Sustainable does not mean pleasant or right

[bevin]

http://www.spectrummagazine.org/onlinecommunity/featuredcolumns/070223coffin.html

There is a lot of truth in the fundamental idea that

"black and white" thinking makes for a self-sustaining unpleasant-to-be-in organisation, but

"shades of gray" thinking makes for a collapsing pleasant-to-be-in organisation

and that the SDA church is experiencing the tension this creates

[there buster]

It is not my experience that so-called "conservative" Adventists are more successful at retaining their children. Far from it. Many leave, fed up with the legalism and repression. Others remain because of comfort with the SDA culture, or simple inertia, but they lack both conviction and energy.

On the opposite end, so-called "liberal" Adventists often end up believing in nothing in particular, something readily available in other settings.

Like most things that matter, it's not as easy as that.

And postmoderns-- Jim Coffin is director of the secular postmodern study group-- often reject both.

And postmodernism definitely does affect SDA young people, both those who attend our schools, and those who are homeschooled. Those who attend public schools cannot avoid it. That last is not a condemnation of public school attendance, just recognition of the culture there.

The protagonist in my book is modeled on a young SDA from a pretty conservative background, but his attachment to the church was minimal and fading. Of course, for many reasons, both legal and for readability, the protagonist and the model are NOT the same person. The protagonist represents a certain kind of SDA youth I have met on many occasions, in many places.

[bevin]

Quote:

It is not my experience that so-called "conservative" Adventists are more successful at retaining their children

Don't the numbers say that NO SDA group is successful at retaining their children in the denomination?

I recently saw a classic demonstration of the problem for conservatives. A few years ago a conservative elder led the charge to disfellowship an unmarried pregnant teenage girl. This year his own son is the father of exactly such a pregnancy...

I am an example of the opposite side. I think you would have called me a "liberal" SDA - and I am thrilled that my children are thinking for themselves and have found paths for themselves and have shaken off the aspects of SDA'ism that I really regret having in my psychological makeup - the most obvious one being uncomfortable on a dance floor. My daughter's all love to dance - and I am thrilled that they do.

/Bevin

(Why the SDA church encourages teenagers to become members is beyond me - they should be encouraged to wait until they are not under their parent's pressure)

[CaseyButler]

Quote:

(Why the SDA church encourages teenagers to become members is beyond me - they should be encouraged to wait until they are not under their parent's pressure)

Spiritually, in the prophets, God refers to this practice of indoctrinating children against their will as causing them to "pass through the fire".

No child psychologically damaged by this process - ie. having their free will to know and choose God forcably removed from them by doctrines of men - will be held responsible for the choices they end up having made for them.

We are all molded by our circumstances. Indeed, God is responsible for our circumstances.

Ezekiel chapter 34 is God's message to those who fancy themselves as shepherds but who "eat" and "clothe" themselves from the fat sheep of the flock instead of looking after the broken, healing the sick, and seeking the lost.

It should be required reading every seventh Sabbath, in every SDA congregation, in my opinion.

Casey