I was recently called to task over my use of the term "a higher standard" in the synopsis of my book, PRECIOUS JEWELS, A SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST FAMILY SAGA. The phrase appears on the back cover of the book (and elsewhere) and reads as follows:
"Precious Jewels is the story of a real, flawed people who, nevertheless, hold to a higher standard and an abiding faith in Jesus."
This, said my critic, is just the sort of prejudice that contributed to turning him away from Adventism. The idea that Adventist standards are "higher" than, say, those of their Lutheran neighbors at the church down the way, or their Jewish friends at the synagogue, or any number of other folks who experience the sacred by observing specific codes of ideals, practices and beliefs certainly deserves to be qualified by an admission that the measurement used is subjective.
In fact, I wasn't even measuring. The expression "higher standard" was used so often in my formative years that I admit that it automatically fit itself into the statement without exciting any thought from the author of what "higher" might be comparing itself to. Read as it is written, it certainly implies that there is a comparison, and one then asks, "higher than what?" In the context of the story, did Pearl's conversion to Adventism consist of taking up a standard of thought and behavior that was higher than, say, that of her parents, Anthony and Sarah, who found a way to a loving compromise when religion caused a conflict in their own lives?
Pearl would probably have said, Yes, that's exactly what it means. To be vegetarian, she would have said, is a higher standard of diet that that of eating meat, and so forth and so on. Point by point, practice by practice, we may debate whose standard on a particular stand is "higher."
Did Pearl become a better person when she embraced Adventism? Even the family -- perhaps especially her family -- might debate that. She interpreted her beliefs to require a stern and rigid sort of life, and all these years after her death, her grandchildren haven't completely forgiven her for her inability to see the person in front of her before the ideology inside of her.
Pearl and her daughter Grace embody two sides of the spectrum of how religious devotion affects a person. Pearl becomes more caustic as the years progress, until none but her daughters who knew her in sweeter years can love her. But Grace who believes as completely in Adventism as does Pearl, leaves a different legacy. The same people who couldn't love Pearl still mourn the death of Grace, whose generosity and unconditional love was nearly not of this world.
One religion, played on two very different human instruments, display two contrasting faces of what Adventism may be. It would be very easy to say that Grace held to a "higher standard" because the resonance of her life struck such a beautiful tone in nearly every heart that encountered her, and to infer that because she was an Adventist then Adventism is the way to go. It might be equally tempting to say that Pearl fell from a higher standard when she held to her beliefs so stringently that she appeared to be uncaring of anything else, and therefore Adventism might be avoided as a narrow, harsh religion.
I suppose that my Adventist teachers who instilled the term "higher standard" into my subconscious did indeed mean that the Adventist way was superior, as this is what many if not all people believe about their own way of thinking.
I, however, visualize "higher standard" as a flag on a tall pole, and "holding to" it as holding that flag up against a wind that would tear it down if not for a great effort. In this sense, both Grace and Pearl held to the higher standard in the face of the winds of desire and heartbreak that buffeted them.
Flags generally represent nations, but they can also represent beliefs and symbolize our most cherished values. To raise the flag and to hold to its standard does involve the sense of height, for a flag is raised above one's head, and to raise it higher means to keep it within ones' sight. A lower standard is a flag not raised--or one not raised high enough so that one may keep one's eyes on the goal. So the "higher standard" that I speak of is a comparison with itself, the standard raised or not raised.
