Dear young progressive Adventist,
I pray that you’ll be able to read this in the tone I mean it to have. It’s not my goal to shame you but to express concern for your worldview and to encourage you to consider a different approach to your faith. It’s my hope that you’ll set aside your preconceived ideas about me as a former Adventist, and that you’ll consider with patience both what I share with you and what I ask of you in this letter.
You see, there was a time when I considered myself to be a progressive Adventist as well. I was greatly concerned with the parts of Adventism which I felt needed to be cut away from our practices. I had a deep sense of personal responsibility to do my part to help Adventism become what I believed it needed to be in order to sustain its message and purpose. This is one reason why, in my early twenties, I entered (for a time) the masters level New Testament studies program at La Sierra University and later was an elder in our local church and helped lead youth classes. I was committed to being a part of the ministry machine of Seventh-day Adventism. My heart was anchored to “my people”, and I wanted to please God inside of this system.
What I didn’t know was that all of my commitment to shed the flaws of Adventism was really just a distraction (more on that later). Progressive Adventism was a niche in which I found myself for a time, and it allowed me to feel I had purpose and to feel I was above the awkward sayings and teachings of the prophetess. Progressive Adventism also let me feel separated from the smaller, awkward segments of Adventism which made me uncomfortable. It allowed me to feel like I could hold my head high above “old-school Adventism” and work to present a different face to the world around me. I wanted people to find freedom from Adventist legalism and outdated expectations, and I was eager to do my part and I cared very much that we did it well and did it soon.
It was this commitment to being a part of the change I thought Adventism needed that kept me ready to defend it from those outside who pointed out its flaws—because, while problems existed, its preservation was crucial. I had a mission, and that mission kept me from considering outside criticisms of the community that I loved while also empowering me to live outside the historic parameters of Adventism.
Admittedly, the things I was concerned about back then were somewhat different from the concerns of today’s young progressive Adventists. Even so, the progressive Adventist focus is all a distraction that leads nowhere closer to the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Scripture.
“We don’t all believe that.”
So much of Adventism is embarrassing to most honest progressive Adventists—at least to the ones I knew. In fact, I believe this embarrassment is the cause of all the spoof internet websites created by Adventists for the purpose of making fun of their own culture. It’s a culture they both love and love to mock. A quick slap to the forehead after hearing some wild teaching of Ellen G. White was not an uncommon occurrence in some of my former circles.
The best way I knew how to navigate conversations in which Adventism’s most embarrassing teachings were being revealed was to distract everyone by saying, “We don’t all believe that.” This comment was intended to make the point that we progressives didn’t believe Ellen G. White had the authority the “conservative” Adventists claimed she had. At the same time, I managed to maintain my connection to Adventism’s unique history and Sabbath message by simply proclaiming EGW was an inspiring writer who had many uninspired cultural influences in her fallible writings. I believed we really needed to just cut her some slack and quit making her the Adventist pope.
I know my experience isn’t unique. There were many in my life who considered themselves to be progressive or even evangelical Adventists. Some of them even enjoyed merging spiritual disciplines from other religions with their own Adventist beliefs. While we didn’t start a club or have a secret motto, we seemed to collectively believe that Adventism could evolve as surely as American culture has. We were eager to proclaim that “we don’t all believe” the more peculiar doctrines which were harder to defend, while we also fully embraced various aspects of our unique culture such as haystacks, soul sleep—and supremely among them—Sabbath-keeping. We seemed to have a sense that we would be the generation which would continue the work that would lead Adventism into a relevant place in our society through the message of the “truth of the Sabbath”.
“They’ve gone too far.”
The idea of a “former Adventist” was hard for me to grasp. I remember when I learned about a couple of young adults (siblings) I knew in my local Adventist community who both left Adventism but who still called themselves Christian; I was dumbfounded. How could they leave? They were two of the nicest people I knew, they loved and read the Bible more than most young people. How had they left? I dealt with the dissonance by ascribing motive to their decision: I wrote it off as something they did to marry their non-Adventist partners. This dismissal kept me comfortable in my own commitment to “my people” and freed me from the need to ask them why they left.
Shortly after I did leave Adventism, I remember a woman for whom I cared very much approaching me at a baby shower and asking me how I could possibly leave. Before I could explain much, she interrupted me and said, “I don’t believe everything we teach either, but I could never leave my people.” I completely understood her sentiment. It was one I had shared with her for all of my adult life until that point. I believed those who had left went too far. I believed the groups of people who left were reacting to the very things inside Adventism that upset me and most of the people I knew.
Inside Adventism I encountered many who had a range of bitter grievances: Adventist politics, leadership, outdated policies, the way money was handled, scandalous affairs, gossip, academy politics, nepotism, abuse of power, abusive teachers, or other issues within the organization. There was always something about which to be legitimately upset. In fact, these problems fueled the desire of so many to work at progressing the church into a new way of thinking and behaving.
I assumed that those who left were those who couldn’t remain committed in the face of the hardships related to moving Adventism forward. They were defectors who left “their people” because they’d been too hurt, too exhausted, or too worn by the very real dynamics within. In fact, when I left, some of the people who once freely shared with me their grievances told me that they no longer could because I was no longer “inside the family”, and “family doesn’t talk about family to outsiders”. Sadly, I understood that worldview, too.
As an Adventist it was easy to imagine that those who left Adventism did so because they were hurt or bitter—because so many inside of it were! It never occurred to me that they may have actually changed their entire belief system! I never imagined anyone would leave over doctrines!
Defending Against vs. A Defense For
As I progressed through my twenties, was married, and had my first child—whom I nearly lost to viral meningitis at 5-weeks-old—life began demanding answers from me about my faith that I could not confidently generate. Notice I said “life’’, not people.
I was outside of the college culture, and the dynamics related to being a new mom isolated me a bit from the routine conversations among Adventists. The questions that rose up in me were not the usual questions about our prophetess, the best way to keep Sabbath, or what I thought about some obscure teaching of Adventism or its history. The questions I began asking were questions about God Himself.
You see, I could defend my loyalty to Adventism all day long; I could argue for Sabbath-keeping using all the verses and arguments I had known all my life, but what I couldn’t do was explain what I knew about God beyond the textbook answers. I didn’t know how He interacts with us or what He expects from us in the face of life-altering crises—like the threat of losing my child. I questioned His compassion and wanted to know if I was being punished. I wanted to know how I could fix myself to earn His grace and save my son.
The sad truth is that when I asked other Adventists to help me understand all they could ever say to me was, “Just have faith…” with a nod and a vacant look. I knew from non-denominational conferences I had attended that non-Adventists had answers that we simply didn’t have. I’d seen their courage in the face of profound hardships, and I knew they knew something we didn’t.
It was in the middle of my crisis over my son that I realized I knew well what I didn’t believe about God, but when it mattered the most, I didn’t know what I did believe about Him. Sure, I had some pat answers—mostly related to the decalogue—but nothing that sustained me as I held my very sick and potentially dying infant in my arms. I knew Scripture said God loved us, but I had no idea what that love looked like. I didn’t know how to sustain it or how it felt to be loved by Him—and looking at the Ten Commandments to know His character was no help to me. It was in a dark hospital room that I prayed for God to help me know Him.
This vacuum in my spiritual walk remained in me and left me needing answers. It was time to commit to finding them. By the time I approached thirty I had come to understand that there were real issues with the investigative judgement doctrine and with Ellen G. White’s plagiarism. I knew the sanctuary doctrine was widely disputed among Adventists. I was comfortable standing with progressive Adventists against it, and I was fine saying I didn’t believe in Ellen G. White as a prophet. What kept me an Adventist, other than my relational connections, continued to be the Sabbath.
I was done only proclaiming what I didn’t believe, however; it was time to know and be able to prove from the Bible alone just what I did believe. I needed to know what was true, not just for simple dialogue with other Adventists at Sabbath School or around the table, but for those darkest moments of life when faith was supposed to be more real to me than the crises overwhelming me.
After all, I was suddenly a mother, and I felt every ounce of the weight of that responsibility. I needed an unmoving foundation on which I could stand, not simply a theory I could discuss.
Discovering Something to Stand For
Another progressive Adventist whom I deeply love told me once that she doesn’t believe in Ellen G. White but she “firmly” believes “in the Sabbath”. I understood her response at the time, though now those words grieve me because we are not commanded to believe in a day but in a person—the Lord Jesus. Even so, I, too, lived in that “place” for a long time. I had been convinced from earliest childhood that I needed to be prepared to die to uphold the Sabbath. I truly longed to be loyal to God in the face of “last day deceptions”—what I didn’t know was that my Adventist end-time narrative was not given by God but was fabricated by the very woman I claimed not to believe.
I, too, was so committed to the Sabbath that I refused to listen to the teachings of non-Sabbatarians. After all, I thought, their teachings might deceive me and cause me to fall away. My commitment to sabbatarianism was sustained by what psychologists refer to as belief perseverance, which I know was fueled by the fear drilled into me from infancy related to the mark of the beast and the “time of trouble” (all dark spiritual abuse). Since my commitment to this Adventist doctrine was far greater than my ability to defend it, I simply refused to question it.
Then, one day, by the grace of God, I had the thought that God was strong enough to protect me from deception while I sought for Biblical truth from His Word alone. I believed that as long as I allowed only the Bible to be authoritative in my life that God would lead me where He wanted me—and if that was in submission to the teachings of Ellen G. White, so be it. However, if it was away from Sabbath-keeping, then He had to be clear! He was.
It was in that active trust which demanded the full weight of my life that I found the answers that clarified who God is and what the gospel is according to Scripture. It was in believing the words of Scripture as they are written that I came to know and love the God who reveals Himself in His word. I saw that before then I had only chosen an interpretation of a god “I could live with”, who had no wrath or hell, and who fit neatly within Adventist distinctives while allowing me the “grace” to wear jewelry or eat out on a Sabbath.
It was in the journey of discovering from Scripture alone the truth of who God is—the reality on which I could entrust my entire life—that I came to see that I had to leave Seventh-day Adventism. I did not leave for any of the reasons that I had believed people left. Rather, I discovered that Seventh-day Adventism had far more serious issues than the ones my peers and I had been able to see. Seventh-day Adventism has a different “gospel” message than God does, and the two are not compatible.
Seventh-day Adventist distinctives—including last day prophecies and mandatory sabbatarianism—simply cannot be sustained when extricated from the false teachings and false prophecies of Ellen G. White; they cannot be didactically taught from Scripture alone. To believe that we can give up Ellen G. White and still be Adventists is to anchor ourselves deeply into self-deceptions that mask the cognitive dissonance we simply refuse to examine.
In fact, one must believe that everything EGW taught was from God and that the Bible is fallible, or one must believe that none of EGW was from God because it stands in opposition to Biblical teachings.
I came to see that in my proud “faith like a child” loyalty to Adventism (which to me meant being fully committed without fully understanding), I was turning my face away from knowing the saving gospel of Scripture—a gospel which, to my surprise, is nowhere taught in Adventism.
While there are variations on the gospel in Adventism, they are carefully crafted distortions created to merge Adventist distinctives with Biblical language, but I assure you, the gospel according to Scripture is not compatible with Adventism. While that statement seems strong and oversimplified, through the brave study of Scripture alone, one can test it and come to understand this truth. You might begin by reading Galatians.
So what do you believe?
While it’s true that there are many “causes” to fight against (or perhaps even for) inside of Adventism, I would like to submit to you that these are merely distractions in your life, and that your greatest need is not to take up a cause to further an organization, but to take up Scripture and know its God. Being progressive does not bring you closer to the truth simply because you believe it’s moving you further from error. When the night is dark, what you don’t believe will not sustain you. Your theories and progressive ideas on Adventist practice or policy will not be to you a foundation.
I want to know what you do believe. Support your beliefs from the Bible alone using didactic passages in context. Show me prescriptive passages with commands written to New Covenant believers. Tell me about the nature of man, of sin, and of God. Tell me why Christ came and if He was fully God. Tell me what happened at the cross. Tell me if you can know if you’re saved. Tell me what it means to be born again, or that “Spirit gives birth to spirit”. Tell me what Paul means when he says we live with Jesus whether we are awake or asleep. Tell me what the writer of Hebrews means in chapters 3-4, or in 7-9. Tell me what you believe about life, death, and salvation—and do it on your own with the Word of God.
You see, it’s not enough to stand for what you don’t believe. It’s not enough to give your life to fighting against internal disagreements while passively participating in what seems sensible to you. At the end of it all, the only thing that will matter is what you do believe.
So, what is the biblical reason for the hope you have?
“But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).
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