Saved by the Law

Saved by the Law

Preliminary draft for a presentation to the Pacific Northwest Adventist Forum

Volunteer Park Adventist Church

3:00 p.m., December 3, 2011

Announcement on the Pacific Northwest Adventist Forum website:

Volunteer Park SDA Church, Seattle

1300 E. Aloha Street

LEGALISM:  THE WAY OF SALVATION

By John McLarty

What do we mean when we use the words, save, saved, salvation? What are people saved from? What are people saved to?

 Saved from hell?

Saved from self-destructive behavior?

Saved from oppressors?

Saved from feelings of guilt and shame?

Saved from moral indebtedness and divine condemnation?

Saved from habits that ruin their children or neighborhoods?

Saved from cancer?

Saved from pain?

Saved to heaven?

Saved to a radical, all-consuming religiosity?

Saved to social, spiritual well-being?

Saved to meaningful, purposeful life?

Saved to happiness?

Saved to prosperity?

Saved to health?

Saved to satisfying marriage?

Obviously, some of these goals are gifts we cannot earn. It is equally obvious that some of these goals are best pursued through smart habits. Behavior matters more than faith.

In forming a healthy church community what is the proper role for legalism? Classic Adventist legalism made “overcoming all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil” a condition of salvation (salvation understood as the opposite of damnation). Most of us have rejected this notion.

I unabashedly advocate “neo-legalism.” Neo-legalism promotes attention to and obedience to wise laws as the most effective way to pursue salvation (salvation understood as a synonym of well-being).

“Saved by grace through faith” is a useful understanding of one element of religious life. It is not a summary of the whole.

John McLarty is Pastor of North Hill Adventist Fellowship in Edgewood, Washington. 

Manuscript for my presentation.

Thanksgiving dinner at our house featured a large crowd of mostly young adults. We were seated around two long tables set together in an “L” shape in our kitchen. The conversation was boisterous, bordering on raucous. Politics, religion, ideas, current research, dreams, relatives – nothing was off limits. The kids – forgive me for calling these young professionals, 'kids,' were telling stories from their practices and residencies and projects at work. These young people have been gathering around out Thanksgiving table long enough their particular contributions to our feast have become traditions in themselves – Bonnie's pies – pumpkin, apple and berry – Katrina's kuboka squash soup, Naomi's avocado and grapefruit salad.

I savored my food and wondered at the privilege that gave me a seat at this table. Surrounding me was a gaggle of attractive, accomplished young adults, doctors, a lawyer, a couple of M.D./Ph. D.s, a musician, a couple of missionaries, an administrator with a Federal agency, some married, some single. All doing well. All actively involved in church.

How does such a thing happen. What is the key to prosperous, happy life passed from one generation to another? Legalism. A long, steady embrace of the disciplines of study, health, spirituality and relationships.

These kids were born to privilege. That was a grace. They were born intelligent and physically attractive. That, too, is a grace. They grew up in homes and churches that planted deep tabus against alcohol and drugs and promiscuity. Those same churches and homes surrounded them with a pervasive expectation that normal life includes higher education. That was all grace.

So these kids studied hard, practiced for thousands of hours, avoided the prohibited destructive behaviors, ate healthy food, engaged in a variety of physical disciplines. That's legalism. And it has launched them into lives full of promise.

Legalism is the key to good life.

Interaction with the audience: What do you mean when you use the word legalism? And what do you mean by “salvation?”

I am deliberately being provocative. For many of us the word, legalism, emblemizes the dark underbelly of Adventist theology and experience. It conjures emotional weeks of prayer in which preachers warned us that a single unforsaken, unconfessed sin would doom us when our name came up in the Investigative Judgment. Legalism referred to the sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit conviction that our standing with God was strictly contingent on our conformity to Adventist notions of Christian perfection.

Then we heard the gospel. Morris Venden or Des Ford or some other preacher opened the windows of heaven and filled our lives with the light of grace. Venden famously insisted, it's not what you know, but who you know. It's not about behavior, it's about relationship. Ford used the theological language and the metaphors of Reformed theology to bring hope and release to thousands of guilt-bound Adventists.

Many of us have spent most of our adult lives trumpeting this good news and battling the evils of Adventist legalism.

Now, I'm calling for a restoration of legalism. I expect an argument, but I'm right. The fact is, legalism is the key to the good life we want for our children and grandchildren. If we want young people to do well, to finish college and grad school, to make good money, to enjoy good health, to have a fighting chance for lasting marriages, to participate in church as adults then we will do everything we can to promote legalism. Legalism is an essential ingredient of any kind of life you would dream for your kids.

Let me sharpen my challenge: It is absolutely vital that we who are in our sixties or seventies or eighties quit trying to shape a church that will serve us well. Instead, we must work for a church serves well our children and grandchildren. And their greatest need is legalism.

What I mean by legalism.

What is legalism? A deep appreciation for the value of rules or standards. A legalistic life, is a life lived in harmony with rules and standards. In a more philosophical vein: legalism is the idea that the entire universe is lawful, that God himself is constrained by law.

What do I mean by salvation?

In much of the conservative Protestant world, the great, burning question in spiritual life is: How can a person be saved? Salvation in this context is merely avoiding the torments of hell. In this world view, the default status of all humans is damnation, i.e. eternal torment. Salvation is rescue from this looming fate. Adventists softened this somewhat by redefining damnation as painful annihilation, but, in general, we still think of the default destiny of humans as damnation. The most valuable action a person can perform is to move another person from their natural state of doomed to hell to being saved.

If, indeed, the great, burning question of our lives is how can I avoid hell, then legalism is useless. No amount of ordered living will protect you from hell. And based on the story of the thief on the cross, just the slightest nod to the Savior will accomplish your salvation. Concern for law in any sense becomes irrelevant at best.

I reject the idea that the default destiny of humanity is damnation. If God is the Savior, then I assume salvation is the default destiny. Otherwise God is necessarily viewed as a failure. Since I reject damnation as the default destiny of humanity, I don't view rescuing people from damnation as the highest calling for Christians.

I regard the natural destiny of human beings to be reigning with God. One of the principle goals of the kingdom of heaven is human well-being. Our calling is to help people experience well-being for themselves and to share it with others. Being saved means enjoying well-being. This well-being begins in this life as health, happiness, wealth, pleasant relationships and is fully realized in eternity. Salvation understood as the fullness of human well-being is inseparable from legalism. It is the behaviors commanded by the law and a view of the world that insists even God himself (and thus all other possible authority figures) is subject to law that contributes most to salvation or the experience of well-being.

The Benefits of Legalism

First, it is an essential condition of a good life.

Legalism is the foundation for the quality of life enjoyed by the young adults around our table on Thanksgiving. They are living well now because when they were younger their behavior was constrained by a comprehensive corpus of smart regulation.

Legalism – assenting to and practicing particular habits – is the key to well-being in every area of life.

Do we want our kids/grandkids to avoid the epidemic of obesity? We will inculcate habitual behaviors in regard to food and physical activity.

Do we want our kids to be accomplished musicians? We will do our best to provide lessons and to support regular practice. There is no other way.

Do we want our kids to be financially independent? We will model and teach habits related to earning and managing money.

Do we want our kids to be involved in church as adults?

Do we want them to experience lasting, happy marriages?

In the United States, one of the greatest predictors of success in marriage is for both partners to finish college. I'm sure that teaching our kids grace will help them be better spouses. We hope that as they experience God's grace they will find joy in passing it on to their spouses. However, at present helping our kids complete college appears to be more effective as an aid to good marriage than giving them proper theology.

Completing college is an exercise in legalism. Showing up for class, meeting the demands of teachings, paying bills, paying attention to the requirements spelled out in the bulletin. Legalism. It is the key to finishing college. And finishing college is the key to marital and economic success in the United States.

Second, legalism is the foundation of pious liberalism.

Since God himself is bound by law, we dare to challenge specific biblical prescriptions when they violate the great law of love. Whatever was the situation in Moses' day, we reject stoning as an appropriate response to Sabbath-breaking or rebellious sons or inappropriate sexual encounters. We reject genocide. We insist genocide is immoral. We simply dismiss the Bible anecdotes that suggest otherwise.

In thinking about homosexuality and slavery we dismiss certain explicit Bible passages condemning or condoning respectively using the words of Abraham, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” We hold God and the church and religion to standards embedded in our notion of universal law.

Legalism – a world view that sees God himself subject to norms of fairness and justice – liberates us from the tyranny of fundamentalism, the swagger of ecclesiastical authoritarianism, and even from the tyrannical impulses of scientism and democracy.

What About Morris Venden?

Morris Venden used to famously say, “it's not about behavior, it's about relationship.” This is a great line. And in the context of Venden's time it communicated an important truth. But what was Venden's central, overriding message: spend an hour a day in thoughtful contemplation of the life of Christ.

His conversion story which I heard a number of times featured him going through the book Steps to Christ and underlining everything it told him to do. After doing this a couple of times, he boiled Christian life to this: Read your Bible, pray and tell others what you found in the first two. In his preaching this was distilled further to spending time with Jesus every day. The young people who heard him preach understood this to mean spending time reading the Bible or Ellen White with emphasis on the Gospels in the Bible and Desire of Ages among the works of Ellen White.

The people I hear decades later still expressing gratitude for the impact of Venden's preaching on their lives are the people who embraced his call to a specific behavior – daily devotions.

Venden's discovery of the “way of salvation” in Steps to Christ, did not deliver him from the necessity of behavior, rather it reduced the hundreds of picky rules about eating and entertainment and thinking and believing to a single, simple rule: spend time every day with Jesus. Venden argued that if you did this, everything else would take care of itself. God would inspire you to do whatever it was he expected you to do.

It didn't really work that way, but the practice of daily devotions does have an impact on one's spiritual life. Doing something daily to cultivate spiritual life will – not surprisingly – lead one to a greater sense of involvement with God.

One point where Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism agree is that spiritual life can be cultivated. And this cultivation takes time. Ideally this will involve a daily practice. Whether you call this daily time: devotions, a quiet time, prayer, Bible study, meditation, contemplation or worship, all of these religions agree that the ideal cultivation of spiritual life involves a daily habit. A behavior.

Another of Venden's proverbs was, “it's all about relationship.” Or “It's not what you know, but who you know.” Again, this was a wonderful corrective to the excessively cognitive-based Adventist spirituality of the time. Venden worked to make the person of Jesus the center of our religion, displacing the maze of prophetic interpretations and the details of doctrinal and lifestyle teachings.

But if take Venden's proverb out of its context and make it a universal principle, it describes the world of corruption and abuse. In nations and cultures where it's really “all about relationship” poverty and systematic injustice are the norm. When “it's all about relationship,” then whether you get signed off on a building permit or not depends on your connections with the inspector, not the quality of your work. When it's all about relationship, what happens in court has less to do with the facts than your connections with the judge or prosecutor. Pushed far enough, relationship can even trump the money you spend on a lawyer.

“All about relationship” government gives us Egypt under Mubarak, Tunisia under Ben Ali and Syria under Assad. Relationships apart from a sturdy framework of law are susceptible to all sorts of distortions.

Domestically, “it's all about relationship,” allows incest and other abuses. As long as the abuser/molester claims to love, the behavior is justified. Glenn Beck famously asserted in one of his 9 Principles, “4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority.”

When a man and his wife are the ultimate authority, who is to say they have gone too far in disciplining their children. Recently the Seattle Times had a front page story about a girl who died from the administration of discipline by her adoptive parents. People are understandably outraged by these parents' behavior.

Our outrage is an expression of legalism. Mom and Dad are not outside the law. Even supposedly “well-intentioned” harm to a child is damnable evil. Good motives are not excuse for starving a child, beating a child, demeaning a child. Love does not justify all behavior. Love itself requires definition. And law provides the definition.

Good relationships are inseparable from a sturdy appreciation of the rules and norms that in other contexts are called “the law.”

So Venden, like every other preacher and prophet, must be understood in the context of his times. A doctrinaire application of his words in a different context can turn helpful truth into toxic ideology.

What about Richard Rice's Believing, Behaving, Belonging?

Rice correctly highlights the profound value of a sense of belonging. Young people growing up in a community need to know they have a place, a home. Ideally, belief and behavior flow out of this sense of belonging. We believe what we do and behave the way we do because particular beliefs and behaviors are congruent with our identity.

Those who argue for the priority of believing, seek to liberate us from the oppressive weight of classic Adventist soteriological legalism which demanded a person achieve perfection in order to earn salvation. In rebutting this anxiety-producing theological, gospel Adventists say, “Only believe.”

Many of us who in our teens and twenties embrace this liberating gospel discovered as we got older that behaving was, in fact, easier than believing. Especially men who were devout in their teens and twenties and got a graduate education, over time the details one was required to believe in order to be saved or even a member in good and regular standing became more and more problematic. It was easier to keep the Sabbath than to believe 6000 years. It was easier to go to church than to affirm without qualification every aspect of the forensic model of salvation. It was easier by far to be a vegetarian than to believe the “ABCs of Prayer.”

People need some kinds of markers of belonging. Belief can be one of those markers. Behavior is another, and for some, a more accessible marker.

Conclusion

We set up our children and grandchildren for the richest success in life by inculcating a deep, abiding respect for ordered, healthy habits – the habits prescribed by law – and a deep sense of the subordination of every “authority” to law.

Of course, a healthy community will make provision for the inevitable failures to perfectly embody law in our performance. The willingness and disposition to extend grace to ourselves and to one another is, in fact, one of the foundational laws of happiness and health.

Legalism, a high regard for law both in our opinions and in our behavior, is an indispensable condition of human well-being. And human well-being is the highest definition of salvation.

The Next Step:

Where I want to go next is to list and defend some specific rules and norms that I think the church should actively promote.

The goal of these rules and norms should be human well-being. We should recognize that most rules are situation specific. Smart rules of a hundred years ago need to be modified if they are going to be smart rules for today. On the other hand, no community can be called “smart” if it is unable to articulate specific, concrete behavioral norms for the children and converts maturing within it.

Some rules I would defend:

1. Friday night as a Sabbath celebration
2. Church attendance
3. Higher education as a norm.
4. Public vegetarianism
5. Strong anti-drug stance, including a Teetotaling approach to alcohol
6. Sabbath afternoon hikes/walks
7. No in-between meals snacking
8. A preference for non-combatancy