Immigrant Children and the Adventist Conscience

This last week, lawyers visited a Texas facility where immigrant children are held. My social media feeds have exploded with reports that turn my stomach--toddlers without diapers, children without beds. Government lawyers arguing that soap and toothpaste aren't required. Filth and malnutrition and despair. I am torn up about it.

I'm torn as well. You see, on Twitter I'm "The Other Adventist Home." Whatever I say, I say as an Adventist voice, not as myself. The debacle, and the debate, are marinated in national politics, and Adventists aren't supposed to get into politics. (We'll lose our tax-exempt status if we do.)

This is why I decided to talk about it anyway, and I think you should, too:

The landscape of US politics has always been hard for Adventists to navigate. We're (typically) morally conservative, but also well-educated and serving in helping professions. And of course there's our eschatology, which says the US is prophesied--in time--to outlaw our Sabbath-keeping. So maybe we want small government, but we're also leery of legislating personal morality. In a(n effective) two-party system, there aren't many places to go.

It puts members in a quandary each election season. I remember conversations over potluck debating which candidate was going to start the religious persecution and bring in the concentration camps.* There were always concentration camps in the picture, usually claimed to be already built, ready to house us. ("Listen to this cassette recording of a speaker who's seen them in with his own eyes.")

And I wonder, as I look at today's news, read today's debates, if these same Adventist believers recognize the fulfillment of their prophecies. Are the camps still inhumane if they aren't housing Adventists? Is our country still speaking like a dragon if it isn't talking to us? Do we care if kids have beds and toothpaste if the Sabbath isn't involved?

On Twitter, my feed is full of two kinds of content--horror over the lack of soap, and concrete floors, and cheery official Adventist sources, handing out generic devotional messages. Maybe we need devotional messages in distressing times. But it would help, at least, to acknowledge the distress.

I know why the silence, of course. We have a knee-jerk fear of politics. We don't tell you what to vote (at least, not officially), and if we talk about something related to government policy, we'll be "taking sides." But not all of politics is taking sides. There are issues, like human rights, that transcend parties.

I don't care what the rhetoric is, no one's political views require them to think children don't need beds or clean clothes. It's not in any party's platform. You don't have to give up your party, or even your immigration views, to care about this. But there is a danger in not caring.

Politics, after all, isn't a separate, intellectual exercise. It's just the way we use resources and make policies. And what we think of as "politics" is just the maneuvering needed because we disagree how to do it. Politics is about our lives, and that's the place where faith is acted out. We don't hold our opinions in a vacuum. They effect the people around us. So if you feel convictions about human rights, there is no special category of "politics" that lets you off the hook about them.

Moreover, we are followers of a Messiah who said helping the needy was a reason for his anointing:

The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's 
favor.

Luke 4:18,19

And who also expects the same acts from his followers:

They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Matthew 25:44, 45

If the gospel has nothing to say about children deprived of their basic needs, it's not the gospel Jesus handed to us. If our gospel doesn't effect how we treat the vulnerable in our midst (whatever our feelings about how they got there), then it has failed. The God who reaches into our sin to redeem us--at the cost of crucifixion--cares about the suffering of children, however it came about. You don't have to profess a certain political view to care about them, too. You just have to profess faith in this God.

So you have a choice. If the reports about child detention facilities don't bother you, then I won't trouble you further. But it you mind, then say so. If you object, then object. It's not disloyal, or partisan. And if you support those leaders who are justifying the abuses, then real loyalty involves accountability.

There's never going to be a perfect world, as long as we live alongside sin. There is no party that can fix all of our ills, or serve our country with perfect selflessness. But you and I have the choice to serve God first, in our politics and outside of them, to serve one another, and to serve those in need.

*The favorite, laudably bi-partisan answer was both, because all politicians are bad.

The Elves, the Orcs, and the Church

Today is my last History of Adventism in California class. We're reviewing for the exam, but of course I'm going to make a speech. My students are used to my speeches, so they'll probably shake it off, but it's a speech that's been growing in me all quarter.

The class is a new one, and my only textbook was written in the 1940s. That meant I got to decide, among the vast number of events in the last 80 years, what is important. What is California's contribution to this church's story? What, of all the things we've done, matters most?

I picked the scandals. From Loughborough's use of organ music, to 1888, to Silver vs Pacific Press, California is famous for pushing the edges. Time after time, believers on the West coast have tried new things and challenged both the theology and practices of our church. And that was good, or so I told my students. We're at our best when we're forced out of complacency. The only time we really know what we believe is when we have to examine it anew. So California's controversies have pushed Adventism to think again, to question, and--at our best moments--to grow.

But there's a cost, too. One only has to dip a toe into the past to find the sharks circling. If we're at our best when we're challenged, we're also at our worst. Over the last few weeks I've sweated through the stories of the church's bad behavior under pressure. A.T. Jones sneering at Uriah Smith, M. L. Andreason retired without his consent when leaders were ready to move past him, Merikay Silver denied the wage scale policy allowed, for fear the Press would have to pay other household-supporting women fairly. It's not all easy to confess.

To throw another log on the fire, I am not speaking to a strictly Adventist audience. Some of the class belong to other faith groups, or none. Some have Adventist backgrounds, but no very strong interest in the church. I have some real anxiety about showing them our bad side. *

Hence the speech. And it's going to go a little like this:

Now you know a lot more than the average person about our story. You know the good and the bad. You got to see people make bad choices, be slow to learn new ideas, protect their own authority or the church's reputation rather than taking care of the people in it.

It's a little like reading the facts sheet on a new prescription medication. If the side effects sound scary enough, you might decide it's no good. But it just means you're informed. You know what's in it now.

Well, this is what's in the Adventist church--people. Human beings are the dangerous ingredient in the church. We can be nasty and selfish and opportunistic--even when we think we're converted. We can totally forget our ethics when we think we're protecting our faith. And I want you to know that the same ingredient is in every Christian church. I teach general Christian History some times, and I can promise this sort of stuff has been going on since the beginning. (And, if we want to go there, Christianity isn't the only religion with this problem.)

So the real question is not "What should we do with Adventism?" It's "What should be do with the church?" I don't know what your answer is going to be, but I'm going to stick with mine. Human nature is the dangerous ingredient in the church. But, just like the medicine, it's still vital.

I like to think of us in Tolkien's terms. You all know about the orcs in Lord of the Rings, right? Tolkien made the cruelest, most repulsive creatures he could think of, and set them against the heroes in his story. But he said they weren't a real species. They were made out of tortured elves. And the elves are the best creatures in his story--they're beautiful, and wise, and magical. They're so good and pure that when the world is changing, they're too good for it, so they have to leave. The only reason orcs are so nasty is that they're made out of something so good.

The Bible says that we're made in the image of God. I can't even begin to understand what that means.That's why, when you twist us, we get so ugly. We have so much power for good, and that's why we can do so much evil.

When Jesus left the earth, he pulled together a bunch of people and he told them to keep doing his work in the world. That's where the church comes from. The New Testament says this is the body of Christ--Jesus took on human flesh to live here on earth, and now that he's gone he made us his new incarnation. The image of God. We're fallen, but we still carry his image. And that's why the church is so amazing, and so awful, both at the same time.

We are the elves and the orcs, both. All the darkest chapters of our history--the Inquisition, the Crusades, colonialism and abuse--they're a product of our potential. It's an inverted image, as in a mirror, of the power and compassion God meant us to wield. The church was designed as the peak of creation. That's why we've also been the worst.

God knew what he was doing. He knew what human beings were--we were already fallen when he forged his church. He knew what we would become, the good and evil both. And he decided the gain was worth the cost.

So I've chosen to agree with him. That's why I'm here.

You'll make your own choice, of course.

But I have to add one more thing. This class is about history. This was only the past, and the past is gone, and we can't change it. But we do have a say in the future. We can choose where to go from here. That's what I'm going to do. I hope you will, too.





*I do so anyway for two reasons. 1. The class is about Adventist history--if I'm going to be honest, I have to say what actually happened, not what I wish had happened. And 2. When the church tries to gloss over its past, the backlash usually has a higher cost than the truth would have (see the 1888 revival and the Questions on Doctrine controversy).