Why Adventism Must Resist Legalism Now More Than Ever

Legalism. 

If you are an Adventist, that's a word you are super familiar with. We preach sermons about it. We publish books on it. Our entire history seems to be a battle between legalism and the gospel — from the 1888 general conference, to the QOD crisis of the 1950’s, to the Glacier View/ Ford catastrophe of the 1980’s. And it's not like its past tense. Perfectionistic theologies along with high control obsession over rules and lifestyle standards continues to dominate many local SDA churches. Which basically means one thing. If there is anyone who gets what legalism is, it’s Adventists.

And yet, we still don’t really get it. Because if we only think about legalism as tight dress codes, Sabbath micromanagement, or moral panic over earrings… we never name the deeper issue at play.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me backtrack a little and offer a definition. At its core, legalism is the attempt to engineer salvation through human effort. It may not always be obvious. Most times it gives lip service to grace and Jesus’ sacrifice. But at all times, it boils back to you having to do something to ensure you either get saved or stay saved. In short, it’s a self-rescue project.

And here’s the thing: legalism isn’t new. It’s not an SDA problem. Its not a Last Generation Theology (LGT) invention. The truth is, legalism is an ancient instinct. It is older than denominations and older than the Pharisees. It goes back to the human fear of being vulnerable in a world we can’t control.

What this means is, the legalism many of us have experienced and reacted to—the diet, dress, and doctrine type of legalism that obsesses over coffee, cheese, long skirts, and doctrinal purity—is actually a kind of lower-case legalism. It’s insipid and small compared to the real thing.

Now of course, lower-case legalism matters. It wounds us. It distorts how we see God. But the truth is, lower-case legalism is but a symptom of a much larger cultural and spiritual pattern that has shaped entire civilizations for as long as sin has been around. And if we limit legalism to this small, predictable definition, we won’t be able to show a secular, post-church world—one that’s never felt the weight of silly Sabbath rules, purity culture, or jewelry police—how dangerous legalism truly is, how it quietly shapes their own stories, and how the gospel invites them into a freedom nothing else can offer.

Legalism as Humanity’s Oldest Survival Strategy

In the ancient world, people believed the gods were unpredictable, dangerous, and easily offended. So they built entire systems that included temples, rituals, sacrifices, purity rules, and hierarchies to keep themselves safe. These weren’t random cultural practices; they were society-wide strategies for managing the existential fear of living in an unpredictable world dominated by cruel and unpredictable gods.

And when you believe the divine world is unstable, your entire society becomes a kind of stabilizing force trying to hold back the chaos of unpredictable gods.

The way this works is you build a social structure designed to keep those gods content and to provide some sense of order and predictability. But that stability is never shared equally. It exists mainly for those in power, because they’re the ones who control the rituals, the temples, and the claims of divine approval.

So the kingdom or nation becomes a tool the elites use to secure their own safety in the face of indifferent or dangerous deities, and the people within that system become cogs in a machine—each one there to serve the interests of the powerful. In that world, your judicial system protects the elite, not the vulnerable. Your economy does the same. Your family and class structures adapt to reinforce it. In the end, you create a society that exists to keep the wrath of an angry deity at bay.

In other words, your safety, your security, and even your salvation are tied to the stability of the civilization itself.

This is why ancient practices like temple prostitution, judicial bribery, self-harm rituals, and even child sacrifice existed. They were all ways of trying to convince the gods to give rain, fertility, protection, or peace. And even though the rituals look foreign to us now, the mind beneath them feels surprisingly familiar: If I just do the right things, maybe the divine will be on my side. If I don’t, I’m doomed.

That is the ancient DNA of legalism. And it has been around since sin began.

Legalism as a Civilizational Operating System

Once you see legalism this way—as a political system rather than a set of church rules—you begin to notice it everywhere. Egypt ran on it. Babylon ran on it. Rome perfected it. These were societies built around the idea that the gods demanded performance, and that the powerful few had the tools to appease them, while the powerless many had to suffer.

In short, legalism isn’t simply “strict religion.” It’s the worldview that says, “The gods are dangerous, so we must save ourselves by building systems of control.”

And when Rome baptized itself into Christianity, that legalistic structure remained, even though the vocabulary changed. The empire built around intimidation and performance found its way into the church, and Jesus was turned into a mascot for an institution that now claimed the power to mediate salvation. Loyalty to the institution was treated as loyalty to God. Obedience to the hierarchy became the new path to safety.

This is the seedbed of imperial Christianity. This is the logic behind Christian nationalism. And it grows from the same root as the high-control church cultures many of us grew up in.

How High-Control Adventism Recreates the Same Imperial Pattern

High-control, legalistic Adventism often imagines itself as the opposite of worldliness. It sees itself as a prophetic voice, a countercultural movement, a people set apart. No dancing. No rock music. No jewelry. But when you look beneath the surface—at how authority works, at how belonging is policed, at how Scripture and even Ellen White are used—you begin to notice something uncomfortable: Legalistic Adventism doesn’t resist imperial Christianity; it imitates it. It doesn’t subvert the world’s systems; it recreates them inside a religious framework. It takes the same ingredients of fear, hierarchy, control, and conformity baptizing them in King James english and repackaging them in pious platitudes

For all its “anti-worldliness”, high-control fundamentalist Adventism is as worldly as it gets—not because it drinks or dances, but because it mirrors the operating system of empire, the same system that empire after empire has relied on in order to maintain stability and protect itself from the wrath of petty, angry gods.

This is why so many people feel suffocated. Why so many feel unseen or unvalued. Why so many leave.

Because legalism—whether you find it in ancient Babylon, medieval Christendom, modern Christian nationalism, or hyper-controlling denominations—always works the same way. It uses control as a means of survival. It builds systems meant to keep the angry god at a safe distance.

And that instinct goes all the way back to Eden. The moment Adam and Eve felt fear, they covered themselves and hid. They assumed God was coming in wrath to crush them, not in love to restore them. And when God asked what happened, they turned on each other and even on him, scrambling to deflect blame and protect themselves. In that moment, the self moved to the center and the other became disposable.

This is the root system of legalism.

The same pattern that runs beneath ancient empires, religious institutions, and denominations that orbit a god who must be appeased. Wherever God is imagined as angry and unsafe, people build structures of control—systems designed to shield themselves, manage the threat, and create security at the cost of relational integrity.

And that is precisely what Jesus came to dismantle.

Why Legalism Matters, and Why It’s Never Been a Small Issue

Legalism is far bigger than rules about cheese or Sabbath behavior. Those things matter because they wound real people, but they are a mere microcosm that reveals much bigger, more dangerous fear-based operating system. Legalism is the logic of empire; the engine of oppressive systems; the theology that convinces us that safety must be earned, even if it means sacrificing the vulnerable.

Legalism is not small. It is not trivial. It is a civilizational toxin.

And just because we live in a secular, post-church world doesn’t mean it has magically disappeared. Instead, legalism has reshaped itself into a secular, techno-centric frame but it still runs on the same old operating system..

Just look at Elon Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars. Contrary to what many believe, this isn’t just a science project; it’s a response to the deep, instinctive fear that humanity is one asteroid or ecological collapse away from extinction. Ecological justice movements, in their own way, are fighting the same battle — a desperate push to stop the slow unraveling of a planet on fire. The transhumanist vision of merging humans with machines, enhancing our bodies, rewriting our DNA, or uploading consciousness into the cloud is driven by a similar desire: to seize control of evolution itself and push humanity beyond the reach of death.

Gene editing, digital immortality, anti-aging research, cryonics, underground bunkers for billionaires, quantum breakthroughs, AI superintelligence, and cities in space — none of this is inherently wrong. In fact, much of it is breathtaking. These are extraordinary achievements born from human creativity and ingenuity. But underneath all of them lies the same ancient impulse: we must save ourselves. Our survival depends on our ability to build systems powerful enough to protect us — not from angry gods like in the ancient world, but from what we now believe is an indifferent, meaningless universe that does not care whether we live or die.

And so what do we do, in our modern, enlightened era? We do exactly what the ancients did — we build structures, technologies, and civilizations based on a cosmology of self-redemption. The language is different. The tools are advanced. But the instinct is the same. These systems can never be for everyone; they always end up benefiting the powerful first. They promise salvation, but only to those who can afford it, access it, or fit into it. And so once again, we create a world built by all, but designed for some.

It is legalism without religion — secular, technological, future-oriented — yet still driven by the oldest lie in the human story: that our hope, our safety, and our salvation must come from our own hands. And perhaps this is why the climax of Daniel 2 points us to a “stone cut out without human hands.” It is scripture’s way of reminding us that redemption does not come through human engineering, political systems, or our frantic attempts to secure the future, but through a God who acts beyond our control and for our good. The vision invites us into a new way of being in the world — one centered on trust rather than fear, on divine action rather than human striving, and on a kingdom built not by human hands but by a God who never fails.

In summary, legalism for most people today isn’t found in ridiculous church rules. It’s found in the anxious exhaustion of a world trying to save itself. The ancients tried to appease angry gods through rituals. We moderns try to secure our survival in a cold, pittiless universe through achievement, innovation, and progress.

Both are self-redemption. Both are legalism. Both fail.

Because legalism — ancient or modern — is built on the same foundational lie:

“It’s all up to me.”

And the gospel answers that lie with a different story:

“It is finished.”
“You are loved.”
“You are safe.”

Imagining a Community That Orbits a God Who Is Not Dangerous

And here’s where the gospel really shines.

Imagine a community whose center is not an unpredictable deity waiting to be appeased but a God whose very nature is self-giving love. A God who doesn’t stand at a distance demanding performance but bends down, embraces, heals, restores, and carries the burden of redemption in his own life.

If that God sits at the center, the entire architecture of our community  changes. Justice looks different. Leadership looks different. Power looks different. Belonging looks different.

This is what Jesus meant by “the kingdom.” Not a new empire, but a new kind of human society. A community that runs on grace rather than fear, trust rather than control, love rather than performance. A civilization where the center is not a throne, but a table.

Jesus is the blueprint for that civilization. And the church—when it orbits this God of love—is meant to be the preview.

A Call to Resist Legalism—and to Build a Different Kind of World

So this is my message, my invitation, and my challenge to the church today.

If all we ever do is preach a gospel that reacts to the small, surface-level expressions of legalism—the petty rules, the moral micromanagement, the high-control quirks of our past—we will miss the deeper invitation sitting in front of us. Because the gospel is not primarily concerned with saving us from insipid lower case legalism; it is concerned with liberating us from Legalism proper—the capital-L Legalism that shapes civilizations, structures societies, justifies injustice, and convinces entire cultures that our security as a species must be earned against cruel gods and an indifferent universe.

This is the legalism that turns nations into machines, people into cogs, and religion into a performance. It is the legalism that tells us we must save ourselves through technology, productivity, ideology, self-improvement, or spiritual perfection. And it is the legalism that keeps showing up in every age—not because we drink coffee or wear jewelry, but because we’re terrified that no one, not even God, will hold us unless we hold everything together ourselves.

The gospel resists that. Not just the small stuff. Not just the embarrassing church rules. The whole system.

The gospel does not merely offer us escape from petty restrictions; it offers us freedom from a world built on fear, injustice, exhaustion, and self-redemption. It calls us out of the machinery of empire and into a community where safety is not earned, belonging is not negotiated, and worth is not measured by performance. It invites us into a world of true relationship, true integrity, true love, and true belonging—where the God at the center is not dangerous or unpredictable, but good, generous, and endlessly welcoming.

And this is where our real work begins: cultivating communities of faith where every policy, every structure, every leadership model, every discipleship practice orbits this God of love. Communities where grace, not fear, is the organizing principle. Communities that are not shaped by the logic of empire but by the self-giving love of Jesus. Communities that resist legalism not by reacting against dumb rules, but by embodying a different story altogether.

And when people encounter communities like this—communities marked by welcome, generosity, gentleness, honesty, and love—they notice. Something feels different. There is a new kind of gravity pulling everything together. A new kind of humanity taking shape.

And in that moment, we get to say: “Look what grace has built.”