Colleen and Nikki talk about living lives of integrity during a time when truth is not obvious. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And we’re here for another check-in, and we actually want to let you know that this is going to be our last check-in for a while. I know my kids are getting ready to start school. We don’t know what that’s going to look like, but it’s going to be pretty busy around here, I think.
Colleen: And especially if they’re doing some of their school at home, you’re going to be involved.
Nikki: So we’re going to take a break from our check-ins, but we do plan on popping on now and then as needed. So if you want to get notifications that a new podcast has been published, be sure that you’re subscribed, and you should be getting emails and notifications from whatever venue you use to listen to your podcasts. We hope you will subscribe to those. And today we’re just going to talk a little bit about how to navigate all of the different narratives around us and how to live a life of integrity. What have you been thinking about that, Colleen?
Colleen: Fresh on my mind this week is a subject related to our weekly blogs that we publish in the Proclamation! email. The Adventist Today executive editor, Loren Seibold, published an article a little over a week ago in which he exposed, rightly, the toxic eschatology of Adventism. But what was so surprising to me was the huge number of former Adventists that I saw on Facebook responding positively to him, as if finally, finally someone inside is telling the truth about this. I even had a former Adventist say, “Wow, maybe this is an evidence that the church is actually going to splinter or split up over this,” and I’m thinking, “No, not a chance. People have always disagreed with the eschatology of Adventism. It’s never split the church.” That’s led me to thinking of a lot of issues regarding duplicity, lack of integrity, people staying someplace where they don’t believe the doctrines, what does that mean, how does that hurt people? That’s been a huge thing on my mind. And then, of course, the other is the fact that I’ve been having hand therapy for my broken wrist with a really very good therapist. He is very good. But he is very Adventist, and I’ve just had some interesting reactions in my head to that experience because he doesn’t hesitate to talk about his Adventism, and he knows what I do. But he doesn’t acknowledge it. What about you, Nikki? What are you thinking?
Nikki: Well, I’ve just been doing a lot of reading in Scripture about honesty and integrity, what we’re called to. I’ve been fascinated by the number of warnings against being self-deceived or deceiving our own hearts or allowing sin to deceive us. It’s interesting that the words in there are often, “Do not permit yourselves to be deceived, do not allow yourself to be deceived.” So even in our being deceived, there is an element of responsibility that we carry for that and for allowing that to happen. And the call all over Scripture that we would purify our hearts, it’s been interesting to me to see the connection there, that purifying our heart, it’s not about – I always thought that was about sex when I was an Adventist, to be pure, to live a pure life. And in the context of so many of these passages, it’s related to setting yourself apart from duplicity and double-mindedness, and living and responding to the truth that God has given us, not straddling the fence or toying and playing with spiritually adulterous concepts and ideas and lifestyles, and so yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that, especially related to what we’re going through right now, just in the United States, with everything going on.
Colleen: It seems as though everything we hear is part of a narrative, not necessarily a succession of facts that are all pointing to something real. We hear information, and it seems as if every source of information has a grain of truth, but also something that doesn’t sound right. And it’s very familiar to me. It reminds me of living inside of Adventism. And I remember how much I was unable to know how to decide what was true as an Adventist. Sometimes I remember sitting in faculty meetings as a very young teacher, shortly after graduating. I was in my 20s, teaching at Gem State Academy, and there would be big discussions about something going on at school, and I would think, “Oh! That makes sense. That teacher’s perspective makes complete sense,” and then somebody across the room would say something that was completely opposite, and I’d go, “Well, I get that too!” And I’d think, “How do I know what’s true?”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I’ve come to realize there really is absolute truth, but today’s narratives would have us believe there isn’tany objective truth. They would have us believe that truth is based on our subjective experience, but that just doesn’t hold up.
Nikki: Yeah, a lot of people like to speak from their own personal, subjective authority, and that was one of the things that was interesting to me as I was reading out of the Gospel of John. Jesus talks about that, and He says that people who speak from their own authority, they’re seeking their own glory. But the one who seeks the glory of Him who sent Him is true, and in Him there is no falsehood. That’s integrity. Jesus was here seeking the Father’s glory. He was doing the Father’s will. He wasn’t self-exalting, and there was no falsehood in Him, and that is an example to us as we walk through these times. If we’re just speaking about everything from our own subjective perspective and authority and we’re seeking our own glory, are we living a life submitted to Scripture? Are we living a life submitted to the truth? The truth is hard. In this context, in this society, it is really – it’s kind of a scary thing to stand for truth because of all of these subjective perspectives that will destroy you if you say there is absolute truth.
Colleen: It’s strange and probably not surprising, but still strange to me, that the idea of absolute, objective reality is something that is being downplayed and denied in so many arenas across the face of society today, and I want to say, if my experience is what determines reality, then I will always be at odds with everyone around me because my experience is different from everybody else’s. How can my experience define reality? Now, my experience is real. My emotions are data. They inform me of things going on around me. But reality is bigger than I can see, and if I don’t believe in a God who sees everything, who has revealed His will in the way He told us He would, through His Son, recorded in His word, if I don’t know that there is that, I will drown in my own subjective reactions, because I have strong reactions to things, and I have to be normalized. Scripture is the one thing I know that normalizes, because it is what God said He gave the world to show the world what is true.
Nikki: Exactly. And I know when I left Adventism, there’s always that period right there at the beginning where you are struggling with confusion and a little bit of duplicity. You’re undecided for a little while, as you’re transitioning out, “Who do I trust?” And even for a while after that, there is that internal conflict you experience when you know what’s true and you know that there are deep flaws inside Adventism, and then you encounter Adventists who will maybe speak highly of God, and it creates this, “Well, what if? What am I supposed to do with that? What do I think about that?” And I had to make the decision that I was going to stop basing my conviction and my sense of truth and my sense of right and wrong on experience and how other people represent themselves. I had to deal with the concrete, the black and white, “What does the word of God say? What is this organization promoting and teaching?” And I love something that you said in your blog that was published on Friday, where you were talking about Mormons and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and – I am so afraid of misquoting you to you. [Laughter.] I don’t have it right in front of me.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Go ahead.
Nikki: But you said something about the fact that those people, those individuals, don’t define Mormonism. Mormonism defines them.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: What I’m trying to say is that as I walk through this life with the Lord and I encounter people who sound like they are giving credibility to something, I have to decide that that person is not going to be my arbiter of truth about what they represent.
Colleen: That’s a really good point, though, Nikki. I can’t think that because Loren Seibold says truthful things about the nastiness of the Investigative Judgment and Adventist eschatology that he is now promoting truth in all areas of doctrine. That man is still an Adventist, and he’s not giving the finished work of Jesus as the antidote to what he and his fellow Adventists have gone through. What I want to say to Adventists or to former Adventists is this: You need to know that truth is in Scripture, and if people confuse you by sounding like they’re saying something truthful while their lives are still endorsing something untruthful, you can’t believe their witness. You have to know you can’t look to them for hope or for truth. Even if they say something truthful, if their whole life is not consistent and lived with integrity, you can’t trust their witness to be truthful.
Nikki: Yeah. And this really isn’t a statement about judgment or being unkind to people or dismissing or, you know, not caring about them. This is simply saying that our source of truth, our source for reality and what determines what is true and false has to come from God Himself, it has to come from Scripture, from His word, and we can’t let ourselves be confused by well-crafted arguments or highly moral behavior. One of the commands that I kept seeing over and over is to not allow ourselves to be deceived.
Colleen: And that’s interesting because, like you said, that implies a modicum of volitional decision: Don’t allow yourself to be deceived. And it reminds me again of the verse in Hebrews 3 that we’ve talked about before that says, “Encourage one another as long as it is called today, so that you’re not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” We formers have been deeply deceived, we came out of blackest deception of the worst kind, the kind that sounded and looked beautiful, and yet it misrepresented the Lord Jesus. We are vulnerable to being deceived again. Look at Eve. She walked with God, and she was deceived in the garden by the snake. We can be deceived, and one of my prayers is that the Lord will protect me from deception and plant me deeply in truth, and I just want to say, as we walk through this strange COVID time and the political strangeness that we’re all experiencing in this country, there is one source of truth: God is truthful, and He can straighten out our heads if we submit ourselves to His word.
Nikki: Yeah. I mean, we know from Scripture that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? And if we look to humans, born again or not, they will let us down because humans are finite, limited, sinful creatures, and so we have to look to our all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite, holy God, who will always tell us the truth, and that’s how we walk through this. And right now, it feels like we’re only allowed to see the next step as we go, but you know what? I’m so thankful for that. I know I don’t necessarily feel that every day that I’m here at home, but when I can step back and I can look at what God has done in my own heart through this – what? – four months now, it’s been incredible what He gives us when we trust Him for the next moment.
Colleen: I think, as we conclude our last regular extra check-in podcast, I just want to say to all of you who are sharing this life after Adventism with us, make it a point to ask God to protect you from deception. We can’t even always know when we’re seeing it, right off the bat. Something will sound good, something will sound hopeful, it will appeal to our emotions, it will appeal to a need we have. And ask the Lord to keep you grounded in truth, and the thing I have found is that His word is a grounding, truthful foundation on which we can stand. We really can evaluate the life around us by what He reveals in His word. And I just want to see all of you learn to be planted deeply in His word and to allow the Spirit to put deep roots from your heart into the word of God so that you love Jesus, you know Him, and you know His will through His word.
Nikki: So please do continue to write to us. Let us know how we can pray for you. If you have any questions or comments, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com, and remember to subscribe for the podcast so that you can be notified if we have any extra pop-ins come up. You can visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly blogs and to view back issues of the Proclamation! magazine, and we’d love it if you’d like us and follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and if you leave a review, you’ll help our reach with this ministry. Please remember to join us on Wednesdays for our walk through Hebrews. It has been so wonderful, and we really hope that you’ll come alongside, and be sure to bring your Bible and your coffee, and we’ll see you guys on Wednesday.
Colleen: We’ll see you then.
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