| Author | Message | ||
| Bb Registered user Username: Bb Post Number: 128 Registered: 7-2004 |
I also pierced mine in my "rebellious" 20's. I wore them only when I thought I wouldn't see any adventists. It was exhausting. One time a lady from church "caught" me with big gold loops and looked at me like "Ah, I see what you are wearing". I felt so small. I never wore them around my mother even though my sisters did. I even hid my engagement ring from my sister in law when I went to dinner. Kept my hand under the table the entire meal. CRAZY! It feels so good to feel normal! I always thought the jewelry thing was one of the silliest things that they clung to. It wasn't biblical, it was just EGW saying not to "spend one penny on gold rings" or something like that. Bb | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 4087 Registered: 12-2003  |
Esther, Raven's right; it's more than a pinch but less than a shot...and it's over in a second. For some reason earrings are a really significant personal symbol of my freedom. It's just funóyou'll be glad you had it done! Colleen | ||
| Jeremy Registered user Username: Jeremy Post Number: 1321 Registered: 10-2004  |
"Not one penny should be spent for a circlet of gold to testify that we are married." (Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, page 180, paragraph 2.) "I see no objection to placing even in our churches a Christmas or New Year tree bearing fruit in gifts and offerings for the cause of God. We may thus take advantage of the occasion to turn the customary gifts of the season into the right channel. And such a holiday celebration is a useful lesson to our children, teaching them to bestow their gifts in a manner to honor their Redeemer. But when we devote our means and labor to feasting ourselves, we fail to render to God that honor which is his due. I have resolved from this time to make Christ first and last and best in everything. I will not sanction feasts made to celebrate birthday or marriage anniversaries, but will bend all my energies to lift up Jesus among the people. I will seek to impress upon the minds of my brethren and sisters the great necessity of preparation of heart, by confession and humiliation, to be accepted of God and acknowledged as his dear children. My heart has ached as I have seen men honored, while Jesus was neglected and almost forgotten,--liberal gifts for earthly friends, but poor and meager offerings for him to whom we owe our all." (The Signs of the Times, 01-04-1883, "The Old Year and the New," paragraphs 7-8.) It is clear from these and other quotes that she did not regard marriage very highly. Contrast that to Jesus and His first miracle--making wine for a wedding feast after they had run out of wine. Jeremy (Message edited by Jeremy on June 02, 2006) | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 2571 Registered: 3-2004  |
Raven, CONGRATULATIONS on getting your ears pierced. You will have fun coordinating your jewelry. I got my ears pierced 2 years ago March, at the OLD age of 62. God impressed on me to be good to Diana that day, and to get the ears pierced. So I did. Before I got them pierced I went to a pawn shop and say the loveliest pair of lapis studs and bought them. Then I went and got my ears pierced. I have been making up for lost time, as I like to be coordinated. So when I buy earrings, I buy a ring, necklace, bracelet to go with them. I was talking to a Christian colleague at work today and we were talking about jewelry. She said God wanted us to enjoy beautiful things, after all, look at what He has used in Heaven-single pearls for each gate, pure gold, and the foundation of all those gemstones. It is a beautiful place. What makes it most beautiful is that Jesus is there. He is awesome. Diana | ||
| Honestwitness Registered user Username: Honestwitness Post Number: 69 Registered: 7-2005  |
It's interesting how we moved from pantheism to jewelry, isn't it? I can't wear jewelry because I'm allergic to metal that touches my skin...it causes oozy, blistery rash. I just discovered that I'm allergic to nail polish, too. Oh well...I'll just have to make the best of what God gave me. I'll really be upset, though, if I develop an allergy to hair spray. Anyway...back to pantheism. I've been reading "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis and he addresses this question quite well. I'll type below two long paragraphs from the chapter entitled, "The Rival Conceptions of God." Please forgive the length, but this is really good writing. _______ Now I go on to the next big division. People who all believe in God can be divided according to the sort of God they believe in. There are two very different ideas on the subject. One of them is the idea that He is beyond good and evil. We humans call one thing good and another thing bad. But according to some people that is merrely our human point of view. These people would say that the wiser you become the less you would want to call anything good or bad, and the more clearly you would see that everything is good in one way and bad in another; and that nothing could have been different. Consequently, these people think that long before you got anywhere near the divine point of view the distinction would have disappeared altogether. We call a cancer bad, they would say, becaust it kills a man; but you might just as well call a successful surgeon bad because he kills a cancer. It all depends on the point of view. The other and opposite idea is that God is quite definitely "good" or "righteous," a God who takes sides, who loves love and hates hatred, who wants us to behave in one way and not in another. The first of these views--the one that thinks God beyond good and evil--is called Pantheism. It was held by the great Prussian philosopher Hegel and, as far as I understand them, by the Hindus. The other view is held by Jews, Mohammedans and Christians. And with this big difference between Pantheism and the Christian idea of God, there usually goes another. Pantheists usually believe that God, so go speak, animates the universe as you animate your body: that the universe almost IS God, so that if it did not exist He would not exist either; and anything you find in the universe is a part of God. The Christian idea is quite different. They think God invented and made the universe--like a man making a picture or composing a tune. A painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed. You may say, "He's put a lot of himself into it," but you only mean that all its beauty and interest has come out of his head. His skill is not in the picture in the same way that it is in his head, or even in his hands. I expect you see how this difference between Pantheists and Christians hangs together with the other one. If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things are really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, "If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God." The Christian replies, "Don't talk damned nonsense." For Chrisianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world--that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God "made up out of His head" as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again. _______ | ||
| Helovesme2 Registered user Username: Helovesme2 Post Number: 523 Registered: 8-2004  |
Quite so! Thank you for sharing that quote Honestwitness. Blessings, Mary | ||
| Agapetos Registered user Username: Agapetos Post Number: 56 Registered: 10-2002  |
Here in Japan there is a lot of pantheism in "shinto", the old state religion. It's no longer the state religion, and some even don't recognize it as a religion but figure it's just culture stuff. Buddhism is big here, too, but most Japanese can't tell the difference between Buddhism & Shinto as well as foreigners can. Many foreigners on neo-pagan cravings actually know more about Shinto than most Japanese. You can hardly find a nice, big tree without it having a rope around it and a little shrine nearby. There are more than six million gods or something like that; it's endless. If you say "God bless you", many people wouldn't understand because there are so many "gods". "Which one?" But then again, these "gods" are carried around on "mikoshi", a kind of parade float, for festivals, etc. Or they're housed in little shrines by the road. | ||
| Dennis Registered user Username: Dennis Post Number: 736 Registered: 4-2000  |
My Primary Sabbath School teacher used to wear fancy gloves to hide her wedding ring. With very few Bible passages to look up, she fared well. Even as a small boy, I was convinced that the SDA ministers were demon-possessed in how they loudly ranted and raved from the pulpit. It was clear to me that they could not have acted this way in their human strength alone. In the late 1960s, in east Tennessee, I listened to a well-known Adventist minister denounce the Catholic Church for about an hour--simultaneously running and shouting all over the rostrum. The SDA audience loved it. Dennis Fischer | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 4092 Registered: 12-2003 |
How interesting, Dennis. The Adventist pastors I grew up hearing were very controlled and, frankly, usually deadly boring. Two sides of a coin... My dad, who grew up in Minnesota during the depression years, said that at the age of 5 he would go to church and watch the preacher "enter the pulpit" armed with a Bible and two to three EGW books. At that age he used to wonder why, if Adventists were the "people of the Book" as he had been taught, they needed those extra books. His cognitive dissonance began early, also. Colleen | ||
| Agapetos Registered user Username: Agapetos Post Number: 62 Registered: 10-2002 |
I think it was one of my math teachers at Takoma Academy who said that his father was not Adventist, and an SDA pastor once visited him to try to show him the truth of Adventism. The father showed up with his Bible, and the pastor brought every EGW book he had... but forgot his Bible. Even as an Adventist then, I had to shake my head 'cause I knew that was embarrassing. | ||
| Violet Registered user Username: Violet Post Number: 386 Registered: 2-2001 |
I pierced my ears the summer I was 15. The next year my father died of a suden heart attack on a Thursday night. I had some small studs in and not even thinking I drove up to the SDA school I was attending to pick something up that I needed for the weekend. Keep in mind my dad had not been dead 24 hours. I was not greated at the door with an "I am so sorry about your father" from one of my teachers, instead a snide remark about the earrings. 24 years later those words still burn in my mind. I think this is why I am so focused on the love and not the rituals of religion. | ||
| Wolfgang Registered user Username: Wolfgang Post Number: 85 Registered: 10-2005 |
My son just had his graduation open house and many church members came and I had earrings in and the people I was talking with instead of giving me eye contact gave me ear contact they couldnt keep their eyes off them,I fianlly took them out for about an hour because it was a distraction for me and I felt gulity,then I was mad at myself for taking them out!!! So I put them back in ,oh the circle I go in sometimes. but I'm sure I was lifted up in prayer the following week for turning into a Jezebel. Dawn | ||
| Violet Registered user Username: Violet Post Number: 388 Registered: 2-2001 |
I think Satan loves it when he can get the focus off Jesus and on anything else. If peole would just open their eyes to how he is using them they might be appauled at their behavor | ||
| 91steps Registered user Username: 91steps Post Number: 52 Registered: 8-2005 |
As a former employee of the GC, I can assure you that the jewerly is alive and well there. Most of the "saints" won't wear anything to work, but they sure looooooooooooooooove their fancy cars. I caught grief one day from some busy body for wearing an expensive dive watch I bought in 1983 when I entered the USAF, and this was in 2002!!!! Man, people gave me grief for several 9-11 commerative pins I wore on my suit coat lapel, said I was wearing jewrely. I informed them if they had an issue with what i wore they could take it up with my boss, who I knew would back me. I saw many employees enter the building after hrs with several ear rings in each ear and rings and necklaces. I could care less what they wore, I didn't pay for it. | ||
| Riverfonz Registered user Username: Riverfonz Post Number: 1725 Registered: 3-2005 |
In Loma Linda and Southern Calif jewelry is not even an issue. In fact I saw a video produced by the Voice of Prophecy which was a musical recorded at Loma Linda, and most of the performers were wearing jewelry of some type or another. I know that jewelry is much less of an issue now in Adventism than it once was. Stan | ||
| Agapetos Registered user Username: Agapetos Post Number: 69 Registered: 10-2002 |
When I first went to LSU, I had an earring and wore it for the bit part I had in a production of "Othello" on campus (set in the 1940's swinger era -- yes, we had swing dancing on stage). The next year I became a missionary, though, so didn't use it anymore and I'm sure it's closed up. My friends at the art department used to urge me to express myself and be different -- meaning they thought I should dye my hair another color or do something wild with it. I was rather content with plain brown and nicely cut. Haha. | ||
| Agapetos Registered user Username: Agapetos Post Number: 70 Registered: 10-2002 |
On the other hand, I'm from Silver Spring, Maryland (halfway between DC and the GC), and there it's sometimes an issue and sometimes not. Two funny ancedotes: One time when my elementary school (Sligo) had a culture night or something like that, they had square dancing. But they couldn't say "dancing", so they printed it "square marching". Another time, one of the Native American headdresses featured in the film "Dances with Wolves" was loaned to the conference and was being passed around from institution to institution. When it made it into the conference magazine or review, they couldn't write the proper name of the film it was from, choosing instead to write that it was from the film "Running with Wolves".  | ||
| Dennis Registered user Username: Dennis Post Number: 738 Registered: 4-2000 |
In order to maintain her SDA membership, my grandmother had to stand up in church and apologize for wearing a sequin-studded dress with a matching purse. The North Dakota, German-speaking Adventists looked very dimly upon such sparkling attire. The men sat on the right side of aisle and the women sat on the left side of aisle. Therefore, when I later attended Sheyenne River Academy, it didn't seem strange that the boys and girls had to be segregated into separate areas in the chapel. Yes, holding hands was one of the most "immoral" things couples could do. Our Bible teacher explained, in great detail, how electricity ignites while holding hands. It was something additional to be scared of. However, we eventually decided to alleviate this fear (smile). Dennis Fischer | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 4102 Registered: 12-2003 |
Dennis, when I was teaching in a boarding school, I first saw a side of long-term academy faculty that I wouldn't have noticed as "just" a student. Those that seemed the most anxious over contact between the genders seemed, sometimes, to have the most serious personal "issues". Southern California has never boasted "mainstream" Adventism. I remember when I was in my teens and twenties people in the Northwest whispered about the Southern California Adventists who would do all sorts of things we would never do! Why, it was whispered, there were many who would drink wine when they went outóand did you know there is even one church that bought a COUNTRY CLUB to have church in?? (Gasp!) (That church is the Azure Hills Church which not far from Loma Linda.) While jewelry is reasonably common among many of the more "free" Adventists here, still it is an issue among the conservative ones. In other parts of the country it is definitely an issue. It's not only the older Adventists (like me!) who haven't had their ears pierced. Many young onesóespecially from places other than So Cal, haven't either. Colleen | ||
| Leigh Registered user Username: Leigh Post Number: 92 Registered: 2-2003 |
Agapetos, my husband graduated from TA and also went to Sligo school. Raven, Have fun earring shopping!! I got my ears pierced 2 years ago for my 40th birthday. Colleen, I spent the first 10 years of my life in northern California (just south of the Oregon border). I also heard about those "southern Californian Adventists who shouldn't even be called Adventists because they drink wine, wore makeup, jewelery, etc." My mother was asked to remove her wedding band at our little church in northern CA. What's funny though is that vegetarianism didn't seem to be stressed. Then we moved to North Carolina and I remember being in shock to see some of the ladies at church wearing makeup. I remember some friends at Southern who put bandaids over their ears to cover up their new piercings. So glad to be FREE!! |
