated to celebrating liberty of conscience. Reprinted with permission. Mailing address: Founders First Freedom, PO Box 571302, Tarzana, CA 91357.

 

1  https://www.cppfs.org/

2  https://postnormaltim.es/essentials/menagerie-postnormal-potentialities

3  https://postnormaltim.es/insights/nadiya-part-3-scrolling-down-first-tiktok-war

23 Oct

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

In

Raising a toddler is an exercise in madness.

It’s like going to war every day with a clinically insane enemy, losing to said enemy, and still being profoundly grateful for the opportunity. They are not rational. They throw tantrums that make no sense. They do not like to do the things that are good for them and seem to be determined to do things that could end their lives.

They are insane.

And yet I love my toddler daughter so much I can’t even imagine a universe in which I don’t get to spend every day loving her no matter how ridiculous she is. I wouldn’t change a thing.

That is love.

Now, before I paint myself as some sort of saint, there is no one else I could exist that way with.

Maybe my wife.

Maybe.

But when you consider just how much insanity exists everywhere, one wonders how anyone stays in a relationship with anyone ever. People can be selfish and dishonest in the most nutso ways.

Did you hear about the “birds aren’t real” guy? In 2017, on a whim during a counter protest that was happening outside his window during a Women’s March, Peter McIndoe decided to throw everyone for a loop. He quickly made a sign that read “Birds Aren’t Real” and went and stood amidst the counter protesters. He then proceeded to start making stuff up on the spot about how birds were all a government conspiracy to spy on the American people because all birds were actually drones and that the entire bird population had been killed and replaced with said drones.

It’s insane, right?

Except that, some people believed him. He spent years playing the part of this conspiracy theorist as a joke and as an experiment. Lots of people knew it was a joke. It was an open secret. But many believed him. He backed it up with fake documents and pictures and such.

Eventually he started doing interviews and even a Ted talk about what he had done and why he had done it explaining how he had made it up and why.

But here is what is even crazier than people having believed such a ridiculous conspiracy. Even after he told everyone he made it up and why, there were still people who refused to stop believing the conspiracy.

Perhaps you’ve met people like that.

Here are some questions. What do we do when everything around us becomes unbelievably insane? How are we supposed to relate to that? What happens when everything changes and all the stability we thought we lived within is turned upside down around us?

What do we do when the world goes mad?

We currently live in a time where Christian Nationalism has a real chance of making life in our country very unstable. Our separation of church and state could begin to disappear. Along with that, we could see the disappearance of religious liberty. Add to that, the uncomfortably high number of powerful Neo-Nazi influencers who have hitched their wagon to Evangelical Christianity and helped shape this current Christian Nationalistic movement.

Rights are being taken from women. Openly racist individuals have increasing say in policy creation. If anyone ever wanted to know what passionate Christianity would look like if the love of Jesus was removed, now may be your chance to find out what could come of that.

And it seems ridiculous that this could happen now.

Haven’t we made progress as a people and a nation? Haven’t we learned from the mistakes of our past? Have we forgotten our history? Did we learn nothing from WWII and other historically significant times like it?

It’s frustrating. And I’m terrified for the future my beautifully insane toddler may have to live in when she grows up. How do I or any of us relate to the events of now and the potential realities of the future?

As is my custom, I want to try to address this by asking some questions peppered with some statements and try to simplify it and add some perspective.

Here we go.

If we are servants of Jesus, does a changing context alter the spirit of how we conduct ourselves?

If, even in the day of Jesus, which was a volatile and dangerous time of unrest, we were to be known by our love, does that change now just because our world suddenly becomes volatile in its own way?

If the person we don’t want becomes the president, whichever one that is, do we stop being love to everyone we encounter? If every fear we ever had about life and politics and religion and good and evil comes to pass, does that mean we stop being love to all people?

Do we stop being love just because it becomes inconvenient?

Are we disciples of Jesus always or only when it works in our favor? Which, if we aren’t willing to be known by our love in every situation, I might question whether we were ever actually disciples of Jesus.

Being a disciple of Jesus means we act in love, always.

Being born of the Spirit means we will follow an unpredictable path and find ourselves in places and situations we never expected, and doing things we might not otherwise do. But whatever those things are, we will do them in love.

For example, if the spirit leads you to be a soldier, you will be a soldier, but you will do it in love, walking a line that balances justice and mercy.

If the world goes completely bonkers, does that change who we are in Jesus and who Jesus is in us?

Adventism is a religion that believes deeply in Religious Liberty, although, based on an unfortunate and growing subset within the denomination, you might not know it. Standing for Religious Liberty is more than just doing so to make sure Adventism is free to be Adventism. And, counterintuitively, it isn’t just to make sure people can choose whatever belief they want. It is to make sure people have the freedom to follow wherever the Spirit of God leads them, whatever that turns out to look like. Because, as disciples of Jesus, it is not just our duty, but it should also be our sincere pleasure and desire to make sure people have the freedom and a safe space to follow the Spirit’s leading.

Adventism likes to hang its hat on things like the Sabbath, our interpretations of prophecy, the state of the dead, and the investigative judgment, amongst other beliefs. But there are a lot of Adventists who seem to have forgotten that Religious Liberty has always been foundational to who we are. Along with another one that is more foundational than any of them.

The love of Jesus.

The belief that a disciple of Jesus will be known by their love must supersede anything else we think or believe. It should define us. It should compel us. It should oblige us.

It should be our greatest desire.

If that is all true, then what should change about our discipleship in Christ if the world goes completely mad?

Absolutely nothing.

No matter how much our context changes, no matter how much more dangerous our world becomes, no matter how much we may have to adapt to a newer and crazier world, if we are doing it right, our character won’t change. Because, no matter what happens and no matter how scary and dangerous the world becomes, there is another thing to remember.

Love transcends all fear.

God is love. Where love is, God is. And where God is, love is. And if love isn’t there …

I think you get that logic sequence.

I don’t actually know if the things I fear will come to pass. I do know that I cannot let my fears undermine my love.

And here is the thing about my toddler. She is not actually crazy. She just doesn’t get it yet. She’s only 2. But one day, after years of growing and learning and experiencing, she will become someone different. And, if my wife and I do a really good job as parents, that someone will be an even better version of the amazing kid she already is. But for that to happen, she has to see what it is to be a loving, kind, and patient human.

If we as servants of Jesus can’t maintain a character of patient love and mercy and kindness, through the presence of the Spirit, no matter how ridiculous the world gets, how can the world ever grow and learn that there is a better way to exist that doesn’t involve hatred, violence, fear, and the suppression of freedom?

The world doesn’t get it yet. And, probably, neither do we.

And since we don’t, how about we just focus on being love to as many people as possible and let God sort out the rest?

It isn’t easy, but it’s so crazy a solution it just might work.

Tony Hunter is a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and a hospital chaplain working for UCHealth. Tony, his wife Nirma, and daughter Amryn live in Firestone, Colorado. Email him at: thatbaldguy37@gmail.com

23 Oct

IN THE GRIP OF MODERNITY: THE VALUE OF HISTORY

In

Historian in-coming, as they say on social media reels:

There never was a normal.

That’s not what we want to hear, because we want to think there’s stasis, or at least some sort of benchmark. Almost always, when we talk about things not being how they used to be, or not being “normal,” what we mean is “things aren’t like they were when I was young.”

Since the beginning of the modern era, by which we mean the mid-eighteenth century or so, humans have had to face what they feel to be radical change each generation. This is quite different from the pre-modern period, in which change occurred, albeit much more slowly. Occasionally, there would be massive shifting disasters like earthquakes, fires, or plagues that would shift society in dramatic ways. Or there might be a big invasion or cultural change, such as the Muslim conquests, or the Aztec movement into Central America. But these were rare, and, once they happened, things settled into slow change again.

But we live in “Modernity”—the “Age of the Institutionalization of Technical Specialization,” as the twentieth-century scholar Marshall Hodgson termed it. And even though it has been going on for 250 years, our brains and DNA are not wired for it. So, we experience it as trauma. And make no mistake, we still aren’t totally Modern, and we are reacting to it all the time, but the conflict with the experience is what forms our attempts at creating community, worship, and political organizations.

Let’s describe the values and attributes of the Modern, and then explain how that is shaping us in the church.

Modernity’s primary commitment is to Progress. This is radically different from what had gone before, where most societies are interested in recovering some sort of past or looking to the past as a model for how to be. On its own, this is a huge shift. But because modernity was based on the economic and technical changes from integrating the Americas and the intellectual shifts of the Scientific Revolution, it also included another massive shift that is profound break with the past: We have new ways of knowing.

In the pre-modern, we “knew” something was True because authorities told us it was—mostly authorities in the past. Sometimes Truth was discerned through philosophical speculation and reasoning, but, even in these cases, it was done by using the rules and definitions laid out by the wise ones of the past. Or it might be received by accepted supernatural means such as visions or the results of rituals provided through a spiritual mediary. There was no universal way of deciding what was true, no one way of knowing. Each culture and geographical region had its own methods of discerning truth or identifying the authorities

The modern era developed new ways of knowing, ones that they determined had universal applications. There was now one way to know something was Truth: measurability, verifiability, definability, explicability. This was radically different from the past. But it went along with the other values of Modernity: a focus on productivity
and efficiency. The inventions and practices of the Scientific Revolution and Industrial Revolution privileged homogeneity and uniformity—it was easier to mass produce when all the products were the same. When the same laws and legal system applied to all citizens the same, or when everyone received the same education, it also contributed to individualism. But this wasn’t an individualism that focused on uniqueness; instead, people were cogs in the great machine of society rather than standing out as quirky characters.

The pre-modern world had valued the personal, the beautiful, the mysterious. But with modernity, the focus on technical specialization in all areas of life meant increasing commitments to homogeneity in education, politics, and industry. And then increasing bureaucracy to measure and manage the productivity with greater efficiency. Technical specialization occurred in all areas of life—greater specificity about citizenship, borders, academic disciplines, religious ideology, capitalism, and the dependence on paperwork and administrative organization that went with it.

The commitment to progress and greater productivity created a constant expectation of change; in fact, to fail to change or to assess greater efficiencies, profits, or growth was seen as “backward” or inefficient or even corrupt. To focus on the personal or the beautiful at the expense of the productive would even be considered immoral in the era of the modern. And yet, as humans, we rebelled against this. And we still do. We know that the personal and the beautiful and the mysterious matter. We “know” things that aren’t verifiable using data. I like to tell my students that I “know” my sister is angry with me just as surely as I “know 2 + 2 = 4.” We don’t want to treat everyone exactly the same, even though the values of modernity say we need to. We know that sometimes some people (especially those we love) need different treatment. And we love the inefficiencies of beauty and mystery. We know life is more than productivity.

But it was in the height of the Modern, the era of technical specialization, that the Adventist church was formed. Against our founders’ strongest ideals, we formed an official organization, developed the thick bureaucracy and secretariat that the Victorians were so good at, created a brand, kept membership lists and ever-accumulating records, and tracked our growth and efficiency in giving Bible studies and collecting offerings.

Each generation found a way to integrate spiritual practices into the current technical specialization. New institutions such as publishing houses, medical establishments, food industry, and eventually media empires grew. Programs developed, administrators hired to oversee all the programs, and a professional educated class inserted to be the middle managers of conferences, schools, and industries. There was a constant need to update, improve, and provide numbers demonstrating growth. This is just what the values of Modernity require. Homogeneity and reliance on data impacted the Church as well as political structures and educational institutions.

But within our structures were embedded the values and assumptions of the pre-modern. The historical Church is based on the ancient truths that beauty and personal relationships and mystery are at the heart of our practice and belief. This remains true even in the modern era. Each week when we worship, each day when we read our ancient text, we are brought back to a historical way of being human. And the way we express truth is best done in the ancient way. Because there are different ways of knowing. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Our belief in the Incarnation is not double-blind-study verifiable.

So, when things in the modern world fall start changing, it is just part of what has been happening for 250 years. And perhaps it is a rejection of what has happened in the last 250 years and a recovery of a better way of being human. There’s never a “normal” in the modern world, just a constant chasing of the elusive thing called “progress” and our human attempt to extract some sort of embodied value out of it that is based on the sublime and the loving rather than the productive.

And yet, we don’t like change, and each of us can only explain the present in the light of the previous decades of our own life. And we decide what to use as a benchmark for productivity. If some of the assumptions of modernity continue to prove to be less than universal, or the practices of modernity are less valued, it can make us fearful. We worry that there might not be a way to demonstrate universal Truth or that we aren’t keeping our children as members, or our schools are getting smaller. By modernity’s standards, this might feel like failure.

If we are losing our commitment to bureaucracy and expansion as a church, if we begin to think we may not be homogeneous or unified globally as an institution in the modern way, if we aren’t sure we can rely on definitions and measurability as a test of what is True, then we can rest assured that others who have gone before us have done this as well.

Maybe we will become more like the pre-moderns. Maybe the postnormal is going to be more like the pre-modern. Christians found ways to flourish in that world, and we will find ways to flourish in ours. We have nothing to be afraid of. It is always a good time to be the Body of Christ, to find ways to love and create beauty and justice, and it may not look like measurable growth in numbers and there may be fewer institutions, but there will be the Holy Spirit, love, confession, and forgiveness.

Lisa Clark Diller, PhD, is chair of the History and Political Studies Department at Southern Adventist University. Email her at: ldiller@southern.edu

23 Oct

THE ACCIDENTAL ADVENTIST

In

“The world and everyone in it is passing strange, except for me and thee—and even thou art a little strange.” That was my grandfather, a teacher and historian, harking back to his Yorkshire roots. With a twinkle in his eye, he applied it to the late 1960s in which I—passing strange—was a teenager whom he and my grandmother were raising.

“May you live in interesting times,” is supposedly an ancient Asian curse intended to rock the complacent to their beige core. By that measure, we are living right now in interesting times. People of my vintage have been here before. I’ve never regretted coming up in the 60s. Sheltered though I was within the cocoon of the Adventist community centered on Pacific Union College, I was attuned to the world outside—its music, its culture, its violent changes, and its politics. The events on the six o’clock news were horrific, but they were such commonplace that it was difficult to measure one against the other. Assassinations, airplane hijackings, the frequent bombings by groups like the Weathermen and the Baader-Meinhoff gang were the foreground to the constant thrum of the Vietnam War.

After a while, it all became the exhalations of a giant wounded beast, whose labored breathing could keep you awake at night. In the apocalyptic cast to our days, it wasn’t hard to imagine the world ending. Whether we would survive to see it through—to see the cloud the size of a man’s hand, to see Jesus riding triumphant—that was another question altogether.

I wonder now if my high school friends and I became inured to the chaos in the larger culture or if we were so insulated that the waves of that tempestuous sea only lapped at our feet. Or were we less attuned to the world than we thought we were, accepting that this was the way the world was when run by adults?

Behind the teenage angst about self-identity and social standing, there were the religious pressures to conform. We knew the guideposts by heart: “This is the way, walk ye in it,” or “Higher than the highest human thought is God’s ideal for His people.” And the hammer: “Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

Our attempts to interpret the moods of the Father oscillated between two poles. The first was God’s unyielding standard of moral conduct (“narrow is the way”) and the second was Jesus’ crucifixion, proof of God’s infinite love for us, though it was we who continued to drive the nails into Jesus’ hands. I pictured this as a double helix twisted by forces at both ends, an image designed to wind me up like a rubber band and launch me into walking in Jesus’ footsteps—but without sin.

In some classes we read long passages from Ellen G. White’s Messages to Young People, handy spiritual advice from our stern and frowning prophet-mother. There were other books, of course, like The Desire of Ages and Steps to Christ, books that portrayed the daily life of Jesus in such detail that it gave new meaning to the argument-clincher, “I was shown.”

In the early phase of my newly awakened spiritual life, I drew strength from these books. I still have a Living Bible with quotations from them about Jesus, written
out in a tiny script on pages I laboriously pasted into the back of the Bible. I vividly recall hitchhiking from Pacific Union College out through Sonoma to Jenner-by-the-Sea while carrying a small paper-bound Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings. One driver, a young man not much older than I, was blissfully stoned to the point that his response on catching sight of the title was “Far out, man!” I left it with him when he dropped me off.

For me, caught up as I was in the late 60s on the fringes of the Jesus Movement, what mattered was to carry a witness to the world. The phrase that powered me was another one of Ellen G. White’s aphorisms: “Everything depends on the right action of the will.” By this time, righteousness by faith was the track I was on, and while her phrase had a faint whiff of works-righteousness about it, its moral agency and the freedom it took to carry it out was attractive.

It turned out this reliance on the strength of the will had a long history in Western philosophy. Beginning with Aristotle’s virtue ethics in which a good character is developed through assiduous practice, and continuing through the Stoics and the Epicureans, all the way to Kant, this form of moral fortitude was captured in another of Ellen G. White’s maxims: “Be as true to duty as the needle to the pole.” Whenever I was faced with some moral breakpoint, however small, my grandmother would quote it to me. It was my responsibility to work it out for myself in the light of this North Star of duty.

The historian of ideas, Sir Isaiah Berlin, once wrote an essay on Tolstoy that has become a touchstone for me. Entitled “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” it provides a kind of assay or test of one’s general direction and method in life. Quoting a fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus which says: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” Berlin observes that a vast chasm exists between the foxes who pursue many various and unrelated ends, and the hedgehogs whose lives are governed by one central compelling vision.

The former group lead lives that are centrifugal, “scattered and diffuse,” with no organizing moral or aesthetic principles. The latter group tends to be centripetal, focused around unifying moral or psychological precepts. Without too rigidly insisting on the classifications, Berlin put Dante with the hedgehogs, Shakespeare with the foxes. Plato, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche are in varying degrees hedgehogs; Aristotle, Erasmus, Goethe, Balzac, and Joyce were foxes.

Berlin’s thesis is that Tolstoy was a fox who thought he should be a hedgehog. The essay discusses the resulting conflict in his work which becomes clearer through his view of history.

When I first read this essay, I immediately knew myself to be a fox. I have disparate and sometimes conflicting interests; I tend to throw a wide net and eventually choose the one fish; I become restless and anxious when I feel herded down a single chute instead of released into the wider forest. But at the same time, as a Christian, I hear Jesus talk of the pearl of great price for which the merchant sold everything in order to possess it. I remember Soren Kierkegaard whose intensity about discipleship is summarized in his saying, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” And Ellen G. White echoes in my head: “Everything depends on the right action of the will.”

My interest in this is not just aesthetic, relating to how I go about writing essays or crafting poems. It is also autobiographical, social, and spiritual. For example, to what extent did my upbringing determine me as an Adventist? How much of my early life was the result of my own decisions? If I had been raised by my father, I might have been rather more secular, certainly not an Adventist, and maybe not a Christian.

As it was, I was raised by my grandparents, both of whom were converts in their youth to Adventism and who taught within the Adventist educational system their whole lives. You could trace the fact I was raised by them back through many branching decisions which were made without them fully understanding the consequences. Were those decisions wholly human or was the Holy Spirit nudging the ball at certain points?

Now here I am, seventy-two years of age, a lifelong Adventist who considers himself to be on the boundary between the church and the world, Christianity and world faiths, a minimalist on the 28 Fundamentals and a maximalist on Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. I have remarked to many classes and students that I was raised a Christian and an Adventist and, at a certain point, I became, by choice, a member of both communities.

I ask myself, is there an overarching pattern to history which can be discerned through Scripture and prophecy, that regards Adventism as the hinge of history? I am convinced of the first part, not so of the latter phrase. Is there a pattern to my life revealing the leading of the Spirit? I hope so. I see fragments and glimpses of it now and then. As much as I am a fox without a single focus, I believe I shall one day know as I am known. Until then I shall try to make my way, under the influence of the Spirit, through these very interesting, postnormal, times.

Barry Casey is the author of Wandering, Not Lost, a collection of essays on faith, doubt, and mystery, published by Wipf and Stock (2019). His recent work has appeared in Brevity, Faculty Focus, Detroit Lit Mag, Fauxmoir, Humans of the World, Lighthouse Weekly, Mountain Views, Patheos, Pensive Journal, Rockvale Review, Spectrum Magazine, The Dewdrop, The Purpled Nail, and The Ulu Review. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion from Claremont Graduate University. He writes from Burtonsville, Maryland. Email him at: darmokjilad@gmail.com  

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