Dave Edgren examines what makes Adventism a culture worth preserving versus a cult mentality that harms people. He praises Sabbath, Bible teaching, and community while warning against the perfectionism and judgment that can breed spiritual abuse.
Chapters
And this takes a level of cultural identity, which means first we have to— we can see other cultures because they're different, and we see what's different about the culture. But until we understand our own culture, it's very difficult for us to value or understand someone else's culture. But it's hard to introspectively look at yourself and say, I'm part of a culture. You think, "No, this is normal, and everyone else has a culture, they're weird." But it's not. We all have a culture. We all— just like language, we all have a unique language based on where we were raised. So, some thought questions for you later, or maybe you've already thought about this. What is your culture? Where did you come from? Who are you now in a cultural sense? What do you like about your culture? What makes you who you are within your culture? And how has it shaped you? Because all of us have been shaped by the culture in which we live. I love the Adventist culture. I was raised from— I think I was 3 years old when my parents became Adventists, so I can't remember anything different. I love Sabbath. I love coming together and worshiping. I love having a day off, and everyone, including Dad, who's so busy all week long, having a full day off and just coming and being with us and having great times. The best memories I have of childhood are because of the Sabbath and spending time as a family. I love intergenerational worship. Which is something Seventh-day Adventists do that if you've been raised in the church, you don't realize. We have a gem. Other churches are struggling. Why are we losing all of our young people? And they have Sunday school, then they have Sunday, our children's church, and they don't— the children never sit in here with the adults for the sermon. And so kids have not been enculturated into what it means to be an adult in their faith. And we're doing some work, Pastor Brian and I are doing some work on that journey between youth and adult. How can we make the youth feel like young adults in our church? Because this process of cultural identity is very important. And so the children are part of worship. We saw Zoe just read to us, we saw Jacinta read to us, we saw Zoe and Michael, he's not really a child anymore, well, not by his age, standing up and leading us in worship. He's mine, that's why I can pick on him. And we have— Every week, I think, we have kids up here. We certainly every week have kids out there. We have a children's story. So many churches don't have that because there's no children. They're out doing kids' church, or they're at Sunday school while the parents are in church. So I love intergenerational worship and the way that Seventh-day Adventists do it. I love Bible teaching. I love the way we take the Bible seriously, and we don't just call it God's book, but we actually, we are called by other people, people of the book, because we love the Bible so much. And I love community. I love what we do, the way we eat together, the way we share together, the way we have— when I was a kid, we had luncheon, or we called it potluck, and it was luck at what was in the pot. You never knew. And luncheon we have once a month here. We have soup and buns every week. It's community, it's bonding, and it's growing together. But within my culture, I also fear— I fear— I love the Adventist culture. I fear the Adventist cult. Now, I know we're not a cult, but some people act like we are. And the simple definition of an Adventist cult rather than culture is that their focus is more on perfection than on connection. If we are connecting with others and that is our goal in lifting people towards what they can be in Christ, it's really hard to say, "And you must be perfect." But if we focus too much on perfection, then we get— We get unbalanced on that side, and we begin to drive nails into people who are already leaving, as they leave, you know, into their back. And then we wonder, "Oh, why did they leave? I guess they were never a good person anyway." And this often leads to spiritual abuse. And that's all— that actually all is spiritual abuse. When somebody else is growing towards Christ, we need to be doing everything to love them to Christ. So I've seen beautiful Adventist culture, and I've seen some of the nasty side of the Adventist cult. So I love Adventism, I fear Adventism.
