Cultivating Character

  I should be more specific about what I meant when I said I rejected Ellen G. White at the end of Part 1 of this series of blogs about my de-conversion, deprogramming, reconversion and awakening. The brevity of the sentence may have lead people to believe that I made a decisive and potentially emotional clean break from her writings and the Seventh-day Adventist Church (“SDA”), that would be an incorrect assumption.   For the next two decades I became more involved in church activities while exploring deeply what I personally believed. This careful approach is the direct result of an experience I had a couple of years before hearing Bishop Hill under that big tent. I was an undergrad at a public university experiencing what I would describe as my version of the Amish Rumspringa.   Rumspringa is described as a period of time in which Amish youth experience the non-Amish world. I was experiencing things that the restrictions my SDA parents imposed on me prevented me from p...

Under the Big Tent It happened under a big tent. The tent was smaller than but similar to those used by circuses, which was intentional. Starting in the 19th century evangelicals used these types of tents to host large revivals and recruitment meetings. The idea was to be able to accommodate large crowds and invoke the interest of any passersby. The meetings were known by various names. This one was called a crusade and it was held at the beginning of the 21st century and hosted by the local Seventh-day Adventist church.   The speaker was David Hill, a former bishop of the Church of the Living God. Bishop Hill had recently resigned from his position and persuaded 150 members of his congregation to leave their denomination with him.   The reason for their exodus was their new conviction of the importance and relevance of Saturday as the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments.   This is precisely why he was invited by the local Seventh-day Adventist Church to speak during this eva...

Seed selection is an important aspect of cultivating. The quality of the seed can have a huge effect on a farmer’s yield. Farmers must consider what tree yields the most fruit and what fruit are the most desirable. Likewise you must consider the type of character you want to develop and grow. What type of yield do you desire?   What are the behaviors you would like to manifest? The desired outcome will dictate the type of concept you should plant in your heart, the portion of your mind governed by emotion.   The metaphor for the character as a tree has been unapologetically drawn from the first three verses of Psalm 1 which read: Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not w...

Our new story begins with humanity in a state of pleasure but ignorance, as told in the metaphor of the Garden of Eden. In the pursuit of something more humanity sought knowledge and took and ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge of good and evil forever altering the minds of humanity into a state that is not pleasurable.  One of suffering. Religious teachings were formulated to assist humanity with coping with this new reality of suffering.  The Bible, in particular, offered a way to reform the mind through which a person’s character is changed.  In the metaphor of a tree as a person’s character is not limited to Psalm 1 but use sparingly throughout scripture, the most potent of which is found in the parable of the sower as taught by Jesus the Christ.  In this chapter the parable is introduced and the meaning of the soil is explored. Let’s take a look at the story Jesus told. “Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. As he scattered them acros...