Thoughts on growing up Seventh Day Adventist

I wrote this in response to a particularly nasty individual who hadn't grown up in the Fundamentalist system that I had and wanted to argue with me about it.


"I think that what some on this site don't truly understand and in some cases even care about is that a lot of us - all of the ones raised in the sAdventist school system spent absolutely years hunched over a desk, being force-fed the White woman's drivel. (Ellen G. White, the purported Prophet[profit?] of the Seventh Day Adventist Cult). We became adept at reading 19th Century prose, as well as what was known in the 17th Century as "The King's English." We, every one of us, hated it all! We also were forced into a 19th Century mode of thinking, and writing, which we (on the site in question) have mostly all rejected, and have had varying degrees of success in overcoming. We were also indoctrinated (read 'brainwashed') in militantism as a tool. We were bent so as to use it as a 'Defense of the Faith,'  which made us different from everyone else. The other kids most like us were the Jewish children who had their own version of this same hell in their schuls and the Catholic kids who were force-fed Catechism. On the other hand... As children of a cult, we had a lot in common with the Mormon kids. All of the above were forbidden to us as 'The Enemy.' As a matter of fact, we were forbidden to them as well.

I revile the White woman, her husband, all of their compatriots and all that they stood for. Those people, even though long-dead, wrote the framework for the system that largely stole my childhood, certainly any joy I might have had. They created the system that forced me, personally, to restrict my thinking to a very small box for years. They were the force behind the system that tried to do these things at any rate, and succeeded well with most of my cohorts. I was lucky because I had recourse to a public library, which was actually forbidden to us according to 'Church Rules,' a stubborn streak that led me to defy my parents and leave their home at 13 and a native intelligence that questioned everything skeptically. Nonetheless, I was deeply, emotionally scarred by their heinous system.

I, and many of us in this group, spent agonizing years under this system and rebelled and ultimately rejected it. Then we had to learn from scratch how to think new thoughts and see new ways of doing and saying things. This too was emotional agony. Again, we have scars. We needed a forum where we can express the hurts we had, where we can laugh at the people who created that pain that we are still working to overcome. My compliments to Stephen Wold for creating this forum for us.

Some of you in this group have never experienced this. You may have experienced some parallel to it but not the same issues we had. Some of you may consider yourselves above us because you don't have those emotional scars that we do. You're not. You are, in fact, deluding yourselves and wasting our time. I would suggest that when we start talking or making fun of something deeply ingrained in the system that we grew up being tortured in, that you give it a pass and hopefully learn something. If you find it distasteful, then remember that so did we find it distasteful to be robbed of a large part of our childhood.