My Adventist-raised children are all now in other religions—and none of them keep the Sabbath
30 September 2024 |
Dear Aunt Sevvy:
I have three children, all raised as Seventh-day Adventists. Now they are all adults—and all in other Christian religions. They all love God, they tell me. They say that they serve the same God that I do.
But don’t we all have to choose the keeping of the Ten Commandments at some time in our lives? None of them keep the fourth one.
Signed, Concerned Mom
Dear Mom,
Your children are faithful Christians. I’m assuming they don’t steal, kill, or abuse their parents, and they apparently go to church. Shouldn’t you be celebrating their success in the Christian life?
Aunty understands that you would love for them to be in your church. But really, Concerned Mom, isn’t following Jesus as Lord the huge, central heart of the faith?
We Adventists have, from the beginning, looked down on people who don’t major in our minors. Aunty is reminded of a passage from C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, where a senior devil outlines to his apprentice devil a strategy for destroying Christians:
What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity AND.’ You know–Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring.”
Jesus, for Adventists, should be the most important thing. But we like to add on to basic Christianity: Jesus and no earrings; Jesus and vegetarianism; Jesus and the Remnant Church; Jesus and the Sabbath; Jesus and Ellen White.
The Kingdom of Heaven is trusting Jesus and being like Jesus. I encourage you to tell your children how proud you are that they’re faithful and good Christians—and never nag them about which day they worship.
Aunt Sevvy
Aunt Sevvy has collected her answers into a book! You can get it from Amazon by clicking here.
You can write to Aunt Sevvy at DearAuntSevvy@gmail.com. Your real identity will never be revealed.
