God’s Many, Many People
Lately I’ve been thinking about churches: the congregations I used to be a pastor of, as well as the whole denomination I identify with.
One notable thing about all churches, at all levels, is that there’s an inside and an outside. These organizations formalize the division between members and those who aren’t. Additionally, nearly all churches have buildings of a peculiar style where we meet, peculiar social mores within the group, and special rituals and behaviors that you have to learn.
We Adventists go farther. A Methodist friend was surprised to hear his Adventist wife refer to “non-Adventists.” “What kind of church,” he wondered, “has a designated word for everyone who isn’t one of you?”
Worse: some Adventists believe that anyone who isn’t one of us is ineligible for salvation! How arrogant! Who am I to say whom God will save? Just as I can love my family without looking down on yours, so with my church.
I’m weary of the whole inside-outside dichotomy. What would happen to Christianity—to all spiritual communities—if we weren’t exclusive? Maybe John Lennon was right when he said that we should imagine a world without religion. Religion divides people because it usually demands that you see things our way, and rejects you if you don’t. How many wars have been fought in the name of some god or religion? How many restrictions of freedom have been initiated to force people to conform to politicians’ or clergy’s picture of what their god wants?
And how many people have been alienated from God entirely by divisive words of ministers? All preachers should engrave this line from Ecclesiastes on their hearts: “Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few” (5:2).
It’s taken me a while, but I’m glad I can say openly and confidently that God loves everyone, wants to include all of us, and that God’s kingdom will be filled with everyone who hasn’t consciously chosen to be excluded.
Loren Seibold
Executive Editor, Adventist Today
17 February 2024
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