This is the best book written on the Seventh-Day Adventist church.
A much darker glance at Adventism is provided in We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. It tells the story of Adventist leaders in Rwanda who participated in the genocide of Tutsis.
It’s weird that I am on this kick of reading books about my former church. When I was an Adventist, I could not wait to get out of the church and into the wider world where I would do magnificent and influential things.
Now I’m in the big world as well as the small world of Orthodox Judaism and I’m thinking about all the pretty girls I left behind at Pacific Union College.
I’m wondering why I was so eager to get away. Sure, the Church seemed dumb, but the girls were hot. So why run, bucko?
In that small community, I was known. Everybody who met me knew that I was not in the popular crowd. So as a marginal Adventist, I dreamed of a much much better world outside the church where everybody wouldn’t already know I was a loser who couldn’t say yes to Cindy’s sixth grade invite note dropped on my desk, “Would you like to go with me?”
I had no idea when I converted to Judaism in 1993 that I would carry all my anti-social, self-destructive tendencies into my new faith. I thought I was leaving old Luke behind. I thought I was wedded to Dennis Prager and that I was going to be a good Jew.
I thought that all those lonely nights listening to love songs would be a thing of the past. Air Supply would no longer be my favorite music group. My tastes would become more sophisticated, more Jewish and more like Prager’s.
I thought I could get away from who I was by converting to a new religion. I thought the girls outside of Adventism would be even hotter. I thought that my chances for success would be even better.
I imagined I’d no longer be held back by ridiculous strictures and my inner super wonderfulness would bloom and the world would pay due diligence.
