Life Through a Father’s Eyes: Not a Human Point of View
My father was a conservative Adventist. He believed that the earth was a few thousand years old, was skeptical about challenges to traditional Adventist readings of Daniel and Hebrews, accepted tight constraints on Sabbath behavior, and was doubtful about ordaining women. He was also a conservative American who supported political candidates from the right without hesitation. Combined with his doubts about immigration and his support for protectionism (strange for someone who enjoyed economics) he easily could have become a Trump supporter had he lived. In light of these characteristics, you may think that you’d have been able to predict his stances on a wide range of issues with ease. You would be mistaken.
Jesus invites His listeners to think about God’s realm springing up from obscurity in Mark chapter 4. He tells the story of a mustard seed, tiny, and yet He says the seed yields something remarkable. Similarly, Jesus points to the quiet growth that happens out of sight after the seeds are scattered. What was sown bears fruit after hidden development. When Samuel chooses a new king of Israel in 1 Samuel 15, he chooses a modest David over his imposing brothers. This modest shepherd boy grows up to become a legend. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul emphasizes that, in light of Christ’s work, He no longer looks at anyone “from a human point of view.” Instead viewed in that light, there is a new creation loved by God.
Each case points to a singular message: don’t trust appearances and don’t assume that greatness will be clearly seen. I’m prompted to think about that message when I think about my dad, Stanley Chartier, on Father’s Day.
Stanley Chartier grew up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. As a child, I heard him talk about sitting in classes in public schools in New England, observing what happened as Christian teachers engaged the class in overtly Christian activities. He saw Jewish students quietly leave and felt like something was wrong if a school students were legally required to attend sent them a message that they were outsiders. As an Adventist, and therefore a Protestant, he knew he was one of those outsiders within a largely Catholic environment.
Adventists my father’s age grew up fearing that Catholics and Protestants would ally to punish religious dissenters. While nineteenth-century Adventists who followed so-called “blue laws” declining to treat Sunday as sacred, could find themselves on chain gangs; Adventists learned to anticipate a future in which they would be subject to imprisonment or execution for violating Sunday laws. As a result, they learned to doubt the wisdom and goodness of religious majorities and their political representatives. That deep-seated sense of ostracism shaped the mindsets of several generations of Adventists and could prompt unnecessary fears of exclusivism. There was one advantage, however: it ensured that Adventists didn’t instinctively identify with those who had power.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Chrisitans who believe they should use state power to promote people’s spiritual well-being. I’ve listened to some online discussions of one group of Christians like this, the Catholic integralists. It’s possible to criticize the integralists without objecting to “weak establishment,” which might include things like using tax dollars to support some religious groups, even if doing so is unwise. Watching Jewish students leave a classroom as Christian practices get under way might make it harder to take this kind of position. Perhaps those who don’t object to weak or symbolic establishments may find it natural to think about Christians as rightly seeking and occupying power. My dad was nourished by an Adventsim that didn’t treat this perspective as natural. To be fair, Adventists have made some dodgy bargains with those in power. I think of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. An awareness of outsider status has definitely been a persistent feature of the traditional Adventist psyche.
Along with many other young men of his generation, my dad discovered a wider world when he was drafted into the U.S. Army while a student at Atlantic Union College. Declining to follow the lead of his contemporaries and switch his major to ministerial studies, something that could have exempted him from the draft, he survived basic training and made his way to the Pacific Theatre as a medical corpsman. His doubts about authority were underscored when, one lazy night, he and a friend broke into their company’s files and checked out what must have been something like placement test results. This resulted in them discovering that the two of them, usually relegated to grunt duty, had the highest scores while the sergeant in charge had the lowest.
Dad and other returning GIs studying at AUC had little time for the paternalism prevalent in Adventist campuses. That must have been the reason he helped his friends get petitions calling for the creation of a student council in classrooms across campus. And perhaps why he helped to stuff a ballot box to ensure that a favored candidate of the dean of students wasn’t elected.
While normally he was a sort of hawk, my dad was unwilling to train using weapons during World War II. He consistently favored a non-interventionist foreign policy. I remember hearing him talk about cutting the military back so much that it’s only capability was to launch missiles. I am very doubtful of the morality of nuclear deterrence, but I appreciated his desire to eliminate the U.S. government’s offensive military capability.
My dad was, in many ways, a typical member of the GI generation. But, he could also refuse to conform to cultural stereotypes. He never exhibited anything like discomfort with physical affection that many of his peers were encouraged to embrace. While his only child didn’t arrive until he was nearly 43, he found the time and energy to engage in active play with me and concocted countless stories for my entertainment.
Whatever his understanding of Ellen White’s opposition to competitive sports on Adventist campuses, those sports were constantly on his Adventist television screen. I remember him spending a Sunday afternoon with a couple TV’s tuned to different sporting events while he played computer chess with himself. Traditional Adventist strictures on fiction didn’t keep him from reading or encouraging me to read classic literature or taking in movies at home or in the cinema. Even if he viewed some things as beyond the pale where sexual morality was concerned, he was no prude when he bought me Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex per my request, and proceeded to discuss it with me.
Religious freedom remained central to the way my dad saw and engaged with the world. As a young accountant in Texas, he realized that worries about his unwillingness to work on Saturday prompted doubts in prospective employers. He valued his own religious integrity but also valued the employer’s freedom to choose, so he made it clear that he had no intention of insisting on a job for which the employer wasn’t sure he would be a good fit.
After flirting with the possibility of studying law, he graduated with an MD from what was then the College of Medical Evangelists in 1961. He still saw multiple issues from the lens of religious freedom. As a physician in the pre Roe v. Wade era, he was asked to sit on committees reviewing requests to perform abortions. He almost always voted to approve them. After Roe v. Wade was put in place, he supported and praised the Supreme Court justices despite disagreeing with their liberal views on other issues. This was likely in part because he didn’t think the early-stage fetus was a rights-bearing-person. But he did believe that attempts to restrict abortion violate religious freedom.
My father was crazy about me and in many ways proud of me. But conflict with him—and political and religious disagreement always meant conflict—was hard. When he died unexpectedly at 74 years old, I still didn’t feel ready to engage with him about our religious and political differences. There was a lot of unfinished business, which is probably why I’m reflecting on these issues now. Upon due reflection, I still differ with him about many of the things that might have sparked controversy. On the other hand, I am grateful for his gifts to me that include a deep-seated skepticism of taking up the standpoint of the powerful.
Throughout his life, my dad exhibited a genuine awareness of the temptations of power. Like the rest of us, he was doubtless inconsistent, but his own surprising stances embodied some of the best aspects of the Adventist heritage. Adventists have rarely been tempted to identify with those wielding power, aware of their own differences from the mainstream. Learning to be surprised, to recognize the unexpected, and therefore to acknowledge the reality of perspectives outside the mainstream, is part of what it means to be alert to what God’s providence is up to in history. It is also among the ways in which we can learn to discern and appreciate the unexpected in those who might superficially seem very different, including those like my dad who embraced an Adventist awareness of the importance of declining to side with those who take pride in chariots and horses. It’s worth resisting the easy instinct to regard others from a human point of view.
