8/19/2010 Adventist Review : Where Is the Love?

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ET’S FACE IT: THE INTERNET IS FAST BECOMING AN ADVENTIST WEAPON OF

L mass destruction.

This revolutionary convenience that we should be using to shower the world with our magnificent message as the
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leaves of autumn is being used to destroy reputations and sully characters, especially when it comes to doctrinal
IN THIS ISSUE
orthodoxy and practice. Godly men and women, professors, preachers, and teachers are bludgeoned in blogs by
careless criticism, unchecked facts, or alleged character flaws that have no basis in fact. Some statements parlayed ONLINE ARCHIVES
in e-mails are downright lies, words deliberately taken out of context and spun to fit the acerbic thoughts of the
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sender, often under the guise of Christian concern. And this, even before the accused is contacted according to
Jesus’ prescription for dealing with differences described in Matthew 18. READER RESPONSE

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This insidious work of the devil is weaving its way into the veins
of the body of Christ, weakening its heart and pulse, and FREE NEWSLETTER
causing those who would join us to recoil from the vile stench
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of the loveless language of a few.
ADVENTIST WORLD
More than a year ago I was a guest speaker at a convention for
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another denomination, at which a bishop and his wife told me
of their desire to join our church. However, they withdrew their SEARCH
plans after reading some material posted on the Internet by
Adventists, about Adventists. He observed, “Did you know that
your people publish some of the worst things about each other EXCLUDE PDF FILES
on Web sites? I could not, in good conscience, join a church
where there’s so much hate expressed by its members, no
matter how biblically pure its doctrines.” Ouch!

I suggest we call a moratorium on these negative missives

and restore the love that once defined our people as different from the world. Let’s get back to basics and observe
Jesus’ command: “Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12). To Jesus, love is the greatest principle; and it
is almost always linked with the keeping of commandments (see John 15:10 and Rom. 13:10). We cannot pick and
choose by keeping the commands we approve of and neglect others because we find them too hard to observe. I
believe, as Ellen White wrote, “All [God’s] biddings are enablings” (Christ’s Ob ject Lessons, p. 333).

This means God has put into the heart, soul, mind, and body of every believer the ability to obey His commands. And
if we really, truly understood love in the Christian sense, we would need no other guide for Christian living.

This love is not just sentimentality or gushing emotional indulgence so often portrayed and perpetuated in the public
media. True love is what was demonstrated at the cross when Christ laid down His perfect, sinless life for sinners.
When Jesus said, “Love each other as I have loved you,” He didn’t mean the kind of love that flows naturally for
supremely attractive persons or things, or for those bound to us by family ties or friendship, as wonderful as they are
in a well-rounded life. But Jesus commanded us to love sinners, our enemies, whom God loves because it is His
nature to do so (John 3:16).

Christ’s command to love one another was spoken on the eve of His sacrifice on Calvary. It was more than rhetoric
when He said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He was
about to do just that for sinners throughout the ages. His love is the standard.

So join me in calling for the end of the use of the Internet as an instrument of the devil against our blood-bought
brothers and sisters in Christ. 

___________
Hyveth Williams is professor of Homiletics at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Berrien Springs,
Michigan. This article was pub lished August 19, 2010.

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