Rajmund Dabrowski

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack
A crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

– Anthem, Leonard Cohen

His demeanor displayed anger as he said, “Our young people are heavily influenced by today’s culture. All those TikToks and stuff. It takes them away from the church.”

As usual, when something goes wrong, it’s the messenger that gets a black eye.

There was a day when I was learning what it meant to be in the world. It was my own church where I was growing up that made sure I heard it loudly and clearly. Years later, I thought of it as an upside-down education. There was an extreme lesson in the way a church elder made sure that girls would not be allowed inside the sanctuary in miniskirts. He stood by the door on Sabbath morning with a ruler.

As I was on my way to study in England in 1966, my own father was worried that I might walk off the Adventist “straight and narrow” road. “You are inclined to imitate those beatniks,” he often said. He asked one of the church leaders living in England, Bert B. Beach, to look after me. Obviously, I needed a chaperone.

My dad told him that I tended “to enjoy too much of that pop music,” which was partially true, and my hair was longer than what Adventist youth ought to have. “You look like one of the Beatles,” he would tell me. A few years later, I was nearly sent home from university unless I got a haircut. It was regarded as a bad influence on other students in an Adventist school, so I was told. Much, much later, Bert jokingly remarked, “You enjoyed that music, didn’t you? Today, I must admit,” he said, “their music is closer to what I imagine we will hear in heaven.”

When talking about culture, through which all of us meander, whether it is art, music, literature, or fashion, my own experience with it was an expression of who I was. My own Bible study made me realize that my religion is not expressed by the volume of religious words I use. Such words and concepts come when they are needed. Christian presence and its media content makes a difference when motivated by the values of one’s faith.

If I were to evaluate the capital of my spiritual country, it would have to be Scripture. The location of my geographical bearing is centered in the Holy Word. And Scripture is at the foundation of the culture by which I am surrounded, that I know and respect.

There was a moment that made the Scripture meaningful for me, and meaningful in ways that charted each of my todays and tomorrows.

Once upon a time, in the 1970s, I was involved with the life and work of Poland’s premier artist, Czesław Niemen. He was a composer, a singer, a painter, a poet, and a friend. I helped him with his professional activities, traveled with him, even organized a tour or two, translating into English some of his lyrics. I will dare to say, what Bob Dylan is to America, Niemen was to Poland …

Niemen’s art was serious. His was a spiritual presence for the nation—a contemporary expression of who the Poles are, coupled with a call to continue to revise our lives. He sang: “Strange is this world, a world where a man hates his fellow man …” He called for a revival where values are reclaimed. Where we move toward each other and respond to our common needs. Niemen’s faith and his religious background made him a bridge builder between the world of needs and the world of God’s compassion.

Enter a day when I decided to share with him my personal worldview, a view described by singularity of purpose as defined by my Bible. Niemen was raised in a home and community where a priest read what he chose from the Scriptures. I introduced Niemen to my Bible. I said: “Czesław, read it for yourself.”

It was a few days after I gave him a brand-new translation of the Bible that I saw him again and he said: “Why did you hide this treasure from me for so long? Are you serious about what you stand for? Listen to this.” He opened the Book of Job, chapter 29. I’ve never forgotten to go back to that passage again and again. From that day in 1979, I was given my marching orders … Niemen impacted my life by pointing to an alignment of the internalization of practicing and sharing what God says in His Word.

“Good faith Christians are rounded in Scripture and practice the art of seeing people,” words that polish my Christian attitude and put me where I am.

Our culture always gets richer when we base it on God’s Word. It takes practice to make a difference. It requires creative relevance. Consider the attitude of Apostle Paul: Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. … I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it! (I Cor 9:20-23 MSG).

Rajmund Dabrowski is editor of Mountain Views. Email him at: [email protected]

By Rajmund Dabrowski … As I watched David Bowie in a commercial advertising Audi in the Spring of 2004, what struck me as important was its simple tagline. The ad issued a call to Never Follow.

Honestly, what it communicated to me was the opposite of what I learned from Jesus’ call to His followers: Follow me.

The marketing campaign tried to position the European car-maker as a product that many were to follow. Some did, more so in Europe than in America. Three years later, the company ditched the slogan. “You have to be bold to be noticed in America—certainly bolder and more aggressive than we’ve been,” they said. Well …

On the surface, this slogan does not connect with Matthew, Zacchaeus, and many others from Jesus’ entourage, if I may be so irreverent, except that all of them had to fail first, forsake their ego, and fly into the hands of … wonder.

David Bowie’s involvement in the Audi ad made sense to me. Never follow the crowd! His words, spoken in a video he shot: “There is no progress without failure. And each failure is a lesson learned. Unnecessary failures are the ones where an artist tries to second guess an audience’s taste, and little comes out of that situation except a kind of inward humiliation.”

That’s a lesson from our contemporary culture. For me, there was another lesson, one all of us had to learn and many continue to learn throughout their lives.

In the mid-1980s, a straw vote was requested by the General Conference on allowing the ordination of women. An upcoming world church session was potentially including it on its agenda. I recall voting at the Polish Union Executive Committee. I know how I voted.

We know the history of the ordination of women drama experienced by the church. Years later, I visited my dad, then a church leader in Poland, and I asked him if he remembered the outcome of this straw vote. He remembered the vote and that there was one Yes vote. After a short silence on my part, he looked at me and said, “You have always been a maverick.”

What an affirmation. I responded with a smile!

Nonconformity and free expression were and continue to be a part of my daily breakfast, so to speak. Apart from my own thought processes, as an Adventist Christian, I learned from the best: the pioneers of the Advent movement.

One of them stands out for me—Michael Belina Czechowski, a compatriot and pioneer missionary leader in Adventism. Before embracing Adventism in 1857, this Franciscan reformer-father was heavily engaged in social and political activities which swept Europe in the 1840s. He wanted his then church to change but became disenchanted with Catholicism.

After arriving in America in 1851, he engaged in sharing what he learned about the Second Coming of Jesus among the immigrants mainly in New England. At first, he was supported by other Adventist pioneers, as well as by the sales of his fascinating autobiography, Thrilling and Instructive Developments: An Experience of fifteen years as Roman Catholic Clergyman and Priest but there was an itch to return to Europe and preach there.

His church was not ready to support a foreign mission, but funding was offered to him by the first-day Evangelical Adventists from Boston. He was an example of climbing through the window if a door was closed. In several countries of Europe, Czechowski preached the message of the Sabbath and the Second Coming of Jesus and established numerous congregations in Switzerland, Italy, France, Hungary, and Romania.

In 1871 the church confirmed the missionary accomplishments of Maverick Czechowski. “We deem it duty to acknowledge the hand of God in planting the truth in Switzerland,” the record states.

It often takes a maverick to foster change and ignite progress. Mavericks of Adventism. What a privilege to join them. We have a job to do!

–Rajmund Dabrowski is editor of Mountain Views and RMC communication director. Email him at: [email protected]