In another post I have listed some of the evidence that finally persuaded me that the long-age people were right.

About 1980-1985 I realized that whenever I looked out the window of church, I drove down a road, I looked down from an airplane, I went to a museum, the world shouted "LONG AGE" to me.

I had to change my understanding of the book of Genesis. To match archeology I had to see it as the product of generations of oral histories, legends, camp-fire stories. God had never intended it to be a science text.

I still have an all-powerful God with a plan of salvation. I just have a less simplistic view of the origins of the world on which Eden was placed.

When I talked to SDA friends who were teaching science at SDA colleges and universities, I discovered I was not alone. The biology department at Andrews University had hall-way displays that clearly explained evolution and made no attempt to disprove it. The SDA church publications in general avoided the topic. It was no big deal. I was later to discover than about 50% of the science faculty at Canadian Union College were closet long-age believers.

It didn't matter. Nobody minded.

Then, in 2000-2002, it began to change. The SDA mainstream publications, including the Adventist Review and the SS lesson pamphlet clearly hit strongly that SDA's should believe short-age creationism.

In my local church, elders misrepresented and criticised my beliefs from the platform and during communion service.

There were other stresses in my work and family life going on at the time, and there were other aspects of SDA theology that I never saw strong Biblical support for.

One day I realized "there is too much stress in my life". There were three sources - family, work, and church. I refused to abandon my family, I needed my job, maybe I should drop my denomination?

A few weeks later I came home after yet another horrible church board meeting (I was the treasurer) and found a Clifford Goldstein editorial equating evolutionists and Satanists.

I wrote my letter of resignation that week, within a month had it passed at a business meeting, and have only been inside an SDA church about ten times since then.

I really should thank Clifford for spurring me into making the decision to resign - It certainly reduced my stress levels, and has given me time to take up being a volunteer EMT in my town, and do many other things that have enriched my life.

/Bevin

Bevin, please understand that Clifford Goldstein does not speak for the entire Adventist Church. Although he presently holds a position of influence (Editor of the Sabbath School Lesson Quarterly, aka Bible Study Guide), he will not always remain in that post. He personally holds the forensic view of salvation, but that is not the only permissible view. And God meets each of us where we are. We don't have to become carbon copies of Clifford Goldstein in order to achieve salvation -- or even to remain active members of the SDA Church.

I feel sad for your bad experience with church membership and church office holding. Often the stress becomes overwhelming, it's true. But throwing out the baby with the bathwater isn't required by anything I've ever read.

On the other hand, I don't believe you've really rejected the faith. It's just the organization you've given up. And you're not alone in becoming frustrated from time to time.

I've always said, This must be the Lord's work, or it would have died long ago, given the frailties of the humans in charge.

Sincerely your friend,

Oh, and P.S.

Are a belief in the Long Chronology, and membership in the Adventist church, mutually exclusive?

I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but holding both can be painful, and you're definitely likely to be made to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome sometimes. Our own pastor came to me to ask about using creation science in evangelism and preaching, and I quietly told him why I think that's a bad idea. We're still friends and respect one another's perspectives, but he frequently preaches in a way that suggests any perspective but recent creationism is not truly Christian. A lot of the frustration that is felt by someone with a longer-age view arises not so much from direct personal confrontation as from seeing others taught like this from the pulpit and from the church's publications.

Forgive me Bevin, for I am not picking on you personally. But I have often wondered how it can be that evolution does not lead eventually to atheism?

Here is my (admittedly simplistic) reasoning:

(1) Evolution leads to regarding Genesis 1-3 as a myth or legend, on par with the rest of the "creation myths" from all over the world and various religions and cultures.

(2) Regarding Genesis 1-3 as a myth leads to:

1. concluding the Sabbath does not originate with creation; and
2. questioning the significance of the rest of the Bible because if the first three chapters are a myth, what does that say about the rest of the book?

(3) #2a above is sufficient to upset the SDA faith in particular. #2b above is sufficient to upset the Christian faith in general.

(4) Following #3, above, one becomes "free" to pick and choose as one likes from scripture, and the verse in Timothy about all scripture being inspired and useful, etc. becomes basically obsolete.

(5) Scripture is no longer seen as the word of God. In fact, it is no more the word of God than is any other "sacred text" such as the Bhagavad-Gita, the Popul Vuh, the Quran, the Book of the Law, or whatever.

(6) As all religions come to be viewed with equal significance (or rather equal insignificance), the distinctions between them become simultaneously blurred yet corrosive, because being self-evident (at least to the thinking person), they erode the possibility that any religion is really any more relevant than another.

(7) Thus belief in one supreme God is eroded.

(8) Eventually one becomes an atheist, for one concludes there is no compelling evidence of a God anymore.

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I've seen -- or rather, heard of -- this happening. What do you all think about it? Does embracing evolutionary theory eventually lead to atheism?

Many years ago I had a chance to ask a devote university-educated Buddhist about their attitude towards their myths of ancient times - which are even less science-friendly than the Judeo-Christian creation myths.

Their attitude surprised me - they had completely disconnected these myths from their scientific intellectual life. In some sense, the stories were more like fables with a moral. They were visual aids for appropriate living today.

To me Christianity does not start with either God or creation. It starts with the realization that "love your neighbor as yourself" is the key to a happy, pleasant, and prosperous existence. Then you realize that "your neighbor" includes whole societies and descendents, and that sometimes under some circumstances you are going to be called upon to make big sacrifices.

Salvation - personal, life after death, salvation - is a HOPE. It is not a certainty. There is very little genuine solid evidence for it - but the idea is certainly very attractive.

The idea of a God in charge of the whole universe is neither provable, nor disprovable, by science. I don't see that a loving all-powerful God being incompatible with evolution, nor is evolution incompatible with salvation.

So the only part that you end up ditching is some of the frills of Christianity - not the core beliefs. You do end up ditching some of the SDA Great Controversy explanations, but even then the basics are not wrong - just some of the details that are too dependent on a recent creation.

/Bevin

Thanks for sharing your perspective and experience, Bevin. Sorry I have taken so long to write back but I have been going through my own transitions and changes over these past several months.

A major catalyst for me was coming across this article online:
http://www.adventistreview.org/2005-1535/storyexclusive.html

Upon reading that, I came to the realization that the reason the SDA church -- despite my being drawn thereto -- was feeling increasingly like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole was because I no longer subscribed to that "metanarrative" to which the article refers. Indeed, I drew a connection between that realization and a distinction I'd begun to make between Christianity and Apocalypticism, so I would even term it the "apocalypticist metanarrative".

At the same time, the whole ID flap was unfolding in the news and I was engaging in some really good discussions with those who side with the scientific community on the point of origins -- some Christian, some atheist/agnostic/humanist. The end result was that I, too, chose to cast my weight with the scientific community on the matter of origins.

To me, even during my brief stint 25 years ago as a wide-eyed, die-hard, literalistic SDA, "salvation" has always been less about where I end up after this life is over and more about where I end up during this life. What I mean is that it is more important to me to find that grace that enables me to experience personal transformation, "enlightenment" (for lack of a better term), higher/deeper awareness, etc. in the here and now than to cling to an unprovable proposition about the nature of after-death. More important than "going to heaven", to me, is what can I do to manifest that kingdom here and now? How can I become a better person -- with "better" for me being loosely defined as more loving but more like what the Buddhists would term "right thought, right speech, and right action" -- how can I become more discerning, more penetrating, more expansive in my awareness, more compassionate toward others, more patient, more forgiving, and more productive in general toward building a better society even if it's in no greater scope than my little one-on-one personal interactions every day? "Salvation", to me, has less to do with after-death destination and more to do with what I experience today. Because TODAY I am alive, TODAY what I do matters, TODAY how I respond to things, process events and circumstances, treat other people, etc. is what counts.

I also find that my ingrained moral compass, while admittedly imperfect, is far clearer and truer than that of some consensus which still admits and makes excuses for such grotesquely wanton evils as arise from dodgy interpretations allowing for blatant injustices. Others may twist the Bible to support warmongering, gender oppression, or even bossy/busybody attitudes, but I cannot do so. My own internal compass will not permit those evils to be regarded as part of the "kingdom of God" and it is an offense in my nostrils that these blatant lies and wranglings over words even exist. And resultingly, my mission (one of them anyway) to expose them to the light and watch them wither and die for the foul pestilences they are.

Jesus said love thine enemies and I find that actually far easier to do than to "hate" them (or anyone). My nature cannot abide strife, discord and enmity. I feel anger like anyone else, but most of the time end up pitying those I might be tempted to "hate". There are exceptions to this rule, but on the whole, I see Jesus' statements like these not as commands or demands but as an invitation to awaken to the full potential of our true will and true nature, to penetrate the surface illusions created by boundaries of ego and chart our course based instead upon the eternal realities underlying our existence.

I'm rambling, so I'll put a cork in it now. Suffice it to say while we should never say never, it's a fairly inescapable conclusion for me that I can never be SDA-metanarrative material again. I think the human species is destined to evolve beyond its current structure of civilization which relies too heavily still upon obsolete tools of authoritarianism and oppression. I think this process has already begun for some but we have much work to do in aiding our less fortunate brothers and sisters toward the light. I sincerely question, however, whether any religion successfully used as a tool of oppression can ever really aid this work as it inevitably must serve as a fulcrum for the lever of liberation, as a matter of course, instead.