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Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

David Shin

Identity Questions

Father in heaven, we thank You so much for the words of that song.

We thank You that You're a God of long-suffering, tender mercy that is patient with us.

We pray that You would bless us this morning as we spend a few moments to reflect on Your Word and the principles that are found in its pages.

We pray that the Holy Spirit would guide our thoughts and reflections this morning.

Our message today is entitled, Identity Questions, and I want to share with you a little bit about my experience.

I was born into the Seventh-day Adventist church, if you can call it that.

I'm third generation Seventh-day Adventist, and I've pretty much lived in Adventist communities my entire childhood life.

I was born in Takoma Park, Maryland, next to Washington Adventist Hospital.

Then my parents moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, next to the General Conference.

And then they moved to Hagerstown, Maryland, next to the Review and Herald, and I grew up in this Adventist bubble, which has its pros and cons, you can understand.

And everyone I knew was Adventist, and I went to church, I went to our Adventist schools, and so all of my circle of friends were Seventh-day Adventists.

And then I went away to academy, to boarding school, and I signed up for selling books door to door, selling great controversies, Bible readings for the home, ministry of healing, steps to Christ.

And suddenly I was engaging with people that I had never engaged with before.

Atheists, agnostic, Jews, people of other denominations, and they began to challenge my faith and ask me, look, why are you a Seventh-day Adventist?

And I would give the standard answer, but as I walked away from these doors, I came to the conclusion that the only reason why I was a Seventh-day Adventist was because I was born a Seventh-day Adventist and in my teenage mind I Said that's not a very good reason What if I was born a Baptist?

I'd be a Baptist if I was born a Muslim I'd be a Muslim If I was born a Mormon in Utah, I'd probably be going to Brigham Young Academy if they have such a thing, or Brigham Young University later on.

The only reason why I was a Seventh-day Adventist was because I was born a Seventh-day Adventist.

And then my mind started to think and ask these tough questions that young people many times do.

Do you have to be a Seventh-day Adventist to be saved?

Do you have to be a Seventh-day Adventist to be in the kingdom?

Then I thought, if you don't have to be a Seventh-day Adventist to be saved, If you don't have to be a Seventh-day Adventist to have your name written in the Lamb's Book of Life, then why be a Seventh-day Adventist at all?

It sure seems like we're going through a lot of trouble for nothing.

I'm going to get a call from our president here.

Because if I read my Bible correctly, The Bible says that once you accept Jesus as your personal savior, your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, no questions asked.

And whether you're Baptist, Roman Catholic, if you die, you have the assurance of salvation.

If you don't have to be a Seventh-day Adventist to be saved, then why be a Seventh-day Adventist at all?

And I started grappling with these ideas, and I'm like, why am I who I am?

And having this huge identity crisis and saying, oh, I grew up in this faith, but my parents' religion, you know, why is it my my following, my religion, whatever you may call it, and and I came across this individual's top 10 reasons for why they're a Seventh-day Adventist.

Now it's kind of tongue-in-cheek, it's it's in, it's with some humor, but there's some truth to it.

This is their top 10 reasons for why they are a Seventh-day Adventist.

Don't want to miss Sunday football games.

You know, we go to church on Sabbath and Sunday Could be a perk.

Number 9, we had Pathfinders, about Pathfinder Camperee here, Pathfinder Honor Sash Not Yet Filled.

Number 8, from an investment standpoint, have too much tithe invested.

Number 6, still have a set of Bible storybooks and an Eric B.

Want to see how this great controversy turns out.

Number 2, have a lifelong subscription to an Adventist magazine.

I just love being a part of a worldwide family.

Now this is kind of in humor, but there's an element of truth to this because I myself, being a third generation Seventh-day Adventist, I'm comfortable in this faith.

I like the haystacks and Big Franks and potluck.

And after a tradition exists for a number of years, you start getting used to the culture, this is what you're used to.

You're used to going to Sabbath school, you're used to going to church on Sabbath, this is a part of your tradition.

Is community and the culture of Adventism enough to keep me here?

And what if I find another culture, another community, that has something better than Big Franks and Super Links and Potluck and what if the people that I associate with are better and they have a better community?

And I have this picture of a group of individuals that are enjoying community.

When you read about this group of individuals, they all enjoyed classical music like Brahms and Beethoven, and they would spend time together, not only in the workplace, but in their free time, enjoying fellowship and community.

The startling thing about this picture is the day job of these individuals, they all worked in Auschwitz the concentration camps Their day job was running the machinery in which 1.3 million Jews were exterminated in cold-blooded genocide in the prison camps of Auschwitz.

This brings us to this idea that yes, community is important, But that community has to be built on a certain foundation of beliefs and truths.

And this community was built on a belief and a system that assumed that certain races were more superior than other races, and that the Jewish race was deserving of death.

This community was built on that fallacy and that foundation that certain human lives mattered more than other human lives, rather than the principle, the self-evident principle that all men are created equal.

So you can see that community is important, But if our community is built upon error or a fallacy, then that community can really be something that is ultimately dysfunctional.

And we have this idea of belonging and believing.

We are living in the 21st century with the millennial generation in which they believe that belonging is more important than believing.

It used to be that you believed in a certain framework, a certain ideology, and then you say, okay, I believe, and then I will belong.

But nowadays, we say, look, I belong, I have community, but you know what, I don't really know about these beliefs and so forth, and that doesn't matter so much.

This is where we're living, and the Bible establishes the reality that, yes, community, that fellowship is important, but notice what the Bible says in 1 John 1, verse 6.

If we claim to have fellowship with him, community, and yet walk in darkness, we lie and we do not live out the truth.

In other words, truth is foundational to true community.

A Relationship that is not built on truth is Not going to be a lasting relationship So we have fellowship We have community, but it's always built on this idea of truth.

Now, any time you talk about truth in the 21st century, we're in the postmodern era, and we have this idea of like my truth.

This idea and this notion that truth is truth for you and your experience, but that's a different truth than my truth and we need to coexist and appreciate each other and this is not saying that we should not be tolerant of other people's beliefs and respectful and engage with them in a respectful manner.

But notice what Jesus said about the truth in John chapter 14 verse 6.

He Says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus brings together truth and relationality into 1 entity, his person.

I've heard sometimes people say, look, it doesn't matter what you believe, truth, we just need to have a relationship with Jesus.

As if the idea of relationality is mutually exclusive from truth.

But Jesus brings these 2 things together.

He brings together relationality, relationship, fellowship, and truth into his person.

So when we talk about biblical truth, we are really talking ultimately about the person of Jesus Christ.

This is an article I read in the Washington Post, CIA divorces the secrecy when spies split.

It was documenting how there is this phenomena within the Central Intelligence Agency where the divorce rate is going through the roof.

And because it's a secret organization, they don't disclose the exact numbers.

But this is a phenomena that is taking place so much so that the head of the CIA, the director, put this as a high priority on his long to-do list of saying, look, we gotta remedy this situation because it seems like everyone within this organization is getting divorced.

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Identity Questions

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