@Richard Myers: “God wants all of the classes taught in …

Comment on Strumming the Attached Strings by David Read.

@Richard Myers:

“God wants all of the classes taught in our schools to be centered in Scripture. God does not want religion to be ‘incidental’ to the subject. That includes biology.”

Beautifully stated, Richard. It really is appalling that La Sierra embraces the notion that its own “secular” curriculum is religiously neutral, when the whole point of Adventist education is that there are no “secular” subjects. I’ve just written an article on this very theme for Advindicate (it hasn’t posted yet). The greatest irony is that the best statement of the Adventist philosophy of education is from a legal brief, a friend-of-the-court brief in Mitchell v. Helms, co-authored by Alan Reinach, director of religious liberty for the Pacific Union Conference:

“Since the goal of math class is to connect the student’s mind with the mind of God, and to develop both the mind and the character in the twin pursuits of both education and redemption, then any aid given to the ‘secular’ pursuit of ‘mere’ arithmetic also aids ‘Religious Instruction.’ The entire premise of religious education is that it is entirely sacred, not secular. It is holistic, not dualistic. Religion is part of the warp and woof woven into the fabric of life in a religious school. There are no secular subjects.”

David Read Also Commented

Strumming the Attached Strings
@Bill Sorensen: Bill, I have now joined you in the ranks of the banned. They are not allowing me to post on any thread at AToday. For the time being, I am still allowed to post at Spectrum, which takes a broader view of permissible speech.


Strumming the Attached Strings
@Sean Pitman: You’re correct, Sean, in that there is nothing magical or particularly inaccessible about the California Supreme Court’s decision in the controlling case.

The best that can be said (and this concept is also perfectly accessible to the layman) is that, as a practical matter, it is unlikely that anyone will ever sue to enforce the secularizing covenant in the bond, or to examine La Sierra’s curriculum. But if someone ever did, that language would be construed to mean exactly what it says.


Strumming the Attached Strings
@George Hilton: Well said, George. Amen. I quoted a similar comment of yours (not using your name, don’t worry) in a sermon I developed a couple of years ago, called “The Two Adventist Churches.” There really are two Adventist Churches.

It has now become crucially important, as you state, that no one put his trust in man, but only God and in God’s word. We must study for ourselves. In times like these, no one is safe in putting her trust in this pastor, or that conference president, or the other Adventist satellite television personality, or in this learned university president, etc. We must “study to show ourselves approved” and “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.” We must not put blind faith in man.

Ellen White wrote:

“Satan is constantly endeavoring to attract attention to man in the place of God. He leads the people to look to bishops, to pastors, to professors of theology, as their guides, instead of searching the Scriptures to learn their duty for themselves. Then, by controlling the minds of these leaders, he can influence the multitudes according to his will.” GC 595

That was a general statement about Christianity, but it is now true within Seventh-day Adventism as never before.


Recent Comments by David Read

LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: I do not agree that science must be naturalistic, but if that is your bottom line, it will not trouble me much where it concerns most day-to-day science–the study of current, repeating phenomena. But a rigid naturalism applied to origins morphs into philosophical atheism. Hence, mainstream origins science is not science but atheistic apologetics. This is what should not be done at an Adventist school, but sadly what has been the rule at La Sierra.


Dr. Paul Cameron and the God of the Gaps
@Pauluc: The Adventist doctrine of creation is that God created the world in six days and rested on the Seventh day and hallowed it. (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:11) Do you believe that doctrine? It won’t do to say that you accept some vague “Christian doctrine of creation.” The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a very specific mission to call people back to the worship of the creator God, on the day that He hallowed at the creation.

You say you believe that the “core doctrine of Christianity is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ,” but what was Jesus Christ incarnated to do? Wasn’t his mission to redeem fallen humanity, to be the second Adam who succeeded where the first Adam failed? And doesn’t your view of origins make nonsense of a perfect creation, a literal Adam who fell, and the need for redemption because of Adam’s sin? You seem to want to gloss over all the very profound differences you have not only with Seventh-day Adventist dcotrine, but with the most basic reasons that Seventh-day Adventism exists.

The syncretistic hodgepodge religion you’ve created for yourself, combining elements of a biblical world view (the incarnation) and elements of a pagan worldview (a self-created creation) is not Adventism. It is anti-Seventh-day Adventism.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Holly Pham: Holly, I will try, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: Since no creationist could land a job as chairman of a biology department at a public university, it seems entirely appropriate that no Darwinist should be given the chairmanship of a biology department of a Seventh-day Adventist college.

The SDA educational system doesn’t exist to expensively duplicate the public university system. It exists to provide a uniquely biblical and Seventh-day Adventist education to interested young people. If mainstream origins science is correct in its assumptions and conclusions about our origins, the entire enterprise of Seventh-day Adventism is an utterly foolish waste of time. So at Adventist institutions, our professors should assume that Darwinistic science is false, and that creationistic science is true (just the reverse of how it is done at public universities), and proceed accordingly.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@gene fortner: What I like about your list of topics, Gene, is that it points out that many disciplines are implicated in the necessary change of worldview. It isn’t just biology and geology, although those are the main ones. History, archeology, anthropology and other disciplines should also be approached from a biblical worldview. The biblical worldview should pervade the entire curriculum.