BarelyAdventists illogical hypocrites

 One of the pretty correctly titled groups on Facebook is called BarelyAdventist. It is, I think, from the same people who give us Adventist Today and Spectrum online. Lately, they have taken to preaching on their Facebook page, and here is one of their latest declarations.

For decades, the Adventist Church has had people who feel it’s their personal duty to correct everyone else. Emails packed with Ellen White quotes. Whispered critiques in the church lobby about someone’s outfit. Cornering the pastor over sermon points. The assumption is always the same: I am right, and I must set you straight.

“Telling the truth in love” has been distorted. In practice, it often becomes a license to judge, critique, or lecture people you barely know. Love gets a bad reputation. Relationships are damaged. Church becomes a place of fear, not grace.

Here’s the truth: Jesus didn’t go around policing or judging people. Even He, with perfect authority, did not insist on correcting everyone else. You are not Jesus. You are not an Old Testament prophet. Trying to “set someone straight” before even having a relationship with them is the pinnacle of hypocrisy.

Start with relationship. Listen. Engage. Care. Only then might someone actually invite your guidance—if it’s truly needed. Correction without trust and connection is not faithfulness; it’s pride in disguise.

Love in Adventism should not be about pointing out every misstep. It should be about showing up, respecting others, and offering help when it’s asked for. That alone could heal far more hearts than a thousand unsolicited “corrections.”

Let's look at some of the logic that this post makes:

For decades, the Adventist Church has had people who feel it’s their personal duty to correct everyone else.

We will see this “everyone” several times in this post. So far, I have never met a person who feels it is their duty to correct everyone else. So this first logical fallacy is the introduction to their post. It is not simply that I have not met anyone who felt it was their duty to correct everyone; it is impossible to correct everyone. So this horrible person in the introduction is not only set with an impossible “duty”; if that was what they actually thought was their duty, they would have to be mentally deranged.

Emails packed with Ellen White quotes

Is that supposed to be a sentence? Let us assume that it is a continuation of the logical fallacy of the first sentence. The person with a duty has packed up what they want to say, hidden behind an email with only Ellen White quotes. If that is their duty to email Ellen White quotes to people, we can assume that indeed it is from a mentally deranged person. But that mentally deranged person who cannot even tell the recipient the reason for the quotes could hardly be said to feel it was their duty to correct everyone with a bunch of quotes from a dead assumed prophet.

Whispered critiques in the church lobby about someone’s outfit. Cornering the pastor over sermon points. The assumption is always the same: I am right, and I must set you straight.

We will move past the other two points because, as we can tell, this is all built from a false view of, at best, a deranged person. It is possible for a deranged person to always feel they are right. Of course it is still not at all likely that even the deranged person is “always” acting with the assumption that that they are always right and that they must set you straight, apparently to the above author it is by packing an email with Ellen White quotes, or whispering a critique of an outfit or simply cornering a pastor to talk about sermon points.

 
Now we are getting to the point of this author's point. Some people do things the author does not like, it is hard for the author to recover from the initial logical fallacy, so for the sake of continuing the analysis, we can assume that that is their concern.

“Telling the truth in love” has been distorted. In practice, it often becomes a license to judge, critique, or lecture people you barely know. Love gets a bad reputation. Relationships are damaged. Church becomes a place of fear, not grace.

Telling the truth in love is not a thing, “speaking the truth in love” Ephesians 4:15. We have Biblical direction to speak the truth in love, but the key is the truth. So to know something is the truth takes a lot more than to regurgitate Ellen White quotes; critiquing an outfit could in no way be considered in the truth category, it is the opinion category. Love, on the other hand, can be classed as permissive to tough love to discipline. That means that something can be done in love in different ways. Certainly, talking to the pastor about a sermon is not necessarily about truth or love. Why is it even included here? Could it be that what this author wants is for people to simply accept what they are told?

Here’s the truth: Jesus didn’t go around policing or judging people.

Are you sure? He cleared out the temple of money changers (John 2:13–17, Matthew 21:12–13) He called the Pharisees a brood of vipers ( Matthew 12:34, 23:33), and He specifically judged those who were of their father the devil. (John 8:44) Of course, Jesus also called Judas a son of perdition (John 17:12). So, Jesus did do it; what the author means by “go around” is kind of meaningless. We also have a lot of sermons on how people should behave, which could certainly be termed policing, as that is a very broad term, especially if you use the idea of community policing or self policing, which deals with relationship building, problem solving, decision making, and trust building.

Even He, with perfect authority, did not insist on correcting everyone else.

Jesus, in his incarnation, would be in the same situation as the first logical fallacy in that Jesus could not correct “everyone”; instead, he taught, but He did not spend his time personally correcting “everyone”.

You are not Jesus. You are not an Old Testament prophet. Trying to “set someone straight” before even having a relationship with them is the pinnacle of hypocrisy.

It has taken a while, but we have finally gotten to some truth in the above post. You are not Jesus or an Old Testament prophet. Then it wanders off into nonsense again. Can you set someone straight, for instance, point out their extreme use of logical fallacies without having a relationship with them, of course it is pretty common on the internet, though it may not set them straight, that depends on the person. But it is certainly not the pinnacle of hypocrisy. That pinnacle might be more like teaching others not to sin while publicly practicing the same sins.

I am going to end this here because I think the post is pretty much summed up with hypocrisy. It is worse yet because it is fueled by logical fallacies. It ends by trying to sound caring, but it is really uncaring because if one cares, they actually try to be truthful, even when saying difficult things. That was the focus of Ephesians 4 and a pretty fitting way to cleanse our minds from the BarelyAdventist sophistry.

14Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

17So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.... 25Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 

No More Christians, Videos to Start a Conversation

Community Christian Church has produced a series of fairly humorous videos available on the internet. The first one I was introduced to was the parody of the PC vs. Mac ads. In which the nerdy guy is the Christian with a pile of books and the cool guy is the Christ Follower”. The Christian asks the Christ Follower if he wants to see the Christian’s bumper stickers which he has inside his coat because his car is full. He then asks the Christ follower “so what do you wear to display your Christianity?” Christ Follower answers; “Well, nothing I guess, I don’t know I just try to follow Christ in the way I live my life, I don’t feel I have to wear my heart on my sleeve so to speak”. The Christian then mocks the Christ Follower until the Christian mocking repeats “I am a dork”

The message in the video to me is that what we do is more important then what we say about ourselves. The Video ends with the logo which says “Christian No More.” The problem comes at the explanation of "Christian No More". In simple terms they want to rid the world of the historic term Christian because in many places Christian is merely a cultural word and many people practice their Christian faith without much conviction. From the Website:

The Difference between a Christian and a Christ-follower
By Dave Ferguson

Here are some thought provoking words from the book, Jesus with Dirty Feet. “Jesus was not a Christian. He never asked anyone to become a Christian, never built a steepled building, never drew up a theological treatise, never took an offering, never wore religious garments, never incorporated for tax purposes. He simply called people to follow him.”

When the Barna Research Group did a survey of 152 separate items comparing the general population with those people who called themselves Christians, they found virtually no difference. Ugh! They found no difference in the attitudes of Christians and non-Christians and they found no difference in the actions of Christians and non-Christians. That is the contemporary working definition of the title “Christian”. Do you understand what it means to the rest of the world to call yourself a “Christian”? And, is a “Christian” what you want to describe your willingness to sacrifice everything you have to see God’s dream fulfilled? Not me!

If you call yourself a Christian, I want you to stop! Seriously, I hope you will never again call yourself a Christian. Maybe not what you were expecting? It is exactly what you and the church need – forget ever being a Christian again. And secondly, if you have ever encouraged someone to become a Christian I want to ask you to never do that again! I’m dead serious. I hope you will never again ask a friend, family member, co-worker or neighbor to become a Christian. Why? Because the last thing the mission of Jesus Christ needs are more Christians!

Here are the brutal facts (and it pains me to say this because I really don’t like being this negative…but the truth hurts.): 85% of the people in the United States call themselves Christians. Now, let’s pause long enough to realize that’s a whole lot of people: 247 million people to be exact. But how are those 85% doing in accomplishing the Jesus mission?

• Research tells us among people in North America who call themselves Christians that a Christian is no more likely to give money to a homeless person on the street than a non-Christian.
• Those who call themselves Christians are no more likely to correct a mistake if the cashier gives them too much change than a non-Christian.
• A Christian is just as likely to have an elective abortion as non-Christian.
• A Christian divorces at the same rate as those who consider themselves non-Christians.
• Even though there are more, big churches than ever before filled with people who proudly wear the title Christian, 50% of Christian churches didn’t help one single person find salvation.

I no longer call myself a Christian. I no longer try to convert people to Christianity. I’m done with that. The word “Christian” has been tarnished. It’s not so much because the title is wrong, but because as a label it has now come to mean something far different than what it means to follow Jesus. Being a “Christian” has been reduced to the expectation of nice-ness. How pathetic. How boring. How easy. How insignificant. And even that expectation of nice-ness doesn’t have to be fulfilled because the greater expectation is hypocrisy – the practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not live out. Who would want to be that!?!

I am a Christ Follower. I follow Jesus. And I follow Jesus step for step as His Spirit moves me and His community called the Church. When Jesus steps, I follow. When Jesus speeds up – I increase my pace. When Jesus slows down – I slow down. The direction; the speed and the entire velocity of my life are determined by moving at the speed of Jesus’ Spirit. Simple. Clear. Not easy!

The concept of abandoning a historic word which means follower of Christ for a new term which means “Christ Follower” is the height of absurdity. What this campaign is probably about is that the media has portrayed Christians as mainly a political entity that is hypocritical and forces the country to follow their political agenda. That is certainly the emphasis for quite some time for some examples you can read my article Election Enlightenment and the World to Come The use of statistics as most of us know is often problematic. For instance note the first bulleted statement where Christians are no more likely to give money to homeless people as non Christians. This really means nothing because there are so many frauds who beg for money that it is unwise for most people to give beggars money. Since there is no way of knowing if you are simply giving money to be wasted on drugs or alcohol, two of the major reasons for homelessness, giving money may not be doing anyone any good. What the statistics don’t note is that Christians do give more to charities and those organizations in turn help the homeless etc.

From the Barna Group Article: American Lifestyles Mix Compassion and Self-Oriented Behavior

The Role of Faith

Faith commitments sometimes play a role in what people do - but less often than might be assumed. In comparing the lifestyle choices of born again Christians to the national norms, there were more areas of similarity than distinction. (Note that in Barna surveys, the born again segment is not based upon whether a person uses that label, but based upon their profession of faith in Christ and confession of personal sin.) Born again Christians are more likely to volunteer for their church; however, they are no more likely than average to help the poor and homeless. Born again Christians were also among the least likely groups to recycle.

In evaluating 15 moral behaviors, born again Christians are statistically indistinguishable from non-born again adults on most of the behaviors studied. They are less likely to view sexually explicit movies and magazines, to use profanity in public, and to buy a lottery ticket. However, even in these cases, the gap between born agains and the norm is not wide - roughly one-third of the non-born again audience say they had engaged in the three activities compared to one-quarter of born again Christians.

The fourth area of difference is the lower rate of music piracy among born again Christians (2% versus 9% among non-born agains).

What is interesting is just how perceptions play such a large part in any poll. Speaking of the recycling issue Barna Group wrote in the article that the "Americans think of themselves as recyclers. The most commonly practiced of the 20 activities is recycling some used product or material. Three-quarters of Americans have done this in the past month (74%)." Most of us a quite aware of how few things we really recycle yet because most Garbage Disposal companies provide recycle bins with the garbage service Americans feel they are recyclers. I have little doubt that the most sincere environmentalists would not class these people as recyclers. This is a similar concept that we see in the Community Christian Churches article about Christians.

The answer is not to discard the word Christian but to practice the concepts of Christianity. Never cave into the secular media’s propaganda that Christians are hypocrites and uneducated buffoons. As Bill O’Reilly has well stated we are in a culture war with “Secular Progressives” and if you allow them to define the terms it matters little what you believe because it will be reinterpreted for other purposes.

I like the video’s and will probably try to use some of them in our Youth department. Videos are an art form and as such subject to various interpretations so they can very legitimately be used even if the ideas behind them are shortsighted. Take some time to check out their other videos.