@Charles: Anent spirits at work hereabout, I sense both kinds, …

Comment on La Sierra University Resignation Saga: Stranger-than-Fiction by Wesley Kime.

@Charles: Anent spirits at work hereabout, I sense both kinds, a consummately righteous and truthful one as well as the “best” (award-winning?) deceiver. That’s a given. What I still want to know is what specifically, in detail, doctrine implied or specified, word or concept, tone or mood, is dislikable about former student-faithful disciple’s post? (As of this moment, it’s 3 likes to 2 dislikes, but even 2 dislikes need to be explained, I think.)

Wesley Kime Also Commented

La Sierra University Resignation Saga: Stranger-than-Fiction
@Former Student: I’m looking at the thumb icons for this post and see that as of this moment there are as many dislikes as likes.

Now that’s startling. Most of the posts on this blog evoke dislikes, as well they should, pretty heartfelt dislikes, and why is obvious. But not here. This post strikes me as so generic, so totally inoffensive, un-disputative, un-belittling; ringing with the sweetest of tones, the tone of homilies once so familiar and dear. (By the way, I LIKE. Thanks. Blessing on thee.)

I’m downright nonplused: what’s to dislike? Could it be the concepts, so familiar and here so simply stated that, to an old Adventist, they don’t seem like concepts at all, contentious or otherwise, but, well, street greetings, like “have a good day”? Like the part about God not clearing the guilty? Or His examining motives? Or probation closing? Could be: these seem to grate nowadays, even among our own. Or – I’m really groping – maybe it’s just the idea of a “faithful disciple,” and that somebody would write under such a name? Or maybe it’s not the words, but the implications? Just the implications, and good grief! those implications.

Dislike of what is said here is downright flabbergasting! Please, would a disliker explain, just hint, why this particular post is to be disliked? Not to satisfy curiosity, hardly a reason to bother, but to give a clue, a bit of core insight at last, as to why we are so polarized nowadays. LIKE? DISLIKE?


Recent Comments by Wesley Kime

Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”

FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)

In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.

FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.

With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.

Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.


Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”

I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.

But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.

Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.

For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.

As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.

What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.

Until then, your jousting friend, W


Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.


Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”

A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.


What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.