Reading as an Act of Hope

Where do ideas come from? What assumptions do those ideas rely on? What paradigms frame our analyses? Are there other ways of looking at the same thing?

If there were a single defining characteristic of my reading life, it would be this: that I have endless questions. At any given moment my head is swimming in innumerable questions about life, God, faith, my body, the world, the Bible, family, people, church, my career, history, leadership, among other things. While some find questions unsettling, preferring the steady feeling of certainty and having answers, I have come to embrace the process of questioning and its life-giving force. I find truth in the cliché that the more you learn, the more you grasp the limits of your knowledge.

Of all the questions that drive me to read, there is a set of overarching questions that has compelled me for more than a decade:

What does it mean to be an Adventist in the present day? How does faith influence the world, and how does the world impact faith? How does a movement meet its moment in history?

Books are where I turn to explore these questions. In an age of micro attentions, overstimulations, constant online-ness and its tendency to lead us to many forms of despair, reading can be a radical act of hope, even when the subjects are dark and difficult. I say that because in this quest to explore faith and its world, I am drawn most of all to the subjects of human suffering and pain, from different times and places in human history.

Reading as an Adventist

One way to explore what it means to be an Adventist today is to ask the question “What did it mean to be an Adventist in ages past?” As a nonhistorian, I start with a reasonable assumption that the past 200 years or so, the period of world history that overlaps with Adventism’s beginning, is a good place to begin my exploration.

Take the early Advent movement as an example—what did the Adventist faith look like vis-à-vis the world of the early 1800s? What was the world like at that time? What were the main threads of culture, economy, and sociopolitical events that shaped the era? And what were the key questions that early Advent believers wrestled with?

It is impossible to answer this question without exploring nineteenth-century history in America and beyond. This includes the formation of the United States as we know it, with most of the states joining the Union in this century. It includes Native American history and America’s western expansion that took over indigenous lands, the Second Great Awakening, the splitting of many Protestant denominations in the United States over the question of slavery, the abolition movement, Black history, slavery and the economic system it drove, the Civil War, the Reconstruction era, the subsequent Jim Crow era, and the rapid ascent of modern science, evolution, and the Industrial Revolution.

The century began with the Haitian Revolution, the first successful slave revolt that loomed over slavery in the Americas. Later in the century came America’s imperialistic expansions in the Caribbean, the Philippines, and other territories. In Asia and Africa was the continuing conquest of European colonialization and resource extraction, a lot of it entangled with the spread of Christianity.

What did the Advent movement mean in the context of its time? What was significant about the birth of the movement at this specific moment?

In the 1900s what place did Adventists inhabit in the age of world wars, of the coalescing of the American Evangelical movement, of women’s suffrage, of postcolonial independence around the world, of the presence of foreign military power in many countries, of the Cold War, of the Civil Rights Movement, of migrations and the many political revolutions, genocides, and massacres worldwide? How did faith meet the world as it was? How did Adventists around the world live their faith through these events?

Each encounter between Adventism and the world adds a piece to the infinite puzzle of what it means to be a global movement. If the movement is to accomplish its prophetic mission to proclaim the three angels’ messages to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, it must wrestle with the history of the world, region by region.

These are questions that won’t be satisfied by superficial and canned answers. Reflecting on these matters is not an easy process, but reckoning with them helps inform us of our present moment, including the times Adventists played both the heroes and villains in history.

I have come to embrace the process of questioning and its life-giving force.

Reading to Understand God’s Kingdom

In my survey of the above questions, my thoughts often linger on the contrasts between human empires and God’s kingdom. In history it is impossible to avoid encountering evil, the horrors of what humanity can do to each other. There is no corner, in any era, where darkness isn’t present. And what I find more insidious than the evil manifested in individuals is the evil that exists in systems, laws, governments, and societies.

There is a complexity to sin that is beyond one person’s choice. Multiple choices made collectively, consciously and unconsciously, can create currents and trends that form the moral tide of a society. Personal sins are convoluted with societal sins, and when we don’t question the assumptions that form the ideas around us, we may unwittingly adopt a moral code antithetical to God.

“Few are guilty, but all are responsible,” writes rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in The Prophets.[*]

When it comes to greed, oppression, and exploitation, we are entangled in a web of complicity.

Why bother uncovering these problems? Why should we care about these things that are often beyond our control and, at times, at the expense of our personal well-being?

I would submit, simply, because God cares about these things. The questions of justice, inequity, greed, and power are tales as old as time. The prophets raged over them, and the Bible doesn’t shy away from them.

The failures of human systems are a study in contrast to God’s system. The deeper you see their faults, inequities, and injustice, the more God’s system of government shines. Take the civil laws in the Old Testament that we often pass over. They are an invitation for us to ask, What are the principles embedded in them of a just and righteous society, one that other nations would wonder over (Deut. 4:5-8)?

What would it look like if the love of money didn’t reign supreme in a society, if bribes that alter judgments didn’t happen, if fields were not harvested to the point where there’s no margin for those who are in need? What would it look like to rest every seven years? What would be the results of resetting land ownership every 50 years? What is the commentary of God’s system on generational wealth and private property?

Each ordinance is part of a broader system, and more important than picking which one to plug into our human systems, we should ask the question What principles motivate God’s laws? And although we live on this earth, with our faulty governments, systems, and laws, we may still pledge allegiance to God’s kingdom first and follow His ways of doing things.

Reading to Understand God’s Love

The most profound lesson I glean from history, though, is personal and not a mere idea. Reading about atrocities, colonization, slavery, wars, and massacres gives me, in a twisted way, hope, both in our human existence and in God.

The fact that these books exist testifies to the common grace that stands in protest when human beings turn against their neighbors. They are testimonies that all is not right, no matter how cynical the authors may be about God. Journalists, reporters, and researchers spend their lives in study and pursuit of these stories, and that is a radical act of hope. Bearing witness to evil, they call to us to not look away from human suffering and pain, even though it may be convenient to do so.

They point me to a God who does not look away—the true and faithful witness of human history.

I may be shocked by the atrocities that I wasn’t aware of before, but God sees everything. He has always known humanity’s true nature. We could forget about the bloodshed that is happening today in another land, about children, women, and men who are dying because of famine and explosives, but God could not. We could get away with not thinking about the souls trapped in the torture chambers of modern-day profit-driven prisons. But God could not.

God does not look away.

No, this doesn’t answer all the questions. But it makes me pause in quietness.

The same God who witnesses all human history is the same God who sends His Son to rescue us. What a radical act of hope! And the most radical part of that hope is that God has hope in humanity.

Reading makes me think that we underestimate our belovedness in the eyes of God. If God could not look away, then His love is not blind. He knows the depth of our sinfulness; it is a gross understatement to say our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. Yet His love, its breadth and depth and width, is immensely beyond comprehension. Somehow He considers this world, us, worth sacrificing for.

I do not know how God simultaneously witnesses the evil that is in the world and hopes for our salvation, but He does. God loves us. This baffling, simple truth shines brighter than humanity’s dark history.

[*] Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets, Harper Perennial Modern Classics (2001).