I was reading an article about North Korean soldiers being sent to fight the war against Ukraine for Russia. As I was reading, I saw something about the hopes that Ukraine and South Korea have that North Korean soldiers will defect. The article on BBC stated that it takes a long time for North Korean soldiers to gain the courage to defect. And then it hit me: This is what I did with the Seventh-day Adventist church.
It takes incredible courage to leave something that you are told "is the only truth." For those in the SDA church, we are told that if we leave the church, we are likely to be lost. I have been told over and over again that those who turn their back on Ellen G. White's spirit of prophecy are lost and will not go to Heaven. Steve Huey asserted many times that Ellen White made it clear that those who leave the church are lost. The amount of damaging propaganda in the SDA church, or should I say cult at this point, is incredibly damaging.
Yet, now I look back to my time in the SDA church in a way that is very similar to how a former North Korean looks back at their life in the regime. It was psychologically damaging. It was incredibly isolating. Adventists teach that the world is evil. Adventists teach that everything in the insular church is better. Adventists teach that things such as fiction, chess, and focusing on this life rather than preparing for the end of the world is wrong. Adventists are obsessed with the end of the world and being the remnant church. They see themselves as the church that has prophecy on their side. While they agree that we should test prophets, Ellen G White is off limits. "We don't need her if we only read our Bibles" we are told, which asserts she is truth. The Ellen White Estate vehemently defends everything she says that is controversial. And there is a lot of it. Ellen White wrote more prolifically than almost any author of her time, they say. The problem with that is that she wrote some truly messed up things.
Much of what she said never came to pass or was outright ludicrous. The church doesn't teach that. Rather, the SDA church focuses on the few things that they can spin that makes it look like Ellen G White was a true prophet. They ignore the fact that she plagiarized almost everything she wrote. They ignore the fact that most of her science was proven wrong. And the SDA church won't tell you that Ellen G White plagiarized from Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet.
I now look at my life, away from the SDA church, and I feel a deep peace. The truth is, this was my in-law's church. My in-laws come from a very broken background. I am not them. I do not want to be them. Why did I adopt their strange religion? These questions I ask myself, but the truth is, now I am out and there's nothing that could ever make me go back. Once you defect you don't go back. You see how much better life is on the other side. You realize just what you missed. Every single ex-Adventist will tell you that. But it takes incredible courage to defect.
When I left the SDA church I was going against close to two decades of teaching that I would be lost. I don't believe that at all now. I see that the SDA church is a cult that feeds endless lies to its followers and uses fear to make money. I am so glad I am free of that.
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