There are some who believe it is possible to be too morally reflective, to give ethical consideration to issues that are relatively trivial. This tends to unsettle the Adventist in me—How can one possibly be too moral? If some ethical reflection is good, should not more be even better? The Seventh-day Adventism in which I was brought up did not take into account any facet of life in which morality did not play a part. It is a slight exaggeration to say that every moment in an Adventist’s life is morally momentous. What is true, though, is that to societal duties we have added layer upon layer of other moral concerns. In addition to duties to act morally towards others we are to act morally towards our own bodies, our possessions and our God. As I see it, these extra concerns can be best understood as owing their existence to two fundamental characteristics of the Adventist worldview. True, this is a very simplified version of an extremely complex reality. But it is one, I fear, that is not far from the ethical system under which many Adventists operate.

1. The Conflict of the Ages: Our belief in a second coming and a final judgment, set against a back-drop of struggle between good and evil, leads to a very directed, goal-oriented kind of ethics, a system with salvation as its final aim. The Adventist end is not merely a balance of good over evil, or of God’s love, but a promotion of the more encompassing will of God. Nearly every moment and every decision in an Adventist’s life has a moral component. We are constantly either performing actions that are in keeping with God’s plan for our lives or performing actions that distance us from God. No choice, except perhaps the most petty, can ever be truly called non-moral.

Much good can be said about such a cosmic frame of ethical reference. It allows an Adventist to believe that his or her decisions are truly important and have consequences beyond just the immediate surroundings. The accompanying danger is moral fanaticism. Ethical concern can quickly descend into moralizing if it loses sight of its objective.

2. The Cult of the Body: Adventists share with most other protestant groups a basic, mostly negative preoccupation with sexuality. In Adventism, though, there exists a much broader corporeal concern that takes into account the whole of the human body—not just because it is capable of relating to other persons sexually, but because it is seen as having moral value in and of itself. This serves to add a consciously self-regarding dimension to Adventist ethics that is not present in many other systems. The simple mantra “the body is the temple of God” speaks volumes. God, and all the moral weight that word carries, is related to the self. From there, Adventists have developed a very physical morality, one that takes for granted one’s ethical duties to oneself.

The way an Adventist looks at an issue like illegal drug use is fundamentally different from the way someone else does who does not believe the human body is an ethical end. That person might oppose drug use on ethical grounds because it destroys families, wastes human potential and leads to violence. An Adventist, in addition to those concerns, would add that drug use is unethical simply because it is harmful to one’s health.

Is it ever possible to be too moral? We Adventists definitely push the envelope. We are constantly asking ourselves not only whether a particular action is adding to the total amount of good in the world or if it is based upon a universalizable, but whether a particular course of action is facilitating or hindering God’s ends. We recognize a larger relevant ethical whole, one that includes the self as discretely important, and also place these moral considerations in a larger context than do most other systems. I am not willing to say that Adventists always engage in moral overkill. But it does seem that we as a subculture, for the two reasons I outlined among others, are prone to ethical overseriousness.