Adventist Today editor libels Abigail Shrier but likely has never read her

 By Ron Corson

Once again Adventist Today has published an article with an abundance of opinions and little facts. Loren Seibold the editor at Adventist Today wrote an article entitled: On Complete LGBTQ+ Acceptance in the Church. I am not going to respond to the full article I think it would be good for the Adventist denomination to examine these new issues in culture and religion. What I have a problem with is when ignorance pretends to be knowledge. Here is what Loren Seibold wrote:

“Recently the youth director of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists recommended on social media the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The author, Abigail Shrier, revives the old arguments that were once leveled at lesbian and gay people: that there is an “agenda,” a “movement,” in this case to induce young women into becoming male. This excreta is being pushed from the very top of our denomination. (Abigail will make a great deal of money on this book from the many people who love simple answers that blame others for problems they don’t understand.)”

 When a person reads that paragraph it somewhat sounds like the author of the article has some knowledge of the work of Abigail Shrier, unless, of course, anyone has read the book or listened to an interview with Abigail Shrier. Perhaps just as bad as someone who clearly has not read the book or even listened to an interview with Abigail Shrier, Loren Seibold seems to imply that the youth director of the General Conference has done something horrible by directing people to an important book on social media.

But how can it be an important book if the book is about reviving an old argument that transgenderism of young girls is an agenda or a movement.  Well, it is at this point that we know Loren Seibold knows nothing about the book. It is here that I have to come up to the plate and say Loren Seibold either does not know what he is writing about or is purposely lying to his readers. Whichever answer, it is not good for Adventist Today.  Unless of course the purpose of Loren Siebold is not honest journalism but leftist propaganda, in which case lying for the political cause is part of progressivism.

One thing all readers must learn is to identify fictional material that is attributed to someone else. This is most easily done by checking the sources. Is there a quote given, what is the source and can we read the quote. Is there any context to the quote? Here Loren Siebold gives single word quotes “agenda,” a “movement”. By just using the single out of context quotes the reader is forced to accept Loren Seibold’s explanation.  I am pretty sure he is just passing on what some other unscrupulous writer had written. That is a huge problem if someone cannot even take the time to get some first-hand information what good is their information. It is no better than gossip and in this case it is malicious gossip.

So what is the book about? The reason for the book is set forth in the beginning of Chapter 2 under the title the Puzzle:

“In 2016, Lisa Littman, ob-gyn turned public health researcher and mother of two, was scrolling through social media when she noticed a statistical peculiarity: several adolescents, most of them girls, from her small town in Rhode Island had come out as transgender—all from within the same friend group. “With the first two announcements, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s great,’ ” Dr. Littman said, a light New Jersey accent tweaking her vowels. Then came announcements three, four, five, and six.

 Dr. Littman knew almost nothing about gender dysphoria—her research interests had been confined to reproductive health: abortion stigma and contraception. But she knew enough to recognize that the numbers were much higher than extant prevalence data would have predicted. “I studied epidemiology… and when you see numbers that greatly exceed your expectations, it’s worth it to look at what might be causing it. Maybe it’s a difference of how you’re counting. It could be a lot of things. But you know, those were high numbers.”

 In fact, they turned out to be unprecedented. In America and across the Western world, adolescents were reporting a sudden spike in gender dysphoria—the medical condition associated with the social designation “transgender.” Between 2016 and 2017 the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the U.S. quadrupled, with biological women suddenly accounting for—as we have seen—70 percent of all gender surgeries.¹

 In 2018, the UK reported a 4,400 percent rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatments.²

 In Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the UK, clinicians and gender therapists began reporting a sudden and dramatic shift in the demographics of those presenting with gender dysphoria—from predominately preschool-aged boys to predominately adolescent girls.³”

Jumping a head a couple of paragraphs:

“If this sudden spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls is a peer contagion, as Dr. Littman hypothesized, then the girls rushing toward “transition” are not getting the treatment they most need. Instead of immediately accommodating every adolescent’s demands for hormones and surgeries, doctors ought to be working to understand what else might be wrong. At best, doctors’ treatments are ineffective; at worst, doctors are administering needless hormonal treatments and irreversible surgeries on patients likely to regret them. Dr. Littman’s theory was more than enough to touch a nerve.

 Activists stormed the Twitter page of PLoS One, the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the Public Library of Science that had published Dr. Littman’s paper, accusing her of anti-trans bigotry. They claimed that Dr. Littman had deliberately solicited parent reports from conservative, anti-trans parent groups. (In fact, over 85 percent of the parents self-identified as supporting LGBT rights.)” (page 21-22)

 

From there the book is a deep dive into researcher and psychologist data and observations.

Now I don’t expect people to take the time to read her book but this is an important topic. Take the time to listen or watch her Interview with Jorden Peterson. Peterson as a clinical Psychologist is very clearly a deep thinker even if he is not the best at interviews. Please take the time to listen or watch and then see just how much truth there is to Loren Siebold’s statement: “Abigail will make a great deal of money on this book from the many people who love simple answers that blame others for problems they don’t understand.”

Update. Here is the Joe Rogan podcast with Abigail Shrier. It is a more conversational program with a bit more on cultural and activists content. Pretty sure that after listening/watching this most people would say that Loren Seibold's paragraph in question above is really activist in nature. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4SIh4Pt39AtGQYzMJMNkv1

You can read articles by Abigail Shrier at: https://muckrack.com/abigailshrier/articles

Update 12-9-21

Read her speech at Princeton: What I told the Students at Princeton

The Rise and Fall of Intellectual Christianity

By Ron Corson

The word intellectual when not prefaced by the term “pointed headed,” reflects by definition the use of one’s intellect over emotion or experience. It is by and large in Western society the legacy of early Christianity. The Christian faith is built upon the books written by people after the time of Christ. Jesus wrote no words for us to quote or they would surely have become the Scripture to all Christians. There was no shortage of books about Jesus or about Christians in those first three centuries of the Common Era. There were many literary works with many differing views of God and Jesus Christ.

In the second century Marcion edited and presented his own view of what the Christian canon should be well before the proto orthodox (those who were the first to hold to what would become orthodox Christianity and the compiled a more standardized Christian belief) decided that a canon was a good idea. Marcion’s canon included several books by Paul and an edited version of something very similar to Luke’s Gospel minus the first few chapters. Marcion was a member of the Gnostic form of Christianity. As such the God of Jesus Christ and the God of the Old Testament were two different Gods and as with many Gnostic’s Jesus was not man or God/man He was a spirit, a phantom who only appeared to be a man. We know about Marcion because of what the Early Church Fathers wrote about him, we have none of his writings but we have a good number of other Gnostic writings many found in Nag Hammadi in 1945. Examples of Gnostic writing include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Truth. Those being the most readable but by no means cover all the Gnostic or other works from the early centuries of Christianity. Recently the news has told us about the new find called The Gospel of Judas. The debates in the first 400 years of the early church dealt with what today some call the “Lost Gospels”. It was from the Early Church Father’s writings until the find at Nag Hammadi that the Gnostic views were known. It was up to the Early Church Fathers to deal with those works and we can still read of their intellectual arguments.

The Early Church Fathers and even the Gnostic Christians were intellectuals. They used literary works to argue their position against the Gnostics and we have even seen Gnostic literary work that argues against the proto orthodox form of Christianity. The very literature we have today can often be traced back to these intellectual debates in early Christianity. Even the very simply logical idea of context of written material was decided by Christian argumentation. What is common sense to us today was part of the battle ground of the intellectual processes of our early Christian fathers. Today we would likely laugh at many of the arguments that some of the Early Church Fathers used. Yet the encapsulation of the Christian Canon was based upon years of Christian debate; arguments, rebuttals and appeals to reason. However these Christians show us intellectual debate does not remove God from the process.  God must act upon the human mind; it is the point of contact between the transcendent God and the physical man; the nexus between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God.

Intellectual Christianity takes work and as time passed it became easier to merely follow religious institutions. Man by his nature is often lazy and seeks the path of least resistance. Not all men of course, for the Christian church could never have been founded by lazy men and women. As orthodox Christianity grew and spread so did the power of the church. With time intellectual Christianity diminished. The Protestant Reformation gave renewed hope to Christianity as the intellectual Christians began to question what tradition had done to the orthodox Christian religion. The Bible as the accepted standard, again took center stage and intellectual Christians championed new ways of understanding the messages that God had inspired. The mind, perhaps God’s greatest handiwork was used by God through the agency of intellectual Christians to rehabilitate the Christian church from the damage done by tradition. When emotion and experience based upon tradition were opposed by the God enabled intellectuals, the church changed.

Protestants today are in need of intellectual Christianity as much as any other time in history. The intellectual activity of our predecessors does not automatically flow to us. Their wisdom and their folly are there to be seen and learned from by those willing to process the information. Protestant heritage includes great minds; men and women of great accomplishments. But to use our intellectual faculties we have to make decisions that likely will lead us away from traditions which were not well founded. Not all emotion, experience or tradition is contrary to intellectual process. But it is the intellectual process that evaluates emotion, experience and tradition deciding what to keep and what to discard. History is less a guide and more a milepost; a sign to the ever vigilant and a message to those who desire understanding.

As the Adventist church stands at a point where it must decide to cling to tradition or accept intellectual Christian challenges, so also must other Protestant churches. The term Evangelical at one time meant the idea of a church spreading the good news of God found in the four gospels. Today the term has come to mean the same as fundamentalist. Evangelical now means people who hold to the Bible as inerrant, infallible and holding to a strictly vicarious atonement, scientifically and socially out of step with reasonable people. While a Christian may not worry too much about what the world says of them (realizing that as Jesus said the world would reject His followers as it rejected Him). Still there may be some truth to those who now use the word Evangelical as derogatory.

The intellectual Christians that built up the church are becoming less and less visible. Today many of the large Protestant churches have abandoned the long held Protestant church practice of Sunday school. Many churches offer little opportunities for adults to interact with one another in the discussion of religious topics. Cell groups, the popular innovation of the last 20 years are sometimes so authoritarian that questioning a leader is not even allowed. Singing and Sermons have become the main form of religious instruction in today’s Protestant churches with the exception of Televangelists. Divergent views and questions have no place in today’s modern Christian churches. While Adventist churches have not abandoned the Sabbath school program it may be so poorly attended or conducted that it often becomes hard to find a Sabbath school that one feels comfortable presenting a differing view or posing serious questions. 

The reason for this situation is very likely that today’s Protestants, as well as Adventists, have accepted the idea that his or her church has “The Truth”. The truth is being preached and there is nothing anyone needs to question or challenge. To challenge and question is what the atheists and the worldly folk do, it is not what we Christians do. It is the decline and fall of the Christian intellectual as the traditional once again gains ascendancy. It is possibly a new Dark Ages at a critical time for Christianity, with the concurrent lack of viability of Christianity in Europe and Canada and the attacks of progressive secularism in America. For Christianity to survive outside of the uneducated third world intellectual Christianity must be maintained. It is something that the Adventist church must fight for; it is something our Sabbath schools must fight for. Sabbath or Sunday school are a good indication of how well members are assimilated in a church, equally importantly however they are vital to intellectual Christians. Stimulating the thinking process and spurring continued study and application of knowledge.

The Christian church has a long history of argument. The arguments are recorded in the New Testament book of Acts and the writings of Paul. Several New Testament authors warn of the false teachers of the day. Truth and error have always existed inside the Christian Church; even the very godly can produce error and error repeated can become tradition. Christian Intellectuals may not be in agreement, they may even argue in Sabbath school and be critical of their own churches, but it is all apart of the process of thinking and applying knowledge. Christian Intellectuals believe that God will lead them into all truth, as the Bible says. However, since throughout history we have not arrived at all truth it is not likely that we will arrive at all truth today or tomorrow. We are all works in progress, and it is our faith in God manifested in Jesus Christ that maintains our unity even during the disagreements.

The Rise and Fall of Intellectual Christianity

The Rise and Fall of Intellectual Christianity

 

By Ron Corson

 

The word intellectual when not prefaced by the term “pointed headed,” reflects by definition the use of one’s intellect over emotion or experience. It is by and large in Western society the legacy of early Christianity. The Christian faith is built upon the books written by people after the time of Christ. Jesus wrote no words for us to quote or they would surely have become the Scripture to all Christians. There was no shortage of books about Jesus or about Christians in those first three centuries of the Common Era. There were many literary works with many differing views of God and Jesus Christ.

 

 

In the second century Marcion edited and presented his own view of what the Christian canon should be well before the proto orthodox (those who were the first to hold to what would become orthodox Christianity and the compiled a more standardized Christian belief) decided that a canon was a good idea. Marcion’s canon included several books by Paul and an edited version of something very similar to Luke’s Gospel minus the first few chapters. Marcion was a member of the Gnostic form of Christianity. As such the God of Jesus Christ and the God of the Old Testament were two different Gods and as with many Gnostic’s Jesus was not man or God/man He was a spirit, a phantom who only appeared to be a man. We know about Marcion because of what the Early Church Fathers wrote about him, we have none of his writings but we have a good number of other Gnostic writings many found in Nag Hammadi in 1945. Examples of Gnostic writing include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Truth. Those being the most readable but by no means cover all the Gnostic or other works from the early centuries of Christianity. Recently the news has told us about the new find called The Gospel of Judas. The debates in the first 400 years of the early church dealt with what today some call the “Lost Gospels”. It was from the Early Church Father’s writings until the find at Nag Hammadi that the Gnostic views were known. It was up to the Early Church Fathers to deal with those works and we can still read of their intellectual arguments.

 

 

The Early Church Fathers and even the Gnostic Christians were intellectuals. They used literary works to argue their position against the Gnostics and we have even seen Gnostic literary work that argues against the proto orthodox form of Christianity. The very literature we have today can often be traced back to these intellectual debates in early Christianity. Even the very simply logical idea of context of written material was decided by Christian argumentation. What is common sense to us today was part of the battle ground of the intellectual processes of our early Christian fathers. Today we would likely laugh at many of the arguments that some of the Early Church Fathers used. Yet the encapsulation of the Christian Canon was based upon years of Christian debate; arguments, rebuttals and appeals to reason. However these Christians show us intellectual debate does not remove God from the process.  God must act upon the human mind; it is the point of contact between the transcendent God and the physical man; the nexus between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God.

 

 

Intellectual Christianity takes work and as time passed it became easier to merely follow religious institutions. Man by his nature is often lazy and seeks the path of least resistance. Not all men of course, for the Christian church could never have been founded by lazy men and women. As orthodox Christianity grew and spread so did the power of the church. With time intellectual Christianity diminished. The Protestant Reformation gave renewed hope to Christianity as the intellectual Christians began to question what tradition had done to the orthodox Christian religion. The Bible as the accepted standard, again took center stage and intellectual Christians championed new ways of understanding the messages that God had inspired. The mind, perhaps God’s greatest handiwork was used by God through the agency of intellectual Christians to rehabilitate the Christian church from the damage done by tradition. When emotion and experience based upon tradition were opposed by the God enabled intellectuals, the church changed.

 

 

Protestants today are in need of intellectual Christianity as much as any other time in history. The intellectual activity of our predecessors does not automatically flow to us. Their wisdom and their folly are there to be seen and learned from by those willing to process the information. Protestant heritage includes great minds; men and women of great accomplishments. But to use our intellectual faculties we have to make decisions that likely will lead us away from traditions which were not well founded. Not all emotion, experience or tradition is contrary to intellectual process. But it is the intellectual process that evaluates emotion, experience and tradition deciding what to keep and what to discard. History is less a guide and more a milepost; a sign to the ever vigilant and a message to those who desire understanding.

 

 

As the Adventist church stands at a point where it must decide to cling to tradition or accept intellectual Christian challenges, so also must other Protestant churches. The term Evangelical at one time meant the idea of a church spreading the good news of God found in the four gospels. Today the term has come to mean the same as fundamentalist. Evangelical now means people who hold to the Bible as inerrant, infallible and holding to a strictly vicarious atonement, scientifically and socially out of step with reasonable people. While a Christian may not worry too much about what the world says of them (realizing that as Jesus said the world would reject His followers as it rejected Him). Still there may be some truth to those who now use the word Evangelical as derogatory.

 

 

The intellectual Christians that built up the church are becoming less and less visible. Today many of the large Protestant churches have abandoned the long held Protestant church practice of Sunday school. Many churches offer little opportunities for adults to interact with one another in the discussion of religious topics. Cell groups, the popular innovation of the last 20 years are sometimes so authoritarian that questioning a leader is not even allowed. Singing and Sermons have become the main form of religious instruction in today’s Protestant churches with the exception of Televangelists. Divergent views and questions have no place in today’s modern Christian churches. While Adventist churches have not abandoned the Sabbath school program it may be so poorly attended or conducted that it often becomes hard to find a Sabbath school that one feels comfortable presenting a differing view or posing serious questions.

 

 

The reason for this situation is very likely that today’s Protestants, as well as Adventists, have accepted the idea that his or her church has “The Truth”. The truth is being preached and there is nothing anyone needs to question or challenge. To challenge and question is what the atheists and the worldly folk do, it is not what we Christians do. It is the decline and fall of the Christian intellectual as the traditional once again gains ascendancy. It is possibly a new Dark Ages at a critical time for Christianity, with the concurrent lack of viability of Christianity in Europe and Canada and the attacks of progressive secularism in America. For Christianity to survive outside of the uneducated third world intellectual Christianity must be maintained. It is something that the Adventist church must fight for; it is something our Sabbath schools must fight for. Sabbath or Sunday school are a good indication of how well members are assimilated in a church, equally importantly however they are vital to intellectual Christians. Stimulating the thinking process and spurring continued study and application of knowledge.

 

 

The Christian church has a long history of argument. The arguments are recorded in the New Testament book of Acts and the writings of Paul. Several New Testament authors warn of the false teachers of the day. Truth and error have always existed inside the Christian Church; even the very godly can produce error and error repeated can become tradition. Christian Intellectuals may not be in agreement, they may even argue in Sabbath school and be critical of their own churches, but it is all apart of the process of thinking and applying knowledge. Christian Intellectuals believe that God will lead them into all truth, as the Bible says. However, since throughout history we have not arrived at all truth it is not likely that we will arrive at all truth today or tomorrow. We are all works in progress, and it is our faith in God manifested in Jesus Christ that maintains our unity even during the disagreements.

Christianity Growing Up

I just read an provocative article on Atoday.com. Since it is short here it is:

I tried to heal someone this week.

I have a friend who is extremely sick, as in die-any-day type of sick.  Furthermore, he doesn’t believe salvation is for him and rejects Jesus as his Savior and Friend.  Lately it has become nearly impossible for him to feel any type of love from God, his family, or his friends because his sickness is clouding his thoughts.

I have done, quite literally, everything I can think of in order to show him the love of God.  I have prayed the tears out of my eyes.  I’ve tried Bible studies.  Prayer circles.  Different doctors.  Just being a listener.  Pastoral counseling.  I can’t list all the things I’ve tried.  But he got worse, not better.  With every change in tactic I expected some type of improvement, yet there has been no change in his sickness or in his soul.

There is no prayer like a desperate prayer.  At one point I got so downcast that I asked God to violate his free will and save him no matter what he wants.   I was, and kinda-sorta-but-not-really still am dead serious about that despite how I know that the destruction of free will precedes the destruction of true love.

Lately, my best friend and I have been talking about miracles.  About how Jesus essentially said that even a little faith could move a mountain if it was hindering the work of God.  About how Jesus said His disciples would do greater and more things than He ever did.  About whether these and other statements were meant specifically for His 12 disciples in that cultural context or if they are timeless principles.

I thought to myself:  If only my friend wasn’t sick, he still might not choose God, but at least the choice would be clearer.  If only my friend wasn’t sick, maybe he could feel love again.  If only my friend wasn’t sick, his judgment would be normal…

I asked God to give me the authority over this type of disease.  I told God He could take the authority away from me after the disease was gone.  I had almost asked God that question earlier this month, but I didn’t yet trust myself to ask not out of caring for my friend, but out of doubt that God would do it on His own.  I just wanted to give him a clear mind, so that maybe, possibly, prayerfully, he will choose to follow Christ.

So I tried to heal someone this week.

Didn’t work.  And I feel dumb.

Thy will be done……so easy to say.  So difficult to mean.

Go ahead and read through the comments as they are about as provocative in what they say and don't say. The author in the comments states that his main concern is the salvation of his friend.

What I have come to think is that we have as Christians taken a view that it is all about coming to believe in God as we ourselves believe. The author of the article wants his friend to view God the same way he does. But his friends mind is cloudy or sick or whatever he does not see God the same way. In fact this is the problem we all face. We want people to think just as we do. If they think like us then they will see the truth. But many Christians have created a religion where that truth...that specific knowledge is what everyone must have to be saved. Salvation then becomes the product of correct knowledge.

Yet none of us actually have correct knowledge or really any method of determining correct knowledge. We like others have a set of beliefs some of which are based upon reason and suppositions and some of which are based upon tradition and upbringing. But we do not “know”.

In many Christian churches they are dealing with how they can deal with science which presents a view of an ancient earth and constant change. Evolution may not tell us where we came from but it presence is pretty well established and it is at odds with a young earth creation as interpreted by many in the book of Genesis. If the story of Genesis is alluded to by Jesus then many Christians will interpret that to mean that it is a divine expression that the Genesis stories are literal truth. Much the same as many look at New Testament verses about woman and authority in the church. How does the church deal with such things when the culture is more equitable and more knowledgeable.

Churches develop their structure and form by their claims to knowledge of revealed truth. When one church finds different truth in their Bibles then they form a new church based upon their new revealed truth. Thousands and thousands of differing versions of truth. Yet often to be saved you have to acquire the correct view of truth. Which often finds itself revealed in my version of truth. Insert your own views as the “my” in that sentence.

I think there is a growing movement of people who find this troubling and who can't grant themselves the privilege of the belief that their version of beliefs represents the truth. If only others could be freed from their delusions and upbringing or traditions they could realize the truth and be saved by God. But this view seems to not work with that of a God of love. Salvation based upon what you know or what you live up to because you believe it seems different from a salvation based upon a love of God that seeks to save the lost.

We often suspect that if there were miracles all the time that might make us believe in the presence of God. Just look at the miracles the legs amputated regrown etc. Yet all it would suggest is that there is supernatural forces in the world. It would not be evidence of a God of love unless all legs were regrown or no one died. Even supernatural experiences would not give us knowledge of truth. We are in a very weak and limited state when it comes to truth. Science has to slowly build it's knowledge and it is forced to regularly redefine its propositions. Religion is far slower to redefine its propositions. But it seems we are way past time to begin redefining what our knowledge of truth is. A little more humility and a lot less surety are in order.

God could very well save every living creature for a new life, would that be out of the character of love to be accepted. What may be the future of Christianity is not the traditions of the past but a new view of what religion can do for us in the now. How can it be used to encourage better and fuller lives for people. Whether they believe in Christ or God or the supernatural. Leaving salvation entirely up to God the Christian would then focus on helping others here and now. No longer soul winning as we have no ability to win a soul anyway even if we knew what it was. Perhaps Christianity is really as easy as the story of caring for people that Jesus taught*. Perhaps the idea of damnation was just sticks to prod people into doing something that they were reluctant to do. Rather like the promises or threats a parent gives to a child for doing what the child should do. But at some point the promises and the threats don't become the impetus to action. Can Christianity actually grow up?

*Matthew 25:34  NIV“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Truth in name only

Anyone who has been following this blog could probably sense that I have been on a path that takes me away from the the feelings of certainty and truth that are claimed for Adventism. The last couple of weeks I have seen 3 different mailing for Adventist programs that set forth to explain the truth of the book of Revelation. It seems that this is a push of either the Washington Conference or perhaps the North Pacific Union. Whatever it is I received these 3 mailing with none identified as Adventist or Seventh-day Adventist or even the Seminary denomination training of the speaker. Who I was assured in all 3 mailings that the speaker was seminary trained. Truth is really important to Adventists, well normally, apparently not when they send out fliers but the pictures of the beasts were there and the provocative titles. Unlocking Revelation's Mysteries, Greatest End Time Signs, Revelation's Star Wars Battle!

I have been to many Revelation Seminars in my lifetime. None were convincing and most all were historically flawed. Flawed history used to explain future prophecy. It never seemed to work out and the concept of guessing the correct method of fulfillment of prophecy seemed to always elude us humans. Just think about it, have we ever once done it. Throughout all Christian denominations have we ever once made and accurate prediction? Even the Left Behind books had the thoughtfulness not to make their predictions, instead hiding the predictions inside of a fictional story. No one does well at predicting the future based upon ancient prophecy.

When we think about this wholly inadequate experience with predictions how do we reconcile it with truth. Adventists have the Sanctuary Truth, the Present Truth, the truth for these last days, the truth about the Bible, the truth about the Sabbath and of course the truth of Revelation. The funny thing about truth is that it should be objective and clear as reality, as indisputable as any fact. But our truth is never like that.In SDA President Ted Wilson's Inaugural GC address he says:

 “Look WITHIN the Seventh-day Adventist Church to humble pastors, evangelists, Biblical scholars, leaders, and departmental directors who can provide evangelistic methods and programs that are based on solid Biblical principles and “The Great Controversy Theme.”'

He prefixes this by saying not to reach out to other Christian groups or thinkers because they have faulty theology. Stay within the Adventist truth is his message. By this technique he claims only the “Historical-Critical method of explaining the Bible” should be used and decries all higher Criticism. Naturally along with this we must literally interpret the Bible and ignore science. What you ask has this to do with truth? The answer is nothing. What it does do is inform the membership to not question the truth as found in Adventism. To leave behind all questions and all knowledge from those not in Adventism. In simple terms it suggest our truth cannot stand unless we have a very narrow fundamentalist Adventist religion. We maintain this by only looking at and studying those who carry the fundamentalist Adventist message.

The other day I received an email to this blog's address which said: “Your website is absolutely devilish.” I certainly don't say all the things that I may believe on this website but it is hardly devilish. Possibly if I was a little more radical in my statements it could be viewed that way and perhaps someday may, but still as of today it is not. What it is however is not safe Adventist fundamentalist viewing and as such it is devilish to a large segment of Adventism.

I however am not content with my version of truth over your version of truth. Mainly because I don't see the truth in the factual non disputable formulation of Adventist truth. It is so much easier to say what is not true than to say what is true. But of course even history is often the record of the winners so maybe we should not even be so certain of that. But what I do know is that knowledge is so much more available today then any other time in history and so are other peoples views and interpretations and ideas. Often just a few clicks away on the Internet. What I therefore know is that we cannot find our surety of truth in comfortable exclusion of everyone else. That is what the leadership of the Adventist church has chosen as their course. It will not work. The questions of truth are far too big and our explanations far to small. The Adventist church has left the building, perhaps they went to the bunker to wait it out. But I don't think I can wait there with them any longer.

Religion as social club

I am wondering if there really is a difference between a religious church group and a social non-religious group. Is a religion just another form of social organization where people follow a generally prescribed set of opinions. The boundaries of opinions being set by the overall denomination out of the scores of different denominations. The social groups then holding together the wider dispersed denomination. The denomination leadership working to keep their overall group distinct from the other social organizations, the other denominations.

Now this would not seem to be a bad thing, as there are all kinds of social groups in existence but the religion claims a higher goal. That goal being to search and hold to truth. They do well on the holding onto what they think is truth part, but how well to they search for truth? Or could I be wrong and they are not searching for truth at all, rather, thinking they already have the truth.

Searching for truth involves testing and experimentation with different ideas and practices, that is not something that many church organizations seem to do much of it seems to me. For example when I used to go listen to sermons at my local church I would practically never hear anything new that stood up to the test of being true. Sure our Washington Conference brought a woman in to help teach people how to evangelize and she told us that the ancients tied lamps to their sandals hence the Psalmist famous quote, “thy word is a lamp unto my feet”. That indeed sounds like something new, it was news to me, but there was no truth behind it. No archaeological evidence no written descriptions, no half burned up sandals from the spilled oil. I would love to have seen her try to tie some lamps to her shoes and test out the theory however. But it does not stop these people who seem to be church organization leaders from telling these ridiculous things.

Just this last month I noticed John McLarty had to write the following to the North Pacific Union Gleaner:

“In his May editorial, Max Torkelson spoke of the good news that Jesus is coming again. In support of this good news, Torkelson quoted an "End Times Predictions" website that claims major earthquakes are increasing in frequency. However, according to the United States Geological Survey (which has credibility in the field of earth science comparable to that of the GAO in the realm of government or the CDC in the field of public health), the frequency of earthquakes has not increased over the last hundred years or so that systematic records have been kept.”

I know over the years on the Internet I have pointed out this same mis-information and pointed people to the scientific information from the USGS. But it seems in the church organization truth is ignored in favor of some pet belief. So maybe truth is really a casualty of religion just as in the societal groups that hold to astrology where the truth of planet alignment really has nothing at all to do with human behavior and that the planet positions or names but is assumed to have deep meaning. As the About.com article states:

These ideas were not, however, isolated - they were instead part and parcel of omens derived from entrails, oil dropped on the floor, birds flying in the sky, and more. As Will Durant observed of the Babylonians:

Never was a civilization richer in superstitions. Every turn of chance from the anomalies of birth to the varieties of death received a popular, sometimes an official and sacerdotal, interpretation in magical or supernatural terms ...The superstitions of Babylonia seem ridiculous to us, because they differ superficially from our own. There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.

Yet how often does the dating crowd ask someone what sign are you? It becomes a commonality a way of communicating, to get the conversation going. That is what is happening with the religion as well. Traditions and untruth are used to bring the conversation around to something that they believe even more deeply. But in religion many of those beliefs cannot be documented as true or false because we lack the ability to ascertain the future or all the aspects of the past so they must remain as beliefs. But if truth is important in a religion why is it so often ignored?

It seems that the search for truth may be one of those statements which is used as a tradition rather then as a meaningful statement. Because a religion should really want to be about truth just as much as tradition if not leaning more toward truth. But because truth interferes with tradition and presuppositions it seems to often be a fictitious piece of propaganda, we have the truth, we search for the truth, but don't ask us to really pay attention to the truth.

The Adventist church is on the cusp of dealing with the issue of science and truth with the controversy at La Sierra University and subsequently all other Adventist educational institutions. Will truth win over traditions...we will see, social clubs don't need truth after all.

A Conflict of Ideas

Today at Sabbath School one of the few people who read my blog said that he thought I was too hard in my article on Sanctuary Truth by Jennifer Jill Schwirzer. He said it diminishes me to use the word “pathetic” about the author even though her article was so full of holes. I could not recall using the word “pathetic” in the article so I searched it in Word today and see that indeed I did not use that word. Now maybe I am becoming such a wordsmith that my impression of the article came through that it was pathetic but if that is the case I did so without actually saying so.

I don’t know that he has ever heard me use the word pathetic but I do like the word as its meaning is so evocative:

1. Causing or evoking pity, sympathetic sadness, sorrow, etc.; pitiful; pitiable: a pathetic letter; a pathetic sight.

2. Affecting or moving the feelings

3. Pertaining to or caused by the feelings.

4. Miserably or contemptibly inadequate: In return for our investment we get a pathetic three percent interest. –From Dictionary.com

One of the hardest parts about confrontation whether virtual or actual is that when we address ideas we are of necessity addressing the people who have those ideas. The ideas don’t exist on their own, they are the product of someone’s mind and they may be deeply held ideas. Many times I have come across people whose ideas are so deeply held that they will not allow themselves or anyone else to question their ideas and in some cases the people will not even look at anything that may refute their ideas. As Christians this becomes even more delicate in that we often have to disagree with other Christians about things that are important to them as well as ourselves yet they are still our brothers and sisters; fellow travelers on the road to God. I think this leads a lot of Christians to withdraw from most discussions. Maybe that explains the longevity of Sermon style presentations, no discussion no other ideas just one person’s thoughts holding sway over all the other possibilities. It provides the semblance of unity and spiritually even when they may not exist.

A carefully scripted presentation that is the typical church service is not the reality of human life. In fact growth in understanding is often predicated upon a conflict within our own ideas. Being shown to be wrong is possibly the biggest such conflict. Those nasty little red check marks many of us grew up with in school, though even those pale in significance when compared to the mistake where actual harm came to someone or something because we acted wrongly. We do learn through our mistakes.

In the market place of ideas some will fall away, some will be trampled to death and some will be embraced and vindicated. The market place of ideas does not deal in the worth of the person as a person, or as a child of God.

Maybe this blog should be titled “Respectfully Disagree” because this blog most often deals with statements and opinions within Adventism with which I disagree. But it is not as it covers even more then where I or others disagree. It is about the conversations which should be taking place in the Adventist community even when in actuality they don’t take place. It is a place where ideas are explored and examined not the personalities of the producers of the ideas. A fine line perhaps but a necessary one.

The Sanctuary Truth Manipulation for the sake of Tradition

After taking a beating from the alternative media of the Seventh-day Adventist publications over the Sabbath School Lesson Study Guide on 1844, the Investigative Judgment and the Gospel the Adventist Review is trying to prop up the sanctuary doctrine once again. In an article entitled the Sanctuary Truth Jennifer Jill Schwirzer presents her view of the importance of this so called truth.

She tells of taking a friend to church and interpreting for her friend the Adventist code words:

Now she sat in the pew next to me, gaining her first exposure to Adventist Church life. “Today, Christ is engaged in the great work of the investigative judgment during this antitypical day of atonement,”⁶ the speaker proclaimed, “and soon the marriage supper of the Lamb will take place.”⁷

Knowing that her appetite for depth was not matched by a grasp of church-speak, I leaned toward Emily and whispered a translation: “Em, what the pastor is saying is that Christ is the husband and His church is the bride. A bride and groom can’t be truly intimate when there’s something between them. The sanctuary in heaven is where Jesus cleanses away the sin that separates Him from His bride.”⁸ Emily relaxed her brow and nodded in agreement.

If I were Emily that would not relax me, “You mean for these last 1600 years no one on earth could be intimate with their God until sins somehow in heaven are cleansed?” “That’s right Em, our sins are not forgiven and forgotten when we ask God to take them away, God must store a record of our sins in heaven and then starting in 1844 He began to cleanse the record of our sins at least of the people who are dead He has not gotten to us yet.” I would guess that this would upset Emily even more, “So we can’t even now have that intimate relationship with Jesus until He has cleansed our sins in heaven. “That’s right Em isn’t the sanctuary doctrine the most wonderful truth you have ever heard?” Emily might respond: “No, I believe that forgiveness is immediate and that God really does forget about my sins, no longer counting them against me, I thought that was standard Christian faith?”

The article then goes on to tell just how much the sanctuary truth trashes evil and treasures good. It ends hypocrisy because it tells us that God will judge us. She writes:

This truth says that professed believers will be judged by an all-seeing God, and ultimately either validated as sincere or exposed as phonies.¹¹ This “scrutinizing of the saints” has been the most offending element of the sanctuary truth, but for those looking in from the outside, it provides a welcome reprieve from prevailing cheap grace.

Wow did you know that Christians do not believe in a judgment by God? That is only found in the Adventist sanctuary truth, the rest of Christianity scoffs at such an idea. You begin to get the picture, the author does not seem to have a good grasp of basic Christianity and likely not of the Investigative Judgment as taught by Adventism in the last 150 years. In fact Christianity does scoff at the Investigative Judgment because it has no Biblical backing but they certainly acknowledge a judgment by God. It is also not really a cheap grace judgment either, it is rather recognition of a judgment not based upon works but based upon faith in God (some believe in rewards based on works but that is separate from salvation). Relationship based judgment, do we have a relationship with God or not. Now according to the author we can’t have that relationship until after our names come up and our sins are forgiven in the Investigative Judgment (she wrote: The sanctuary in heaven is where Jesus cleanses away the sin that separates Him from His bride). Which it would seem to me is really an unnecessary obstacle to faith in God, not a beautiful truth at all really.

She continues:

Yet the sanctuary told her otherwise, because there the most whitewashed sins are recorded with searing clarity. What is done in the darkness is seen and chronicled in the books of heaven to stand as objective testimony in heaven’s court. This tells those whose sense of justice is offended by man’s inhumanity to man that the Judge of the world can’t be bought off by pretended piety.

A little later:

The sanctuary doctrine reveals that we are significant to God, who notices the details of our lives sufficiently to record them all. The enemy has twisted this truth into a weapon of psychological torment—particularly for Adventists who fear judgment. But I propose that we see it as a mark of God’s care rather than His condemnation.

The sanctuary truth tells her that her sins and everyone else’s are kept track of right there in heaven. God keeps a record of wrongs, Love , in 1 Corinthians 13:5 tells us keeps no record of wrongs but God does and he uses them. The Bible actually only records such things as who’s name is in the book of Life and in the Old Testament the book of remembrance (Malachi. 3:16) which again is not about a record of sins. God knows we all have enough sins to choke a heard of horses it surprises me that a record of sins in heaven is such a good thing. I suppose if one considers that some people have so many sins that we with fewer might feel a little better but I can’t see when dealing with a perfect God that it makes too much difference. I would rather know that He has written my name in the book of life (Revelation 3:5) or that He knows who are His (John 10:27-30) then to hold to a theory of recorded sins.

After listing all this about how important it is that God stores a record of sin the author then in true sanctuary truth fashion contradicts herself:

This may pinpoint another sanctuary doctrine stumbling block—it seems to be all about sin!... Simple reasoning follows that if God’s law is love, then sin is failing at love. That means that the putting away of sin involves coming into love—a love relationship with God, but even more relevant to today’s cry, a loving community with other human beings…

The doctrine of the sanctuary posits that alienation is an outcropping of sin, and with the removal of sin, at-one-ment is made possible. By demolishing the sin-barriers, the sanctuary facilitates relationships and brings about true intimacy and brotherly love.

Is this the same Sanctuary mentioned earlier? The one that is at some future time going to cleanse our record of sins? What a sad idea that postpones reconciliation with God until some heavenly sanctuary activity. Nearly 2000 years ago Paul pleaded with us to be reconciled with God (2 Corinthians 5:20) We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. No, this is not a sanctuary pseudo truth this is the reality of a God that loves and wants a relationship with us and through that relationship improve our lives and other peoples lives.

If you have the stomach for reading material designed to prop up the least Biblical of all of Adventist doctrines take some time and read Ms Schwirzer’s article. It is a very telling piece of evidence which exposes the faulty logic that is the Investigative Judgment AKA Sanctuary Doctrine. Calling something truth when it is not truth is an attempt to manipulate people but to print this in our official church paper indicates that it is very likely the accepted view of the leadership of the SDA church. That should be our real cause for concern. Honesty and integrity to the Bible is discarded for the sake of manipulation in the cause of promoting what many Adventist today have chosen to reject because it is not Biblical. The leadership it seems has at least realized it cannot support the doctrine from the Bible so this new means is used. The idea is now that everything good and important is found in the sanctuary doctrine. Forgiveness, love, justice, harmony, reconciliation, even the very formation of the SDA church it is all to be found in the “Sanctuary Truth”.

I feel so used!.