Gauging the Intelligence of our leaders

Here is a quote from a recent article on Spectrum magazine online Reflections on Annual Council and the Association of Adventist Women Conference President Ted Wilson invited a testimony of a Dentist by the name of Carla Lidner Baum. She said the following according to the article:

“Why is there not more of an outcry about the erosion of our beliefs,” she asked?

She said she was worried that our leaders, who in their efforts to be tolerant, instead end up being like Eli or Aaron.

"Because of my gratitude to God, I can never bow down to golden calves."

Next she talked of the “enlightened ones” who seem to suggest that they understand the Gospel better than other people. But the poor people will never be able to understand their gospel. Yet, she suggested, the enlightened ones say they are being attacked.

“I’ve fallen in love with the Adventist interpretation of Scripture,” she said calling it “beautiful, powerful, and close enough to get us through to the end.” Were the ideas about evolution true, “when Jesus came to earth He could have set the record straight,” she maintained. He could have told us that God only gave names and gave order.

So Jesus would have set us right on evolution though no one knew anything about the concept. By that rational should not Jesus set us right on diseases and germ theory and the nature of stars and planets and the destructive nature of slavery and recreational drugs?

Now this might not have deserved mention except that the article also pointed out this:

The next day, Dr. Baum also flew back to Southern California. While it was never mentioned before or after her presentation to Annual Council, she was a member of the Board of La Sierra University. She arrived in Riverside just in time to find out that she had been voted off the Board.

Baum was on the Board of La Sierra University! With a mind like that, an intelligence so uncritical and lets just say it foolish; she was on the Board of a major Adventist University. Somehow I feel only relief that she was removed from the board. But I am equally concerned that she was there in the first place.

We can do better and we must and we must by expecting those in important leadership positions have the intellectual ability to think critically. Being a successful professional does not mean that these people are in any way worthy of positions of leadership. That she spoke as she did at the behest of our Adventist President Ted Wilson says a lot about his intelligence also, sadly.