To stick up for someone is fine. But to take offense for someone is not. And sticking up for someone by defending error is also not fine.

My wife just had major surgery, remember? I spent most of last week preparing for it, and this week was spent in recovering from it. And it's far from over. So, drive by postings is all I can do.

Anyway, since I have a little time to address the hidden premise that I only recently glimpsed, here goes....


When I read that, of course I agreed with the idea that the cross sheds light on everything.

But I was wondering how this applied to post #116691, to which it was a reply. In that post, I pointed out that according to all the accounts we have of two events - the stoning of the man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath and the execution of the unrepentant calf-worshipers - God ordered pain and death to be meted out by the Israelites.

Of your list of 4 items of increasing difficulty, though you did not mention where in inspiration we find such a listing, you said, "It seems to me impossible that if one has the wrong ideas about 1 that this won't permeate the others." IOW, if one does not understand #1 correctly, #4, the point you were replying to, cannot be understood correctly. That seems reasonable based on the GW 315 quote.

However, and this was the first glimpse of the premise, I could not see how that applies to my post about God giving the orders to kill the stick-gatherer and the calf-worshipers. Yes, we must understand the atonement properly in order for every piece of the puzzle to fit properly, but that does not impact the historical facts of the events I mentioned. IOW, even if I misunderstand the atonement, how can that change the facts regarding whether or not God ordered Moses to kill those people? It does not; what happened then is set in stone, regardless of my understanding or lack thereof.

So I wondered what you could be thinking. Then this one popped in my inbox.


Here's what caught my eye: If you prefer to believe the doctor is responsible for your wife's pain, rather than sin, or her sickness, that's fine.

Now, here was a historical event - my wife's surgery. It already happened, so nothing can be done to change what happened. Before it happened, the doctor told me that she was going to cut my wife. Afterwards, the doctor told me that she did cut my wife. Every eyewitness to the event documented that the doctor did, in fact, cut my wife.

Today, my wife tells me that the cuts hurt. These are cuts that, by the testimony of all involved, the doctor made. Since I was not there, I cannot dispute the testimony, even if I wanted to. Therefore, I must conclude that the doctor caused the cuts which are now causing the pain.

Of course, I could credit the pain to the scalpel that the doctor used, or the nerve endings that are sending signals to the brain. But that would be silly. So let's just skip that. The doctor was the motive force in making these cuts. So she was responsible for the cuts. And, without a doubt, they hurt. Therefore, the doctor is responsible for the pain.

The claim could be made that the disease caused this pain. Yes, the disease caused pain, but it was not THIS pain; it was another kind of pain. The disease did not cause these incisions. The pain from the disease is gone. What is left is the pain from the incisions that the doctor, NOT the disease, made.

But the new insight I'm getting from you is that you claim that what I "prefer to believe" impacts who made these cuts or who caused the pain. You asked, "[W]hat's your motivation in seeing things this way?" It is as if I need a motivation other than seeing things for what they are.

I am an engineer by education. We are trained to analyze things based on what IS, not what we would LIKE THEM TO BE. We left that kind of discussion to the history and literature majors on the north end of campus. On the south side, we tested our theories on cold, hard observations. Facts always trumped feelings.

Here is one of the historical facts in question: God sometimes commanded the Israelites, through Moses, to kill rebels.

As far as the stick-gatherer and the calf-worshipers, all the testimony we have - the Bible and SOP - say that God commanded the COI to do it. Regardless of what I prefer to believe, or what my motivations are, or what I would like to feel about it, or anything else about me, the documentation of this event all say that God ordered the killing of those rebels. I take that as a data point, and formulate my theory such that it accommodates that point.

Does your theory of the atonement, of God's abhorrence of violence, etc., take into account that God commanded those killings? Or do you believe that God did not command those killings?

To make it very easy to see if we're even looking at the same thing, let's boil it down to determining what happened in the desert. Did God order Moses to have the stick-gatherer and the calf-worshipers killed by the COI?

I say, Yes. What say you?

And that is the same answer I give to the question in the subject: Does God sometimes cause pain? Regardless of any misunderstandings there may be about God's purposes or motives, one event is enough to answer the question in the affirmative. And we have here two such events.

Let's go back to my wife's surgery. The disease caused pain, but it never caused as much pain as the cuts are now causing. The pain the doctor caused is excruciating, while the pain the disease caused was only debilitating. Definitely, the pain the doctor caused hurts worse.

Moreover, the disease, had it been left unchecked, would have eventually decreased in pain. It would actually have made my wife numb to any pain. She would have become unconscious, then she would have died. Letting the disease progress would have entailed less pain, but less life.

I look at the situation and freely admit that the doctor caused pain. But it is a pain I praise and thank her for, because when taking everything into account, the alternative is worse.

as a child and young adult i could never understand why it was wrong for the papacy to hurt people but it was ok for adventists to hurt people.

and the message came across very strong that it was ok to hurt people, disrespect and mistreat those we deemed as "bad" in some form.

i struggled with that for years. the only thing i could figure out was that it was wrong for the papacy because they were wrong but it was ok for us to hurt people because we were right.

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but we forget the lessons of the past. so many in the church held jones and waggoner to be in "error".....according to the sop they refused to unite in prayer with j and w, and they refused to investigate the position being presented.

they felt the law was being undermined.

the jews before them felt that Jesus was undermining the law.

the jews persectuted Jesus and slammed Him on a cross, then went after the disciples.

ellen white said if j and w fell away it would be the fault of their brethern.

but i guess it is still ok to hurt people as long as we have decided those people are in "error". we are, after all, just as infallible as the jews and those of ellen whites day, are we not?

after all, the reasoning is that people have to be hurt if it will bring about a greater good. the sop and research has proven that so very wrong, but what would they know?

Regarding you're being busy, I understand. But stringing things along is not a new thing. At any rate, I really appreciate your prompt, detailed reply! Especially given your circumstances. Thank you!



What happened is, of course, set in stone, but not our perception of what happened. The same thing could be said of the cross. What happened there? That's, of course, set in stone as well. But our perception of that event isn't, and as our perception of that event changes, so will our perception of other events.

Regarding God's causing pain, I wasn't discussing this as a general principle, but was specifically addressing a subset of this, in particular, God's (supposedly) causing excruciating pain upon His enemies in order to get them to do His will. It appears what you are doing is taking this specific principle, causing it to include a greater scope than intended, finding a counter-example of that greater scope, and then concluding that the original principle is false.

If the truth causes us pain, because of sin, and God revealed the truth to us, which causes us pain, that's in my view a reasonable way of looking at things. This could be viewed in a similar to a doctor's using a painful technique to heal an illness.

However, back to God's revealing truth. There's another issue to consider. Why should the revelation of truth cause pain? It shouldn't. It's only because of the presence of sin that truth causes pain. So is this God's "fault" or sin's? Surely it is sin that is responsible, because without sin, there would be no pain. It doesn't make sense to ascribe the blame to something like the skillful revelation of truth.

To give an example of skillful revelation of truth, consider the case of Simon the leper. From the SOP we learn that he led Mary, who had crashed the party, into sin. When he said within himself, "If this man were a prophet, He would know what manner of woman this is," he was exhibiting hypocrisy of the highest order. Christ could have exposed him in righteous indignation, and have been totally justified in so doing. But Christ loved Simon's soul. He wanted to save Simon. So he told Simon a parable, which only Simon understood. By the parable Simon understood that Christ knew what he had done, that Christ could have exposed him publicly, but didn't, instead telling him a story that exposed him as a hypocrite, but did so in a way that only Simon could understand. Beautiful!

So did Christ cause Simon pain? One could say so, but surely the real culprit was Simon's own hypocrisy.

Regarding the COI in the wilderness, this seems to me to be quite a different situation than the plagues. In the one case, God is supposedly causing violent things to happen to inflict His enemies with pain to force them to do His will, and in another He is supposedly ordering others to do something similar in His name, which seems, if anything, even worse. A brief, and I'm sure insufficient answer, to your question to me regarding what happened in respect to the calf-worshippers, I don't perceive what happened there as you do. If I had to answer your question "yes" or "no," I'd have to answer "no," but the reason for the "no" would be because my perception of the whole incident is different than yours. I'd have to go into a lot more detail to explain this satisfactorily. Right now I'm more interested in pursuing the questions we were speaking of, involving whether God inflicts others with excruciating pain if its eternally beneficial.

I'm particularly interested in the implications to our own behavior. From your answers, it appears to me that you feel it would be perfectly appropriate for us, as God's representatives, to inflict others with excruciating pain if its eternally beneficial. I'm sure you'd agree with me that we don't have the ability to properly judge such things (i.e. when such pain should be inflicted) so would have to leave that to God, and merely respond to His orders. So if God ordered you to kill or maim in His name, presumably you would do so.

I wouldn't, because I would never believe it was God telling me to do so. kland was getting at this same thing earlier. Hope he drops by to contribute some thoughts.

At any rate, one can see the importance of an issue such as this. Before Christ comes a second time, Satan will impersonate Christ, trying to get us to do things for him while we think we are honoring God. This is what the Great Controversy is all about: who is God? What is He like?

A comment regarding the engineering points. I work for a software development company. When dealing with software, you have to get things right, because the computer is stupid, only doing precisely what it's told to do. So tell it the wrong thing, and that's what it does, despite your intentions as to what you want it to do, or what you think it should be doing. So I'm very well acquainted with the perspective you are speaking of.

However, I don't think human history can be analyzed in terms of "data points." It's not like you can look at a piece of code, and see "Oops! That says '1' instead of '2' That's why this whole things working wrong!"

This just happened to me, and is actually an excellent example of what I'm getting at. I had to get someone to help me, because I couldn't figure out what was going on. That's because I had certain ideas fixed in my head. In my head, there was a "2" there, but in reality there was a "1." But because of my presuppositions, I couldn't see the "2". A friend helped me, looked at things, without the presuppositions that I had, and found the error.

His perspective was different than mine, which enabled him to see the truth.

Now if perspective can cause us to improperly view something as closed to interpretation as what a number is, how much more so when we are analyzing human history.

Regarding the list of difficulty, I made that up. It seemed reasonable to me as I considered discussions I've had with people. I'm, of course, coming at things from the perspective that my view of things is generally correct, and then consider on what points people agree with me. I find there are oodles of people who agree with me in regards to the first two points (the death of Christ, and the judgment) but many fewer regarding the last two points (if God acts violently or orders others to do so). The OT is so overwhelmingly violent, it seems, on the fact of things, crazy to even consider such a notion. But when I look at Jesus Christ, I'm constrained to believe what I see in Him, and conclude that the OT has simply been grossly misunderstood.

Going back to the COI question, if you wish a more detailed explanation, please go to http://sinbearer.com/light_on_the_dark_side_of_god.htm and read chapter 9.

MM, please take a look at http://sinbearer.com/light_on_the_dark_side_of_god.htm chapter 9. This is a good explanation of what I've been trying to say.

Regarding you personally, I'll send you a PM. I'll make some general comments.

I think my positions have often been grossly misrepresented. So many times I can't count I've pointed out "I never said this." I've asked to be quoted, and taken to task for daring to insist that I be quoted accurately or have my positions not grossly misrepresented. I don't think that's fair.

Often there have been comments directed at me personally as opposed to addressing the ideas being shared.

Often the tone of comments in general is very unpleasant. Some posts I've found to be downright nasty in tone.

I'd be curious to know what Teresa had in mind.

Having said some negative things, I'll say some positive ones. When I first started posting with MM, we both said things the other didn't like. I'm talking about the positions taken, but how the posting was done; words used to describe the other or the other's view, how questions were put, etc. So he told me what he didn't like, and I told him what I didn't like, and we've accommodated each other pretty well. We disagree on a lot of things, but are able to communicate in a way that makes our conversations not unpleasant for the other.

Rosangela is another example. We never had the difficulties that MM and I sometimes had, but she improved in terms of her discussion technique and I think she makes a good role model. She rarely makes personal comments, and is accurate in quoting others and correctly representing their positions. She also presents well thought out arguments.

I'm not following this. If you see someone being poorly treated, why would it be wrong to be offended by this? I don't understand this. I also don't understand your comment that we shouldn't be burdened by another being poorly treated. Isn't this the Spirit of Christ?



What do you think you're doing?

Seriously, I think this is a funny comment you made. Obviously if you and I are disagreeing on a point, at least one of us is wrong. If you're wrong, and you defend your position, then you are defending error. If someone else is wrong, and you defend their position, then you are doing the very thing which you say is "not fine."

Unless we are perfect in what we believe, the only recourse would seem to be just keep silent. I think the real thing to watch out for is not being open to truth. If we are open to truth, then even though we defend error, we'll be willing to change our ideas. Isn't that what the point of these discussions is?

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it has been pointed out to me privately that my wording was poorly chosen. for that i apologize. i saw it more as a general statement but understand it was taken "personally".

again i do apologize.

agreed. when i first started posting i had a hard time with her, but it can be a joy to interact with her now. she may be on a different track than i am at times but generally speaking there is much more of a discussion going on with her.