We need to stop pretending that the problems of racism and white supremacy do not exist in our church. They are ever-present, from the local church to the General Conference. Keeping our racist past to ourselves is not helping anyone.

The typical Adventist obsession to escape reality by saying that true reality is what Adventism is, and what others are is necessarily a deviation, expresses a kind of double myopia. It prevents us from seeing ourselves as we really are, but it also pushes us to see others and external reality as domesticated by our own doctrinal reductionism, and not as they really are. 

Celebrities are people. Christians are people. And people hurt. Your fame, wealth, career, position in church, or even devotion to God doesn’t eliminate pain from your life. Everybody hurts. Everybody cries sometimes. Jesus wept.

Who can baptize? Adventist policy is clear: Adventist pastors alone have the authority to baptize, and that, under the authority of the Conference president. Milton Adams respects this, but in his article “Who Gave You Authority to Baptize?” finds a way forward for Adventist believers to baptize their friends who become disciples — and this way is also within policy, but true also to the commission of Jesus.

The “Sisyphean” world we inhabit involves repeated, practical, ethical choices. The Bible has material that speaks to these situations, but also more esoteric information (like eschatology), otherwise unavailable to us. The danger is to elevate the esoteric and deprecate the practical.

The debate over which sins are most offensive to God is as old as time itself. Early Christians struggle to know whether or not to welcome uncircumcised gentiles into their fledgling church. The apostle Paul spends an inordinate amount of time combating the intolerant and divisive thinking that emerges almost immediately after the ascension of Christ. The church argues over which foods to eat, what laws to keep, the practical definition of chastity, Christian dress, how worship services should be conducted, and pretty much everything in between.

Frank popularized the song “My Way” in 1969. In a recent Sabbath School class at Sligo Church we discussed people blindly following autocratic religious organizations like ISIS. This sparked my thoughts to Frank’s song that praised independent thinking and doing.

Every Seventh-day Adventist has their own particular ideas about “how to be church.” The collective mental model a congregation adopts becomes the foundation for the values and priorities their church pursues. That mental model determines both the personality and culture of church life. It is therefore crucial that each member carefully examine their thinking to make sure it aligns with scripture.

What do we do when the exercise of our religious freedom impinges upon the rights and freedoms of someone else? As difficult and as intricate as the issues can be, it may be that the answer is indeed quite simple. “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you,for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

It’s Sunday morning, March 17, 2019, and as we taxi our mission plane up to the parking spot in Papua, Indonesia, Gary and I are oblivious as to what happened at home base last night.