Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200486A
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00:25 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:27 This is your program 00:29 that will bring you up-to-date news, 00:30 views, discussion, analysis on religious liberty 00:34 in the US and around the world. 00:36 My name is Lincoln Steed, 00:38 and I'm editor of Liberty Magazine. 00:41 And my guest on this program is Pati Lawrence. 00:44 Pati, welcome. Thank you. 00:46 And I could characterize you 00:47 as a religious liberty advocate. 00:50 You're a Seventh-day Adventist. 00:52 A very Seventh-day Adventist. 00:56 But, you know, I'd like to, 00:57 before we talk about some of the things 00:59 that you've done recently and experienced, 01:01 because I know you're just 01:03 full of the excitement of possibilities 01:05 in the religious liberty advocacy work 01:07 in contacting government leaders 01:09 and officials in the community. 01:13 How did you come to where you are? 01:15 How did you become even a Seventh-day Adventist? 01:17 What's your background? Well, I'm glad you asked. 01:19 But first, thank you for having me. 01:21 And it's always good to see you. 01:22 It's always good. Yeah. We had many contacts. 01:24 Oh, great conversations also. 01:26 I grew up in a home 01:28 where we didn't have prayer in the home. 01:30 My parents were Catholic. 01:32 I was baptized Catholic as a baby, 01:34 which I didn't have any upbringing in the church. 01:38 I think the only time we went to church 01:39 was if there was a wedding or a funeral. 01:43 But I can remember I was about 10 years old. 01:45 And I started to feel that 01:47 there's something somewhere that 01:49 I should worship, but what? 01:51 I had no idea. 01:52 So I started my journey. 01:55 And it may sound strange, but when I was 10, 01:57 I'm going to age myself 01:58 but the Beatles were coming to America. 02:01 The Beatles, and they started studying, 02:04 I'd see on television, 02:06 Maharishi Mahesh and I thought that's it. 02:08 That's who I'm supposed to. 02:09 And what did your parents say about this? 02:11 They were oblivious. 02:13 They really didn't pay any attention there. 02:15 I don't think I ever heard 02:16 the word God or Jesus in the home. 02:17 We didn't own a Bible in the home. 02:19 So they were Catholic you said they were born into... 02:20 They were born into. 02:22 Into sort of an identity rather than the calling. 02:23 Exactly. 02:26 And so I would try to watch the off channels. 02:28 I think it was 5428 with a static 02:31 when the Beatles would sit cross leg 02:32 with the Maharishi 02:34 and I would do the same 10, 11, 12 years old. 02:36 And after a while, I thought, "No, this can't be it." 02:39 It just felt like it was shallow. 02:40 It was empty. 02:42 Then Hare Krishna emerged on the scene. 02:44 Okay, so there I was. 02:45 That's it. Uh-huh. That's it. 02:47 That's what I'm supposed to worship. 02:49 Again emptiness. 02:50 So I went through the years of Jehovah Witness, Mormon. 02:55 So you really didn't get involved 02:57 with Hare Krishnas, 02:58 you just were attracted to it briefly. 03:00 I would begin the study. 03:03 And I would learn a little bit about it. 03:04 But I would then start to feel this pullback 03:07 where it just didn't feel 03:09 that there was any substance to it. 03:11 I didn't feel any connection. 03:13 It was empty. It was really empty. 03:14 I've got to tell you something. 03:16 You know, I grew up in roughly the same era. 03:19 And I do remember the attraction 03:22 of the not so much the Maharishi 03:25 but the Hare Krishnas. 03:27 And I remember I was back in Australia at that time, 03:30 and one Christmas time, 03:31 I was sitting at the town square in Melbourne. 03:37 Just sort of watching the crowd and suddenly, 03:40 I hear tambourines banging in and I look around, 03:43 and here is a crowd of Santa Clauses, 03:46 probably 30 or 40 of them all dressed 03:49 in beautiful Santa Claus outfits, 03:51 with tambourines came along. 03:53 And then I looked and they were all barefoot. 03:56 They were Hare Krishnas dressed 03:57 of the Santa Claus to attract people 04:00 to the season wandering funds. 04:02 And which was sort of crazy, but it shared the appeal. 04:06 And I do remember in that era, 04:08 there was a great spiritual hunger 04:10 with young people. 04:11 And this is what was going on. 04:13 And many older people saw this, sneered at it, 04:16 but even then I took it that 04:18 there was something serious going on. 04:20 And, of course, it manifested itself later 04:22 with the Jesus movement if you remember. 04:24 Keep going. Exactly, exactly. 04:27 And the barefootness 04:28 I think I still hold on to that. 04:29 I love being, I'm barefoot and in flip flops that I... 04:32 Well, I got cured of it 04:33 when I got plantar warts on my foot. 04:35 Okay, yeah. 04:37 There's a lot of bugs that you could pick up. 04:38 Exactly. 04:40 So I just, then I stopped for a while. 04:43 I sort of gave up and I thought, all right, 04:45 I'm not meant to worship or know who God Jesus creator, 04:51 I didn't know. 04:53 I was married. 04:55 My daughter was turning five years old. 04:57 And then this calling again. 04:59 And there's something inside me that kept saying, 05:02 "Don't put her in a public school. 05:03 Find a private school for her." 05:05 So I searched, I tried the Lutheran schools didn't, 05:09 I didn't care for it. 05:10 Catholicism, I tried the Catholic and nope, 05:12 that's not going to work. 05:14 So one evening, my father owned a lot of rental properties. 05:16 And one evening I was at his home, 05:18 and he's playing with my daughter 05:20 and everybody's having fun. 05:21 And I said, "Dad, 05:22 do you have any books that I can read?" 05:24 Then he says, "You know, 05:25 I just cleaned out an apartment. 05:26 There's a box of books they left behind. 05:28 Go on the garage, you'll see a big box of books." 05:30 Well, yes. 05:31 This was in about 1980/81. 05:35 And I found a book called "The Legacy." 05:37 Now, The Legacy was about Kellogg, 05:39 and it was about 05:40 Adventist hospitals and schools. 05:42 A little bit about the church, 05:44 but more about the hospitals 05:45 and the schools and I said, "Schools." 05:47 Where are Seventh-day Adventists? 05:48 I didn't know. 05:50 I had no, I'd never heard about Seventh-day Adventists. 05:53 I read the book took it home with me. 05:55 I started calling around the closest Adventists school 05:59 was West Covina Hills, 06:00 but at the time we were renting, 06:02 we were renting, this church still hadn't been built there 06:05 in West Covina Hills. 06:06 My wife's sister used to live in that area 06:08 so I know it very, very well. 06:09 Okay. 06:10 I lived in Claremont. 06:12 I lived in the Clermont area. 06:13 So I called and I spoke with the pastor's wife, 06:15 and she was very friendly and said, 06:17 "Come on down, come visit us." 06:19 So I did and I felt 06:22 just the acceptance of the sincerity of her 06:25 and many of the other mothers that were there. 06:27 I said, "This is it. 06:28 I'm putting her in the school here." 06:30 She went through K through eight West Covina Hills 06:33 and I went through the years with her. 06:35 The pastor and his wife, 06:36 his family, they took us under their wing. 06:39 It was and the pastor's wife would always say to me, 06:43 John 3:16. 06:45 And I was like, "Okay." 06:46 I would listen to her through the years. 06:47 But I enrolled her in the school, 06:49 I think 1980/81 like I said, 06:53 we were building our church, 06:54 the church was finally built, the school was built, 06:56 she was one of the first classes 06:57 in the school. 06:59 And it didn't, it took until 1989 07:01 that I was baptized. 07:03 And I'll tell you why it took that long. 07:04 I don't know why it took so long. 07:05 I was, she was in the adventurers, 07:07 she was in the school, we were active in the church, 07:10 but there was something I don't know. 07:13 I found a book one day at an antique store 07:15 called Synopsis of the Present Truth 07:16 by Uriah Smith, 1884. 07:19 You're throwing me at every point. 07:21 When you found the first book 07:23 I thought you're going to say Great Controversy, 07:24 because I know this, many of those 07:26 that have been sold and put on shelves, 07:29 and I've myself seen them in sight on sidewalk sales 07:32 and just sort of been cleared out. 07:34 And on one level yes, they weren't used. 07:37 But they disseminated, they're just in the system. 07:40 And many people have discovered truth 07:42 because of them. 07:44 But yeah, you're right. 07:45 It was The Legacy of a Kellogg and the health message. 07:47 You were getting at the source. 07:50 Uriah Smith. Yeah. 07:51 Synopsis of the Present Truth, 1884. 07:54 It's an original copy. 07:56 And that started with Daniel 07:57 and then Revelation that convicted me. 08:00 I said, "Thank you, God. 08:03 Thank you, God." 08:04 And I was baptized, I still have the book. 08:07 And I did a search recently. 08:08 And the search I found said there aren't many copies 08:11 or any, any around. 08:13 And it's very rare. 08:14 And I think one article I read said, 08:16 there is one copy around, I thought I have that copy. 08:20 I won't tell you my address, I have that copy. 08:23 Should check with the White Estate 08:25 that keep a record of these things. 08:26 I should. 08:28 Well, they might try to steal it from you, 08:31 but that's a treasure. 08:33 And more than just the book what it contains, of course, 08:36 that's the root thinking that established our church. 08:40 Exactly. 08:41 And I hold on to our pioneers on my refrigerator. 08:44 I have a article on Joseph Bates, 08:46 Our Core Values, Back To Our Core Values. 08:49 And what do you know, discovering naturally 08:52 that Adventism is not Ellen White. 08:54 Ellen White was a major pioneer, 08:56 but they were a number of others 08:58 that were deeply studying the Bible 09:00 and prophecies and arrived at these determinations. 09:03 And then there was the confirmation 09:05 we believe divinely 09:07 but it's not right at all to think 09:10 that it was sort of a singular prophetic voice 09:13 and everyone getting around. 09:14 No, that's like Joseph Bates, Uriah Smith, James White. 09:18 Yes. So I was convicting. 09:20 Even A.T. Jones, first editor 09:22 of our religious liberty channel. 09:23 I have one of his books 09:25 I believe it's called Rights of the People. 09:26 I have read his books. Yes. 09:27 And he wrote about the two kingdoms. 09:29 And a lot of political, religio-political analysis. 09:32 Yes. 09:33 So there was the substance, there was the truth for me, 09:38 unlike any other thing that I've ever dabbled with. 09:41 And as you move through the faith spectrum, 09:45 you'd come across even some more. 09:47 I did. 09:49 Well, my daughter was baptized. 09:50 I was baptized in '89. 09:52 Years later, I left Adventism I don't know why, 09:56 I still to this day try to think why did I leave. 09:59 And I embraced Islam, 10:01 I became a Muslim for quite a few years. 10:03 And what attracted you to Islam? 10:05 What was the contact on that? 10:06 You know, I met a family, I worked with someone, 10:08 I met a family, and the love that they had 10:12 and there're similarities to Adventism. 10:15 And it was after 9/11. 10:17 And my heart just was drawn to these people. 10:20 First of all, just for compassion. 10:22 I saw some of the... 10:25 I saw some of the family went through their teenage boy, 10:28 one day when I was over visiting, 10:29 and he comes home, 10:31 and he didn't want his mother to pick him up 10:32 from school anymore. 10:33 She wore the hijab, she wore, 10:35 and he would be teased in school. 10:36 He came home one day, 10:38 yelling and screaming at his mother and say, 10:40 I'm ashamed of you, don't dress like that, 10:41 I'm being picked on, I'm being beat up in school. 10:44 And it was sad. It just broke my heart. 10:45 But I had already left the church, 10:48 I really can't say why, but I embraced it. 10:52 And it was. I don't have... 10:55 You know you've had a personal journey. 10:57 And there are so many dynamic personal dynamics 11:01 that affect that. 11:02 But I think at the end, 11:04 it's given you more than a typical understanding 11:07 of different faith viewpoints. 11:09 It has. 11:10 And this is and I'm sure you understand, 11:12 but we need to reiterate it for our viewers, 11:14 that religious liberty is not a matter of defending 11:18 just any one religion. 11:21 It comes hard to a lot of people. 11:23 At this point, you and I are quite convinced 11:27 that we found the truth. 11:29 But with religious liberty principles, 11:31 even knowing you have the truth, 11:33 you have to defend the right 11:34 of all other believers of whatever system 11:38 because they're children of God, 11:39 they've made a choice of conviction and conscience, 11:42 and you defend them 11:44 even to the death if necessary, 11:45 doesn't mean you think they're right. 11:48 In fact, I think, you know, some of the belief systems are, 11:52 you know, I almost wonder how could anybody come with it, 11:55 you know, it's just craziness? 11:58 But they have a right and I have to respect it 12:00 and the dignity of humanity means that 12:04 they might think the same as me. 12:05 So I give them 12:07 the full freedom for protection. 12:08 Let's take a break now 12:10 and we'll come back and talk a little bit more 12:12 with Pati about her faith journey. |
Revised 2020-12-27