Understanding Ellen White

9. Use sanctified common sense

Seventh-day Adventists have been known to differ and even argue over some of Ellen White’s counsel. That situation is especially true of those statements that seem so straightforward and clear. One such statement appears in volume 3 of the Testimonies: “ Parents should be the only teachers of their children until they have reached eight or ten years of age.” ³³ UEGW 78.1

That passage is an excellent candidate for inflexible interpretation. After all, it is quite categorical. It offers no conditions and hints at no exceptions—no “ifs,” “ands,” “ors,” or “buts” to modify its impact. A struggle over that statement has provided us with perhaps the very best record we possess of how Ellen White interpreted her own writings. She applies many of the principles explained in this chapter and combines them under the principle of using sanctified common sense. UEGW 78.2

The Adventists living near the Saint Helena Sanitarium in Northern California had built a church school in 1902. The older children attended it, while some careless Adventist parents let their younger children run freely in the neighborhood without proper training and discipline. Some of the school board members believed that they should build a classroom for the younger children, but others held that it would be wrong to do so, because Ellen White had plainly stated that “parents should be the only teachers of their children until they have reached eight or ten years of age.” UEGW 78.3

One faction on the board apparently felt that it was more important to give some help to the neglected children than to hold to the letter of the law. The other faction believed that it was an inflexible command that must be obeyed. UEGW 78.4

To put it mildly, the issue split the school board. Now, the most interesting fact in this case is that the school was situated on Ellen White’s property. Thus the board was able to request an interview with her to discuss the question of school-age attendance and the responsibility of the church for the education of its young children. Fortunately, the entire interview was transcribed, typed out, and preserved in Ellen White’s manuscript file. ³⁴ UEGW 78.5

The interview itself is one of the most remarkable documents in the Ellen White corpus of writings. It clearly demonstrates some of the principles Ellen White used in interpreting her own counsels in a real-life situation. It is a document that every student of her writings should read. UEGW 78.6

Early in the interview Ellen White reaffirmed her position that the family should ideally be the school for young children. “The home,” she said, “is both a family church and a family school.” ³⁵ That is the ideal that one finds throughout her writings. The institutional church and school are there to supplement the work of a healthy family. That is the ideal. UEGW 78.7

But, as we discovered in our last section, reality is often less than ideal. Thus Ellen White continued in the interview: “Mothers should be able to instruct their little ones wisely during the earlier years of childhood. If every mother were capable of doing this, and would take time to teach her children the lessons they should learn in early life, then all children could be kept in the home school until they are eight, or nine, or ten years old.” ³⁶ UEGW 79.1

Her realism continues as the interview progresses. Unfortunately, she noted, many did not take their responsibilities seriously. It would have been best if they had not become parents. But since they had unwisely brought children into the world, the church should not stand by idly without giving any guidance to the children’s characters. She held that the Christian community had a responsibility to train such neglected ones, and she even went so far as to claim that the church needed to reform its ideas in regard to establishing kindergartens. UEGW 79.2

During the interview she remarked that “God desires us to deal with these problems sensibly.” ³⁷ Ellen White became quite agitated with those readers who took an inflexible attitude toward her writings and sought to follow the letter of her message while missing the underlying principles. She evidenced disapproval of both the words and attitudes of her rigid interpreters when she declared: “My mind has been greatly stirred in regard to the idea, ‘Why Sister White has said so and so, and Sister White has said so and so; and therefore we are going right up to it.’” She then added that “God wants us all to have common sense, and He wants us to reason from common sense. Circumstances alter conditions. Circumstances change the relation of things.” ³⁸Ellen White was anything but inflexible in interpreting her own writings, and it is a point of the first magnitude that we realize that fact. UEGW 79.3

Part of the problem is that we “grab” an Ellen White quote merely because it is clear and forceful and push it into situations in which it does not apply. In the process we not only at times contradict Christian principles, but we make nonsense out of the counsel itself and offend people. Thus she gave her impassioned utterance about those who have taken one of her statements and “are going right up to it” She had no doubt that the mindless use of her ideas could be harmful. Thus it is little wonder that she said that “God wants us all to have common sense” in using extracts from her writings, even when she phrased those extracts in the strongest and most unconditional language. UEGW 79.4

Ellen White argued for sanctified common sense as a practical matter in real-life circumstances. She was not proposing that clear biblical doctrines or teachings are subject to rationalistic manipulation or historical criticism. UEGW 79.5

We have a precious gift in the writings of Ellen White. But, unfortunately, those writings have not always been studied as carefully as they should have been. That was true in her lifetime, and it remains so in ours. Fortunately, be-cause of the problems in her day, she has provided us with priceless counsel on how to interpret her writings in our times. UEGW 80.1

In our day there is an opposite danger that has become common in regard to Ellen White’s writings. While some may misinterpret or misrepresent them, others do not read them at all. The intent is that the above-mentioned principles should guide a thoughtful reading of Ellen White’s writings. Then the divine counsels God gave can properly benefit and inform our own Christian experience and the life of the church. The solution to misinterpretation is proper interpretation, not an elimination of God’s message. We must both read and understand Ellen White’s writings to receive benefit from them. UEGW 80.2