I did not tell that story becaus I think all SDA people are bad. I have seen a host of individuals who live Christ likel? The story is, about Saving the Appearances. While in college I took a class called Great Books. The teacher had the class read a book by that title. Not long after the Desmond Ford situation broke out where I was teaching. Same place I graduated from. The book was about how groups .of people and organization handle both outside influences and inside non conformist. ALL churches use their leaders in part to Save the Apperance. In doing so, many times people get hurt in such a way that they remove them selfs from the hurt. Our Church is not purposeful in hurting those who are members. But it happens non the less.
I’m very sorry you and others got hurt. Here I see people who have experienced hurt. I am not one of those people. I want only the best for both people and leadership. But will not pretend that I don’t see problems. Before change can be made, we must be introspective about problems and issues. There in lies the problem. We find it difficult to bring everyone to the table to be introspective. We feel we must exclude those who don’t,have complete buy in to the narrative. I have hope that we will one day do just that.