Adventist Media Response and Conversation

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Brain Dead Administation

I think I have figured out the leadership of the Adventist church. Ah you may say no one can figure out their inscrutable minds. After all the Board Chairman at La Sierra University Ricardo Graham recently asked 4 people to resign after listening to a secret recording of their private conversations. As if private conversations should be supplied to employers for their use in deciding faculty and staff positions. You may think they would not want their words recorded and played back to their constituency. But I think they don't even think about that. It is to Clifford Goldstein that I owe this new understanding of Adventist leadership.

Here is the paragraph that led me to my new understanding:

“The dead, therefore, know no delay in the Second Coming. It’s we, the living, who fret over it, but only because we look from the wrong perspective, the perspective of the living. But that’s too narrow a view, because most people are dead a lot longer than they are alive. From 
the perspective of the dead, things appear quite differently.”

You see if you have perspective of an active and thinking brain you act differently then someone who as Goldstein says in his article: “--what would death do to that experience when we have no brain function or, if dead long enough, no brain?”

So he wants people to look at the wider view of things. That view, that perspective, in his article is that of the inactive, non functioning, dead brain. Are you getting the picture? The goal of the Adventist leadership is to have the wider view of things. The perspective of the dead with no thoughts and no brain. What is the perspective of someone with no brain; normally being brain dead is not a something to be desired but it appears to be good and we are to emulate it and it does appear that the administration at La Sierra University are doing their best not to think. Strange how not thinking and fundamentalism go together, but that is the subject for another day.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That quote seems to be pulled completely out of context and misapplied to fit your point of view. It's akin to the old "Judas went out and hung himself...go thou and do likewise" adage.

Anonymous said...

I'll have to admit that the original Goldstein article isn't all that inspiring (which could be interpreted as "Jesus is coming back as soon as you die" - so you might as well die soon!) http://www.adventistreview.org/issue.php?issue=2011-1517&page=21 Is your point that the actions of the board (giving a choice of resignation vs. real board action) is pretty much a pass the buck type thing? Designed to not really address the real issues and just give people an "easy way out"?

alle said...

Well, Anonymous 12:07, that was always the logical conclusion I came to as a young SDA, not that I give a toss about it anymore. I have a Baptist pastors' widow as a patient right now who is expressing that same conclusion in so many words which her daughter has interpreted as suicidal. Of course she wont go thru with it because she also believes she'd be banned from heaven if she offed herself. Interesting conundrum dont you think?
BTW I know this is getting a bit off topic. Sorry. My 2 cents worth or less. ;)