So, if that's wrong...what is true then?

There is a phenomenon that I've observed. When you have a radical paradigm shift after leaving an environment like Adventism or some other closed culture where you are taught ideas that are later refuted, something clicks inside our head. The person one day stands back and looks at the world and pauses, and asks, "So, which part of what I believe is real and true and what else might be wrong?" If X idea was totally unfounded and has been proven to be false, what about Y or Z?

This leads some to question Christianity, the Bible, and even religion in general. This can be especially troubling, when in the process of attempting to honestly understand what is real and true, the searcher is presented with something as fundamentally flawed as the age of the Earth. If one grows up in a fundamentalist community – which Adventism is – they are generally taught that the age of the earth is somewhere between 6,000 to 10,000 years old. We were also taught that carbon dating schemes were flawed and that Darwin was the anti-Christ. Yet when the mass of the scientific community, through a variety of radiometric and other dating methods, all come up with an age for the Earth greater than 10,000 years (conservative ice layer counting methods show at least 50,000 years) one begins to not only doubt the conclusions of their fundamentalist community but the methods of deriving truth.

This brings the honest and earnest searcher back to some very fundamental questions: How do we think? How do we know? How do we know that we know? (Epistemology) How can we be certain? What is the role of faith when faith has proven to cause so many problems in this world – our present "war on terror" is really a war between warped faith and our own perception of what is right and what our role in this world should be.

At a more basic and focused level the Christian who has left, or is seriously questioning Adventism starts wondering what they should believe and how they go about arriving at truth. This is one of the most serious issues with the dishonesty of Adventism and other flawed systems of belief that persist in a self-preservation mode. When what they insist is true is shown to be false everything else – even truth – is questioned. For those of us unfortunate enough to have grown up in fundamentalist environments, we discover as adults that we were never taught as children how to think and arrive and truth, but rather were simply feed someone else's version of "truth". (Think Mormon, Islam, Hindu, LSU fans – why are they what they are? Because they were brought up to believe it.)

While I don't have an answer that is a panacea I do have a suggestion. If we (as Christians) are to start over in our quest for truth we have to walk back through history. There was a guy named Noah, and one named Abraham and one named Moses. These guys all claimed to have met, talked with and followed a God who simply called himself "I am" (a philosophically perfect description for God). Following their generations we arrive at the conclusion that they all were looking forward to some event – to someone. About 2,000 years ago it is said that that event happened and that someone came. Our search for truth must start with that event and with that someone. If the story about that event is wrong and that someone was not who he said that he was then it's all a lovely story. However if he was indeed who he said that he was – and more importantly if his mission and his accomplishment is accurate, then the importance is greater than discovering the age of the earth.

It seems to me that it is understandable and profitable to stand back and gaze thoughtfully at the world and ask, "What is true?" But it seems that our search must have a starting point – a reference point – in order to produce accurate conclusions. Science can tell us what they see; it can not tell us what truth is. Hollywood can delight our senses; it can not soothe our souls. America can "win" a war on terror; she can not solve the sin problem. If there is an ultimate truth and an ultimate being, he exists outside of and apart from us (he can not be found within as Buddhism teaches); a good starting point is to look again at the man and the claims of Jesus Christ.

Oh, and the age of the Earth? Who cares? In no place does the Bible set an age for the Earth – nowhere. Theologians (cf James Ussher) have added up the time periods documented in the Bible and have derived an age for the Earth. They have come up with a dating method; any serious study on the various methods for dating the Earth will mention the Biblical methods. Yet, when crosschecked with the other methods there is a huge difference. Christians, then, naturally conclude that all the other methods are flawed since they go "against the Bible". But do they contradict the Bible or do they contradict our interpretation of the Bible? Indeed, no where does the Bible define the duration of time between creation and the Fall. That period could have easily been thousands or even millions of years. And Genesis 1 says that the spirit moved over the waters of the deep – where did the waters come from and upon what did they sit, and for how long had they been sitting before God decided to stir them up and create us? So, is it the Bible that speaks error or is it our traditional and fundamentalist interpretations that have been culturally and traditionally handed down?

Indeed, if Genesis 1 doesn't say what we've thought the consequences are insignificant; If Jesus doesn't say what we think he says, however, Christianity has built its house on a sandy flood plain. More important than the age of a rock is the question of the solidity of the Rock we base our faith upon.

New Chaplain for Southern Adventist University

This post will only be meaningful to Adventists, but is about exciting news. I'm not sure if it is officially public yet so I'm going to speak with a bit of vagueness. Libby was just speaking with a friend who's going to be the new Southern chaplain, replacing the irreplaceable Ken Rogers. This is truly a case of the Incomparable following the Unsurpassed.

This new chaplain has a wonderfully cheerful and enthusiastic personality, is both intelligent and creative, plays the fiddle and loves Jesus very much.

Oh, and even though he's a friend he's not in any way theologically aligned with my theological protests of Adventism. Yet he has a wonderful understanding of grace and of the cross.

Congratulations! I'm thrilled: Southern is lucky and Gordon Bietz and company have made a great choice.

Crazy Amos Torments the Millerite Adventists

You know doubt may have seen the chat/gamer acronym ROFL LMAO. If you don't know what it means, ask your teenager. When they get done ROFL they may tell you :)

I'm reading some of Days of Delusion - A Strange Bit of History and finding the view of 1843/44 enlightening. Chapter 10, however has a story that had my face hurting from laughing. Yup, strange sense of humor. It's short - give it a read. I don't know who this guy was, but I think I like him.

On EllenWhite.org

Recently a friend mentioned that they don't like the site EllenWhite.org. I chuckled as they referred to the site as an accumulation of trivial objections to insignificant Adventist ridiculousness - well, my words not theirs. But it is true: some of the items appear to be insignificant.

While I do have a variety of opinions of some of the content a couple of points need to be made. First, the site has a wide variety of content. Some of it is rather trivial and I found myself in a state of perpetual yawn while reading some of it. Other of the content is rather bombastic and not at all scholarly. But there are points made on the site that need to be heard. One such article entitled "The Arrest and Trial of Israel Dammon". This was very striking to me especially since I'd heard the traditional Adventist accounting of this miraculous episode from childhood and here was an alternative accounting that did not match Ellen White's own. I've written my observations here. To me this involved the credibility of Adventists and of Ellen White.

The other observation about the content on the site is that it gives another voice about many subjects that Adventists have heard but one side of -- the official polemic Adventist side. Rather you believe that Ellen White was a plagiarist or not, honest scholarship requires that other voices be heard rather than the traditional defenses. In fact, as a student I was only presented with a watered-down version of the accusation and a standard paper-doll version of the rebuttal. It was only many years after that I fully understood the nature of the accusations and what has been discovered on the subject both by Adventists themselves and other researchers. So, the site, while at times dipping into the sensational, at least gives content and a voice that needs to be heard.

Oh, and the official site is here. Caution: you're entering in to a spin zone...