The Beginings of a Roadmap

To be methodical is usually not my style but if I'm going to really, really try this time to work some things out in my mind concerning this whole spiritual journey in Adventism thing it might be helpful. So, somewhere in this house is the packet I went through way back in the day that had weekly lessons on the 28 fundamental beliefs in the Seventh-Day Adventist church. I will try to rustle that up.

I was thirteen when I went through that packet the first time. It was a preparation course for baptism. Pastor Marion Kidder came to our house once every other week for fourteen weeks to go over the lessons with us. I remember it as a very pleasant time. Pastor Kidder sat a the dining room table with my mom, sister, and I and we would go over the lessons we had studied over the previous two weeks. He was patient, very kind, and humble. To my mind he was the perfect pastor. He often brought a theology student with him from the local Adventist university and it was always an interesting time. At the end of it all my sister and I were baptized. My mom gave each of an NIV Bible with our names engraved in the leather cover. I still have mine and enjoy it and can usually find what I'm looking for among it's heavily highlighted pages but I'm careful with it now because its cover is being held on by bandage tape.

There was really only one downside to those lessons. Me. I was thirteen, as I said, and a very good student. I was a good student who liked to get the right answers. Looking back on it now, almost thirty years later, my thinking was so immature. I regurgitated the "right answers." I believed in God, Jesus, and the Bible but my questioning of the deeper answers to the theological lessons I read just didn't exist. Mom and Pastor said,"it is so" so it must be so was as far as my thinking went.

So, I will try to find those little lessons and revisit them. Take a deeper look. If I can't find them I will ask the local Adventist pastor for whatever they are using now.