ast summer I spoke for young adult camp meeting at Lake Junalusca Assembly, an idyllic setting nestled in the wooded hills of North Carolina. Above magnificent Lake Junalusca (owned by the Methodist church) towers a 25-foot cross.

One day my friend Erin Miller and I were riding in her car around the lake when we saw a remarkable juxtaposition. In front of the huge cross appeared a yellow warning sign: Dangerous Intersection.

This is not a sign of the times. Today’s Christian music often portrays our relationship with God solely as a yearning for protection—He is our hiding place, our sanctuary, our shield.

Safe. Safe in the ironic arms of Jesus—the greatest risk taker in history. If you follow Him—taking godly risks, as He did—you too will be as safe as He was. You can bet your life on it.

Here is a call for courage. As a denomination we must move beyond a self-absorbed preoccupation with “perfection,” both behaviorally and doctrinally. Sometimes I think of how the moon was perfect until we fired missiles into its skin and stepped on it. The planet Pluto is still perfect—no disturbances or flaws, as the moon used to be. When we compare Pluto to Earth, with its troubles and tears, sound and tumult, Pluto seems so . . . peaceful.

On second thought, though, the moon was flawed and disturbed long before we invaded it. Giant craters pock its surface, probably the result of immense rocks slamming into it again and again. The moon in reality is defenseless. While Earth’s atmosphere provides the fertile soil of life’s imperfections, it also protects us from nearly all the frozen death balls flying through our solar system.

Pluto is a dead planet. If holiness means only the absence of sin, Pluto is holy ground. But holiness is so much more, as light is much more than the absence of darkness. Holiness is proactive. Dag Hammarskjöld observed, “In our era, the road to holiness necessarily runs through the world of action.” That’s why sleeping away the Sabbath does not keep us holy. Simply avoiding hazardous amusements, drinks, and drugs will not make us holy. Merely trying to avoid everything unclean makes us susceptible to frozen death—the condition of too many of our churches.

The 27 fundamental beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church are like multiplication tables—valuable for their help in real-life situations. We don’t walk around repeating, “eight times six is 48, eight times seven is 56 . . .” But when we need to balance a checkbook, we can do it. Similarly, we are fundamentally sound when we can connect and balance our real thoughts, loves, and actions.

The litmus test of doctrine is in our application. Stopping a downcast colleague, listening, and offering to pray. Making friends with those who don’t believe or look the way we do. Forgiving someone who has hurt us deeply. Volunteering to lead out in Sabbath school with a room filled with hormone-crazed earliteens. “Do this,” Jesus says in Luke 10, “and you will live” (verse 28, RSV).

Adventist News Network recently reported the Eastern Africa Division’s astounding plans to send out 100,000 Global Mission pioneers this year. These will be added to the 30,000 pioneers currently working around the world—who in the past eight years established more than 11,000 Adventist congregations. Lately I’m contributing more of my church offerings to Adventist Global Mission, believing, as Jesus obviously believed, that investing in risk-taking people is best.

My friend Buell Fogg tells of visiting an onion ring factory. As you might imagine, the air inside the factory was redolent with onions, thousands of them, assaulting his streaming eyes with stinging fumes. Amazed, he looked around and noticed that the workers appeared unaffected.

“Don’t rub your eyes,” his guide advised. “If you do, you’ll never stop rubbing them.” Sure enough, within five minutes Buell’s eyes adjusted, and he could see clearly.

Jesus announces, “I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (John 9:39, RSV). As Christians, we enter life clear-eyed and unblinking. God doesn’t tolerate an antiseptic approach.

The orbit of the Son intersected the orbit of our blue planet to create an enormous explosion. A blinding flash of God, enveloping us in a mushrooming cloud of peace and hope. Now we are all contaminated.

Father, lead me not into temptation. Lead me out of my comfort zone.

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Chris Blake teaches English and communication at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska.