Comments of the Week September 30-October 6
Comments on The Beasts of Revelation, whether or not Adventist Higher Education can be saved, is God really in control, and Adventist-raised children who left the denomination. Is your comment featured here?
Who Are the Beasts? I Don’t Know!
“One of the main principles of responsible Bible study is to consider how the message was written for the original audience. When we forget to do that, we risk building doctrines of conspiracies!”
–Frank Spangler
Can Adventist Higher Ed Be Saved? Part 2: New Ways Forward
“I loved my time at Southern. But looking back—I wish I’d done community college. I did Not understand the debt it saddled me & my parents with. Literally I was still paying off My debt when my oldest child was the age to go to college!! Tuition has outpaced earning power so much, in good conscience how can I recommend a kid go take social work at Southern when it’s like $32,000 a semester—and their income will not even likely be $40,000 a year!!“
–Kate Estella Walter
Can Adventist Higher Ed Be Saved? Part 1: Falling Enrollment
“Yes, there is a problem.
And there is no mono-causal explanation for it. Here are my 2 cents of round abound 25 years of experience in higher education. Not exhaustive, nor conclusive – but certainly part of the problem.
1. demographic change. At least in Europe there are fewer ‘young’ people and more ‘older’ folks in our church, which means the pool of potential students is decreasing. Unless, of course, we discover ‘lifelong learning.’
2. cost of education. It simply is too high. In Germany, education is free at state institutions (including universities)…. However, we found this reason to be far less relevant than expected. Even full scholarships didn’t increase interest.
3. a plethora of alternatives. We are competing against a highly efficient, flexible market of higher education. Due to our own standards, history, and way of doing things, we lack innovation and flexibility.
4. territorial infights. Andrea Luxton is absolutely right – instead of cooperation we have been competing. From my experience this problem has less to do with the academic administrators, but more with church administrators (who like to adorn themselves with sporting an institution of higher learning).
5. anti-intellectualism. While we like to boast institutions of higher learning, our church has developed an increasing anti-intellectualism over the last decade or two, a mistrust of science and research (far beyond natural sciences).
It is the last point I find most troubling, as it has an impact on all previous points (1. brain drain, 2. lack of funding, 3. ability to adapt, 4. reducing institutions to medals of honour – without substance).”
–Andreas Bochmann
“It is interesting that back when we had some of the more devastating fires in California in the past few years, some Bible Belt believers wanted to blame it on how sinful California is. Now that a truly catastrophic storm has wiped entire towns off the map in a Bible Belt region, I suspect they are much less willing to credit the sinfulness of the region. Nothing makes it clearer that natural disasters occur due to natural processes, and not because of God’s judgments, or at least I hope that is now clear.
OTOH, to some degree all Americans are responsible for the increased frequency and severity of these kinds of natural disasters. Climate scientists have warned for decades that failure to reduce greenhouse gases would lead to just the kinds of disaster scenarios we are now facing. I guess when the Bible says we will sow what we reap, this is the result.”
–Bryan Ness
“Unfortunately, organized Adventism has found itself in an entrenched position where the significance and joy of Sabbath is lumped in with all the ‘ISM’ stuff—you know, haystacks, tithe-to-the-SDA church-only, no jewelry, ‘us versus the world,’ ‘peculiar people,’ ‘we are the sole body of the remnant,’ etc. We have almost universally failed to articulate any profound meaning to Sabbath beyond the ‘thou shalt not’ approach, and have therefore relegated Sabbath to a mere extension of our religious sub-culture.
So what happens when the subculture doesn’t work for our kids anymore—when they are too honest to buy in to the top-down authoritarianism and ‘you can’t do that because we said so’? They disavow the culture, and sadly, the Sabbath goes too, because we haven’t demonstrated any meaningful difference between Sabbath and our cultural isms.
So I can’t blame our kids. And I’m not making any generalizations about the person asking the question here—I have no idea how they did it. But that’s what I have seen, and what I have done with my own children. I wish I could go back, but I didn’t know any better 20 years ago either. Ultimately it’s only Jesus that saves them anyway, and He will.”
–Brian Scarbrough