Grieving

She was the cutest little girl you can imagine. Curly strawberry blonde hair and freckles. So dainty. She was always smiling in our Cradle Roll Sabbath School. As her teacher I picked her out to marry my son; what an adorable blonde couple they would make. (Yes already anticipating grandchildren.) 


I watched her grow through the years, in church, in school.... I knew something was wrong in her teenage years. She stretched out her wrists and showed me her suicide attempt scars. 

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Another, a young lady, became pregnant with her second child out of wedlock. She was terrified of her SDA father--after he'd abused her and her first child. She called me when she was overdosed, telling me goodbye. I called 911.

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Another had been threatening suicide for months when I finally felt I had to tell her SDA father. After several attempts she became a drug addict. 

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Another SDA girl we took to the emergency room after an overdose. 


All four of these happened in one 12-month period. 


More:

• A SDA boy hangs himself and I sit with the mother all night long watching her shock and despair.
• SDA pastor arrested for pedophilia.
• SDA teachers seduces student (Xs dozens!)
• SDA Bible teacher gets girl pregnant and takes her for abortion.
• SDA Bible teacher doesn't get girl pregnant but secretly takes her for abortion for her own good.
• SDA teacher beats little girl for not allowing him to rape her--or succeeds. (Xs several.)
• SDA father makes girl lick floors to clean for sabbath.
• SDA sabbath school teacher tried to drown girl after attempted rape.
• A woman down the street, an very prominent SDA commits suicide and her grandsons find her. 
• Girl after girl tells me stories of incest and rape by SDA fathers and leaders. 
• SDA kids grow up and ruin their lives with drugs, alcohol or jail sentences. 
• One creepy tale--is of a SDA pastor forcing a girl into a cemetery at night and showing her a dead baby.....
• Divorce after divorce after divorce. 
• Secret after secret after secret told to me, like I am a confession booth for SDAs or former SDAs. 
• AND MORE AND MORE AND MORE stories I have heard directly from the abuse victim's mouth. This isn't hearsay.

I began hearing these horrifying stories at boarding academy. I heard them at SDA college and universities, I heard them as President of Adventists For Life and I hear them almost on a daily basis now in my former SDA ministry: Despair, suicidal thoughts, incest--abortion--child abuse--sexual abuse--cover ups after cover ups after cover ups by family and leaders. 

I am exhausted with hearing stories. These are people I knew and loved (and most stories I DIDN'T write down were from people I never knew but love anyway.) 

Either Adventists are the most unimaginative (as most of the stories are the same), delusional, and attention-starved liars or they are one of the most abused sectors of our society. Either way they need our help. 

Please don't make excuses. I know other groups, other churches, other organizations, other people abuse their kids too. I know that. But can't we just for once... just for ONCE look into the abuse that is inside Adventism and confront it for our children. 

Someone at the top needs to address this and expose it. For God's sake, for the children's sake.... for the remnant's sake. 

Vegetarian Jesus?

Jesus would have fit in so much better today had he been a vegetarian. I would have “got” Him easier. He would have fit in with the tender-eyed Jesus I grew up seeing painted lovingly carrying a lamb on His shoulders--not the Old Testament God who commanded Israel to slaughter bulls and lambs. If He were an animal activist, we would effortless understand Him in today's culture. That would clearly show His love and mercy.   

It would have been so much better if He had been Pacifist.  It would have made more sense if Jesus wasn’t the same God as the Old Testament God who told Israel to take up arms and slaughter all Canaanites--men, women and children. I don’t understand that God. 

I could understand Him so much better if He were like me. But when I read scripture I find He is not. He is not like me. And I am a very nice person. 

His ways are above my ways and His thoughts above my thoughts. He is a sovereign God who doesn’t play by my rules, nor does He ask my opinion to make rules. He doesn’t even seem to explain His ways to me very thoroughly.

But He is God and He requires my obedience even if I don’t understand. Even if I don’t particularly like His commands and think they are strange, unkind, harsh, judgmental, intolerant. And He commands that I love Him.

And I obey, not because I understand.  But because He is God.