I recently had the pleasure of responding to a young man who voiced some concern over certain changes he was seeing in the Seventh-day Adventist church. My response follows:
Dear Friend (name withheld),
I joined a Seventh-day Adventist church about six years ago. When I sought membership, I was acutely aware of the distinctives of the SDA denomination. In fact, it was the distinctives that I had to work through, understand and find place for in my own relationship with Christ; it was not an easy or painless process.
When I joined my current church, I was not a new Christian. I came with a long-standing relationship with Christ that stretched back to a genuine and binding conversion to Christ from childhood. My interest in an SDA church did not come as a result of a search for more truth or as a realization of the error of other denominations. My interest was sparked by deep and meaningful relationships with friends and relatives that were members of SDA churches.
Like most christians, my prior knowledge of SDA distinctive beliefs was sparse at best, although I’ll have to admit my opinions were more generous than some, probably as a result of a couple brief incidents from childhood:
Once the pastor of our church was teaching a series on cults. He had a chart and teaching materials that he had obtained somewhere listing many cults that were in the christian mind in the 1970’s. The last group listed on the chart was Seventh-day Adventists. On the first night of the series the pastor took a sharpie and struck through the line with SDA’s. He then explained that, although they were listed on this chart, he had concluded that SDA’s were not a cult and were a part of the brotherhood of christian believers.
On another occasion, a new SDA church was built just down the road from us in the semi-rural area where we lived. As we drove by the church one day I asked my Dad, a very Christian but not very theological man, about Seventh-day Adventists. The entirety of his explanation was, “they’re pretty much like us except they go to church on Saturday.”
While not deeply probing, these two experiences were critical to my later exploration.
As one who was already engaged in a relationship with Christ and who had experienced the joy, grace, peace, and salvation found in Christ, I was less interested in SDA distinctives than in the critical points that join all true Christians together.
In the same way that the pastor from my youth had effectively said “SDA’s are okay, and they are a part of us,” I needed to hear from my SDA church that “other Christians are okay, and we are a part of them”. Don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean to imply that all who profess christianity are truly followers of Christ or that just any belief system is acceptable. What I mean is that I needed to know that there are true Christians who are also SDA’s and that they major on major issues and minor on minor issues.
I did not draw any conclusions about the SDA denomination but only about my SDA church and its leadership. My conclusion was that, while I probably disagree on some secondary points, on the primary points we were in complete harmony. More importantly, I concluded that we agreed on what the primary points are: Christ, grace, forgiveness, the loving nature of God, my total inability to earn any part of my salvation.
And here is the critical point: the SDA church that I joined as an adult believed, preached and tried to live the same gospel as the Baptist church of my youth, the Presbyterian church of friends, the non-denominational church of my favorite preacher, the Bible church of my sister and all the faithful followers of Christ that span the Millennia.
We were also in agreement as to the secondary beliefs. This is not to say that we agreed as to the details or even the truth of the secondary beliefs, but rather that we agreed as to which beliefs are secondary. Given the vast depth and breadth of christian doctrine, it may seem a daunting task to separate the primary beliefs from the secondary, but it can be simplified by considering this. Secondary beliefs are those that, if given ascendancy, separate true followers of Christ from each other.
Now here is the hard saying. If this is true, and I am convinced that it is biblical, then any distinctive of any denomination is of secondary importance at best, including SDA distinctives. It is for this reason that my SDA church has exactly the same mandate and calling as all Christians of all time, including Christians of other denominations in the world today – Preach the gospel (and there’s only one).
To misunderstand this is to place us at great risk of idolatry. Rarely will anyone idolize a bad thing; rather, we take a good thing and give it a level of reverence above its created purpose. Money, work, position, power, influence and health are all good things – in their proper place. But any of those will replace God and become idols if they become the pursuit of our hearts. Likewise, even our best distinctive beliefs will become idols that separate us from God if given position above that which God intended.
As I write this, my mind is drawn back to a chorus we sang often in the church of my childhood:
We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity
May one day be restored
And they’ll know we are
Christians by our love
John Monday
A poem by Andy McDonald
