Here’s a short story about seat belts with applications to the Adventist soul. First some questions: When did you first start buckling up? And what made you do it? Or maybe you are one of the few remaining renegades who insists on a life of unfettered freedom.... I don’t remember when or why I started wearing them. Typically I’m fairly obedient in practical matters — I only rebel when someone tells me I have to do something. Initially I buckled up more faithfully when I was driving than when I was a passenger. But since the winter of 1963 I wear a seat belt all the time. I was a passenger without one and popped my head through the windshield. I can still rub the scar on my forehead and feel it in the middle of my scalp. It’s a convincing argument in favor of seat belts.

But if seat belts are such a benefit, why doesn’t everyone wear them? Of course they restrict our freedoms and of course they’re uncomfortable. And yes, one can even cite examples of accidents where it was more dangerous to wear a seat belt than to be without. Still, the evidence in favor of seat belts is overwhelming.

So the people we have elected to govern us decided to help us wear our seat belts. The first efforts were gentle and kind, buckles in the shape of hearts with a “loving” message: “Buckle up – we love you!”

Didn’t work. Let’s try a harder line: “Buckle up! It’s the law.” Stronger words, but still not much muscle. Sometimes the hard rhetoric was softened just a bit: “Buckle up! It’s our law.”

But only when it turned expensive – “Click it or ticket!” – did the habit begin to catch on. In Washington State, where I live, the fine is $101 for riding without a seat belt. Next door in Oregon it only costs $94. But in both states the authorities issue tickets with no qualms of conscience. Still, I am amazed at how often the report of a fatal accident includes the line, “The driver was not wearing a seat belt.”

Now let’s bring God into the picture. Should God be concerned about such things as seat belts? Why not, if God, like John, wants us to “prosper and be in health” (3 John 2)?

So God sets about the task of helping us protect ourselves and others. In short, to make us be good. Well, make is a bit strong. Encourage? Entice? Coax?

You see the problem. Paul lays it out — his dilemma, ours, and God’s: “What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” (1 Corinthians 4:21).

Now let’s turn more specifically to the Adventist soul and note some highlights in our corporate pilgrimage. Prior to the 1844 disappointment, eschatology was the only Adventist game in town. The goal: Let’s get out of here.

Didn’t work. As our forebears then struggled to make sense of their experience, they came to the conclusion that the “cleansing of the sanctuary” had more to do with heavenly than with earthly matters. Very soon, however, focusing on the heavenly brought them back down to earth again, for in 1846 Ellen White saw in vision a scene from Revelation 11:19: “God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple.” In the open ark she saw the Decalogue with a soft halo surrounding the fourth command. That vision made it clear to her that the little flock of faithful believers must keep all of God’s commands. In short, our pioneers realized that they were called to be an obedient people. Eschatology was still alive. But now the call to obedience was equally important.

The real Adventist revolution, however, began in 1863 when Ellen White received her famous health reform vision. I say revolution, for what that vision did was set Adventists on a collision course with the dominant evangelical impulse that pits law and grace against each other. For many evangelicals, law condemns; it is grace that saves. Ellen White’s health reform vision helped Adventists re-discover that Old Testament truth that the law is God’s gracious gift to his people. It is good news. To be very blunt, it is Gospel.

One senses the euphoria in Moses’ voice as he describes the awe and envy that their God-given law elicits from neighboring nations: “Surely this great nation,” Moses quotes their neighbors as saying, “is a wise and discerning people!” Then in his own words he tells why: “For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?” (Deuteronomy 4:7-8, NRSV). Psalm 119, the longest psalm of all, can’t stop singing the praises of the law. Paul and other New Testament writers may have struggled with ambivalent feelings toward law (another story for another time), but not Moses or David.

Adventists in the 1860s had urgent reasons for learning the good news about “natural” law, for they were dying off like flies. They needed to recognize that the “laws of nature,” or “the laws of our being” are just as much a part of God’s law as the Decalogue. In the words of Ellen White, “It is just as much sin to violate the laws of our being as to break one of the Ten Commandments, for we cannot do either without breaking God’s law” (2 Testimonies 70 [1868]).

With such a view of law, punishment for sin is not something mandated by a sovereign God; rather, it is the built-in and natural result of breaking a “natural” law. It is the stomachache from eating stolen green apples, not the whipping administered by an irate authority.

The pressing need for discovering the link between “natural” law and God’s law was highlighted in a report cited several years ago in the Senior Sabbath School Quarterly (1/13/93). Based on the deaths of 63 Adventists whose obituaries were published in the Review and Herald in the year 1862, the study revealed an appalling fate awaiting young Adventists:

Can you imagine a world in which only eight of 63 people live past 60 years of age? I picked up a copy of the North Pacific Union Gleaner (July 12, 1993), and tallied the 56 obituaries listed in that issue. Here are their ages at death:

Small wonder that Ellen White turned passionate on the benefits of “natural” law. After ticking off the hazards of bad health and noting the transformation that health reform had brought into her life, she had spunky words for the believers in Battle Creek: “There is not one woman in a hundred that could endure the amount of labor that I do. I moved out from principle, not from impulse. I moved because I believed Heaven would approve of the course I was taking to bring myself into the very best condition of health, that I might glorify God in my body and spirit, which are His” (2 Testimonies 372 [1870]).

A deadly backspin, however, lurks in this “good news” approach to law, namely, the powerful impetus it gives to salvation by works. Health reform can be practiced. It can be done. We can keep God’s law!

But somewhere along the line each of us has to confront the reality of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and the horror of the tangled mess within. It’s one thing to take care of our bodies. But only God can tame the soul. That’s why the 1888 message brought such a crucial corrective to that seductive Adventist temptation to believe that we can earn salvation.

The hard but liberating truth is that only God can change the human heart. We must come to him and be broken. It is his gift that forgives and saves, not our efforts to take care of our bodies. As Ellen White exclaimed: “Let the law take care of itself. We have been at work on the law until we get as dry as the hills of Gilboa, without dew or rain. Let us trust in the merits of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (MS 10, 1890).

Note that she speaks of a spiritual malady, not a physical one. However hard we may try to whip our bodies into shape, it is only the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that gives us salvation.

It’s a good idea to take care of our bodies. I must admit — if I could say so without being arrogant — that I like the idea of a conscientious Adventist being the healthiest and most productive worker in a crowd of a hundred. But gratitude must always be the driving force, not our efforts to earn a ticket to heaven.

Finally, don’t be too surprised if God sometimes uses the “click it or ticket” approach on you. It could save your life; it could even save your soul. It’s not his preferred method. But God is a great pragmatist, fully capable of being all things to all people in order to save some. The “some” may include you. It may include me. We must speak again on these things.

pp.22,23 adventist today | vol. 15 issue 3