Since the Garden of Eden, Satan has specialized in mingling truth and error. When disguised as a serpent in the branches of the forbidden tree, he declared to Mother Eve, “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5).
Error is by nature parasitic. Unlike truth, it cannot stand on its own; it has no credibility unless it mingles itself with truth. Novelists understand this. No work of fiction creates characters which don’t bear some resemblance to real ones. The phrase “based on a true story” often used in movies makes the thoughtful observer laugh, as no fictional tale isn’t to some degree based on fact. Only God can create something out of nothing.
Current Societal Issues
Many conservative Christians, including some Adventists, seem to be forgetting this. If a particular issue or agenda is being promoted by a movement or institution which teaches a significant volume of doctrinal or moral error, certain ones maintain that the issue or agenda in question must be bad. Rather than measuring each issue by the written counsel of God and/or objective facts, they simply assume that because elements rightly or wrongly believed to be negative—in the religious world or society in general—hold to a certain ideological or moral posture, that the posture in question must be wrong.
Much of the dialogue now heard in Western society regarding social justice issues reflects this knee-jerk, broad-brush approach. Because certain forces or individuals with a wrongful spiritual or moral focus are found promoting social justice causes, the entire genre of issues grouped under this label suffer condemnation. Because the Roman papacy is now promoting the climate change movement so prominently, and because this issue is often combined with the promotion of Sunday legislation, certain folks in contemporary Adventism think the climate change movement merits wholesale rejection.
It isn’t the first time we’ve seen this in Seventh-day Adventist history. Ellen White spoke of how, in her day, the temperance movement—which she strongly supported—was being combined with the Sunday-law movement. Speaking of those Christians with an erroneous view of law and grace, she writes:
Yet this very class put forth the claim that the fast-spreading corruption is largely attributable to the desecration of the so-called “Christian sabbath,” and that the enforcement of Sunday observance would greatly improve the morals of society. This claim is especially urged in America, where the doctrine of the true Sabbath has been most widely preached. Here the temperance work, one of the most prominent and important of moral reforms, is often combined with the Sunday movement, and the advocates of the latter represent themselves as laboring to promote the highest interest of society; and those who refuse to unite with them are denounced as the enemies of temperance and reform. But the fact that a movement to establish error is associated with a work which is in itself good, is not an argument in favor of the error. We may disguise poison by mingling it with wholesome food, but we do not change its nature. On the contrary, it is rendered more dangerous, as it is more likely to be taken unawares. It is one of Satan’s devices to combine with falsehood just enough truth to give it plausibility [1].
If Ellen White could endorse the temperance work of her day, while at the same time rejecting the Sunday-law movement with which the temperance cause was often blended, the same principle can apply today when we consider various issues being debated in our present societal context. Neither the reality of man-made climate change, the Christian imperative to protect God’s creation, nor the inherent hostility of Scripture to racism and other strains of social injustice, lose their claim on the conscience because certain ones combine them with agendas or ideas which contradict God’s Word.
One is fascinated by those who condemn the climate change movement because of its promotion by the Catholic Church, yet who don’t hesitate to champion other, much older Catholic causes, such as opposition to abortion. The point here is not to invite a lengthy debate in this context regarding any of these issues, only to underscore the fact that each issue merits consideration in the light of inspired counsel and other objective measures, irrespective of who may be promoting these issues or what other causes with which they are presently associated.
Inspiration Trumps Logic
This isn’t to deny the logical connection between certain issues and others. The logical tie, for example, between the erasure of spiritual gender role distinctions and the Christian acceptance of homosexual practice within the fellowship of faith, has been demonstrated both by simple reasoning and the course of events within a good many Christian bodies. The following observation was made several years ago in a Time magazine article:
For many evangelicals, the marriage debate isn’t really about marriage or families or sex—it is about the Bible itself. And that makes many evangelicals all the more uncompromising. The roots of the conflict are deeply theological. . . .
And there is another, just as fundamental, obstacle. So far no Christian tradition has been able to embrace the LGBT community without first changing its views about women. The same reasoning that concludes that homosexuality is sin is also behind the traditional evangelical view that husbands are the spiritual leaders of marriages and men are the leaders in churches. . . .
It is not an accident that the women’s-liberation movement preceded the gay-liberation movement,’ [Episcopal Bishop Eugene] Robinson says. ‘Discriminatory attitudes and treatment of LGBT people is rooted in patriarchy, and in order to embrace and affirm gays, evangelicals will have to address their own patriarchy and sexism, not just their condemnation of LGBT people’” [2].
But at the bottom line, whether or not one accepts this logical connection is beside the point. Ultimately, identical gender roles for men and women in spiritual leadership, as well as sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual monogamy, are morally wrong because Scripture says they are, not because of their logical or other association with each other.
Conclusion
The broad-brush endorsement or condemnation of causes or ideologies, a practice often encouraged by secular rather than Biblical imperatives, should be scrupulously avoided by Seventh-day Adventist Christians. Our agenda as God’s end-time church cannot be driven by secular forces or philosophies, whatever position they hold on some abstract ideological spectrum. The written counsel of God must remain the unbending standard of all ideas, all practices, all causes. If we find a cause or practice that God’s Word condemns operating in tandem with a cause or practice that God’s Word endorses, we must simply attribute this to the adversary’s age-old policy of mingling truth with falsehood (Gen. 3:5).
REFERENCES
1. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 587.
2. Elizabeth Dias, “A Change of Heart: Inside the evangelical war over gay marriage” Time, Jan. 26, 2015, pp. 47-48.
Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan