Vertical Truths

any might find it hard to believe I would confess this, but after 20 years as a Seventh-day Adventist (including the past six as an ordained minister) I'm still not comfortable in a church. Even after all these years, when I hear my children (8 and 10) talk about going to "church," I feel a twinge of pain.

It's because of my Jewishness, of course. However secular my background, I was still raised Jewish, and from my earliest years I had always associated Christianity--churches, Jesus, the cross--with oppression, persecution, and anti-Semitism. Jews were Jews, Christians were Christians; they had more weapons than we did, and that was that. The neurons had been formed early on, and it's not so easy to dismantle them now.

In fact, if I could follow my heart, I wouldn't even be a Seventh-day Adventist; I'd be a Messianic Jew instead. Messianics are Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, but who worship Him as Jews, in synagogues, just as the earliest followers of Jesus did (sorry, folks, but Peter, Paul, James, Barnabas, et al., did not go to church). Messianic Jews know that they don't have to become Gentiles or worship in Gentile traditions in order to follow Jesus. I love Messianic services, Messianic liturgy, and Messianic music (something about singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers!" in a church just doesn't do much for me). In a Messianic synagogue I feel like what I am, a Jew who has accepted his Hebrew Messiah, Jesuah ben Joseph.

What's interesting, too, was that an Egyptian Seventh-day Adventist once told me he struggled with the same feelings, only from a Muslim perspective.

Which comes to the crux of why, even despite my heart longings or the sporadic twinges of pain, I'm a Seventh-day Adventist and, through God's grace, will always be one. My feelings, and those of my Egyptian friend, arose from the horizontal, the dimension of the contingent, relative, and constantly changing cultural forms, traditions, and customs that we just happen to be exposed to (if, by fate, I had been raised where my Arab friend was, and he where I was, our roles would be reversed). Though the horizontal has its place, something transcends it, something takes precedence over it, and that's the vertical--the dimension of eternal and unchanging truths, the truths that years ago I sought with all my heart to know no matter the cost to myself, the truths that have made me, not a Muslim, not a Baptist, not even a Messianic Jew, but a Seventh-day Adventist.

Whenever the horizontal conflicts with the vertical, the horizontal has to give, because the horizontal is just fleeting and ephemeral, while the vertical is eternal and transcendent. The horizontal is, essentially, just the world passing away, nothing more; the vertical, in contrast, leads to eternal life, nothing less. If truth were exclusively horizontal, existing in the realm of the human only, there would be no argument: one should do what one feels like doing because there's nothing above to judge whether it's right or wrong. Reality, however, exists in more dimensions than a mere plane.

I love the Messianic worship, the Messianic culture, the Messianic ambiance, but I love "present truth" more, and present truth dictates that I worship in a church that understands the state of the dead (which Messianic Jews don't), a church that understands the eschatological significance of the Sabbath (which Messianic Jews don't), a church (I still cringe at that word, but don't judge me unless you've been in my shoes) that understands Christ's two-phased ministry in the heavenly sanctuary (which Messianic Jews don't). These are vertical truths that transcend culture or tradition, truths that can't be swallowed up and swept away by the emotions, twinges, and biases that the horizontal has etched, hewed, and scribbled into me since birth.

Of course, I'm not narrow enough to believe that one has to be a Seventh-day Adventist to be saved; that's hardly the issue (in fact--that's not the issue at all). But I am narrow enough to want to follow truth, which leaves me no other option than the Seventh-day Adventist Church--even if, as a Jew, I would rather be in a synagogue on Sabbath worshiping my Messiah Jesuah HaMaschiah and chanting, "Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohanu, Adonai Echad" (see Deut. 6:4).

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Clifford Goldstein is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide.