4. Avoid extremes:

James and Ellen White often had to lead out in reforms. In an editorial in the The Review and Herald, March 17, 1868, James White shares some of the problems they faced in attempting to implement these reforms:HPEGWW 16.2

Mrs. White needs the help of all who can help in the cause of truth and reform. The people generally are slow to move, and hardly move at all. A few move cautiously and well, while others go too fast….He who is but partly reformed himself, and teaches the people, will do some good. He who sees the duty of reform, and is full strict enough in any case, and allows of no exceptions, and drives matters, is sure to drive reform into the ground, hurt his own soul, and injure others.

She works to this disadvantage, namely: she makes strong appeals to the people, which a few feel deeply, and take strong positions, and go to extremes. Then to save the cause from ruin in consequence of these extremes, she is obliged to come out with reproofs for extremists in a public manner. This is better than to have things go to pieces; but the influence of both the extremes and the reproofs are terrible on the cause, and brings upon Mrs. White a three-fold burden. Here is the difficulty: What she may say to urge the tardy, is taken by the prompt to urge them over the mark. And what she may say to caution the prompt, zealous, incautious ones, is taken by the tardy as an excuse to remain too far behind.—The Review and Herald, March 17, 1868.

Some time ago I studied the Index listings of Ellen White’s comments on extremes. It was every enlightening. Extremes are to be avoided in dress (Messages to Young People, 350). Some take an “extreme view of health reform” and are in danger of “preparing tasteless dishes” (Testimonies for the Church 9:162). “Neatness and order are essential to comfort, but these virtues should not be carried to such an extreme as to make life a period of unceasing drudgery” (The Adventist Home, 152). Parents are not to “err upon the side of indulgence” or go to the “opposite extreme and rule their children with a rod of iron” (Testimonies for the Church 4:368-369).HPEGWW 16.3

We are not to cry “peace” on one hand or go to a “second extreme” of “always hammering at the people in a harsh unChristlike manner” (Evangelism, 281). To some “religion is a tyrant” and they are “chilled by the innocent laugh from the youth or from anyone” and others “must ever be on the stretch to invent new amusements and diversions” (Testimonies for the Church 1:565). She objects to “fanatics” who have a “tendency to run….from one extreme to another entirely opposite” (Testimonies for the Church 5:305).HPEGWW 17.1

In doctrines there are some that go to “great extremes” and are “critical and sharp, and very tenacious in holding their own conceptions of what the truth means” (Medical Ministry, 269). She says that many “have taken the extreme meaning of what has been shown in vision, and then have pressed it until it has had a tendency to weaken the faith of many in what God has shown” (Testimonies for the Church 1:166). She says the Word of God contains “nothing strange, nothing extreme, nothing over-done” (Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 90). She even cautioned that “lawful habits can be carried to an extreme as the antediluvians did” (Temperance, 141). And finally, in summary, she says, “Do not go to any extreme in anything” (Selected Messages 1:379).HPEGWW 17.2