| Author | Message | ||
| Susan_2 Registered user Username: Susan_2 Post Number: 2187 Registered: 11-2002 |
This is something I have been wondering abourt for years. Is it a EGW thing or is it just the SDA's i know? I have numerous kin who are SDA, many going back to the early 1900's. I have been told by these folks that it is wrong to have a good time/fun just for the sake of having a good time. For instance Magic Mountain is out because it is just thrill rides for the sake of thrills. Disneyland though is o.k. because one can turn Disneyland into a learning experience if he goes to the Abe Lincoln display and the Ture America ride, etc. Sex is wrong if done for pleasure (and I am referring here to the union of marriage) but if procreation is the goal than sex is o.k. Reading books such as novels just for the pleasure of a story to read that came from someones immagination is wrong but to read a history book or a geography book or something that has learning involved is o.k. Get my drift? Is is EGW or is it the SDA's I know? | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 2527 Registered: 3-2004  |
Susan, As I think about my upbringing, I seem to remember most of that coming from EGW. Diana | ||
| Jwd Registered user Username: Jwd Post Number: 213 Registered: 4-2005  |
Susan, I have Diana's memories as well. I'm sure 99% of it came direct from the writings credited to EGW. I grew up never reading Treasure Island, or Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Robinson Caruso, etc. Touching a deck of playing cards was considered cantamination by and with sin; even touching them. I found a deck once and brought them home. Mom made me throw them away and take them immediately out of the house. I was playing with them as building blocks. The early years of our marriage was fraught with frustrations, confusion and guilt all because of Ellen White's sordid, puritanistic views on intimacy between husband and wife. I have always wondered - tongue in cheek - how she was ever able to give birth to Willie? lol Jess | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 3948 Registered: 12-2003  |
I agree with Diana and JWD, too. Most of those restrictions came to me from the direction of Ellen White. Unlike you, Jess, I did read some novels on my ownóbut I did so with continuous undercurrents of guilt. Throughout my grade school and jr. high years I read novels, (and also some during academy, but I got a lot busier then!) but sometimes my conscience was bothering me in almost inverse proportion to the amount the novel brought enjoyment. It wasn't as if I were reading "bad" novelsóthough some of them were pretty sillyóbut almost all of them I checked out of the library at the nurse's dormitory at Portland Adventist Hospital, the Portland campus for the WWC junior and senior nursing students. There's just so much contradiction about the whole thing: if an Adventist library had the novels, I felt "safe" in checking them out; they'd been "pre-screened". (I'm not talking here about the "vege-novels" published by the church and sold in the ABC's. Those I accepted as just fine because they were published by the church.) At the same time I knew novels were generally a bad thing, and I needed to be self-controlled even if the SDA library carried them. But my love of readingóand also of escape, no doubtókept winning over my conscience. Such anxiety. (I was really quite a nuerotic kid, can you tell?!) Colleen | ||
| Susan_2 Registered user Username: Susan_2 Post Number: 2189 Registered: 11-2002 |
I thought so. About novels-I was brought up that reading novels is wrong. And now Pastor Doug Batchlor has a novel out. It's a fictionalized story about Mary Magdaline. So many of us on here have such shared memories. That is always amazing to me as most os us have never even met each otherc let alone having known one another during our childhoods. Yeah, I thought it must have been the EGW influence. |
