by M.J. 35 Replies latest jw friends
and also wondering why whoever drew the concept of paradise never drew anything to do with the ocean?
Rev. 21:1--Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. Maybe the artists are taking it more literally than the writers.
ya, what forsharry said...
anyways, this whole paradise malarky is another version of the afterlife. most people need some version of it to make sense of the current world. fine. whatever.
ts
I haven't overcome the allure of Paradise. I still believe that the bible teaches it. Also, many christian and non-christian religions teach about some sort of paradise. Just don't think that so many people could be wrong. Though, if JW's are going to be the only ones there then I just assume die.
I honestly believe that God is more mercifull than your average JW. When Jesus was on the torture stake or cross (whichever you want) there was a conversation that occured with the evil doer next to him. "In reply the other rebuked him and said: "Do you not fear God at all, now that you are in the same judgment? And we, indeed, justly so, for we are receiving in full what we deserve for things we did; but this man did nothing out of the way." And he went on to say: "Jesus, remember me when you get into your kingdom." And he said to him: "Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in Paradise." The evildoer did nothing except express faith in Jesus and yet Jesus promised him paradise. So, yes, I believe in a paradise that will be extended to all who believe in Jesus. It is very important though to believe in Jesus and not the Governing Body. JW's are so concerned with men that they have completely taken Jesus out of the picture.
But this is just my opinion. I love the idea and don't want to give it up. Of course, if I were going by what the JW's believe then paradise is lost anyway. Oh well.
Loruhamah
Fascinating question.
Paradise became distasteful when I learned that mates who die cannot remarry when they are resurrected. Although I could understand that their resurrection might have deprogrammed their own desire for marriage to anyone, let alone their previous faithful mate, I could find no logical reconciliation for the surviving mate would have faithfully remained single through Armageddon just on the chance that the “They are like angels” rule might be bunk.
The Revelations Book’s artistic visions of heaven were too fascinating a look from the outside in. Why are humans, however faithful, supposed to not want to participate in such an awesome place if we’re allowed to conceive of it by seeing illustrations of it in a book? Who is it that gets to decide and enforce what Paradise residents are allowed to want to see, when all that they might want to see is good, holy, proper, etc?
In high school biology class we saw photographs of fish whose teeth could not possibly have ever been used to eat seaweed. They were meant for one thing, and unless the photograph itself was lying, God had created something designed for a very violent existence in such a place as Paradise. There was no way those teeth could have evolved in only 6000 years due to some corruption of the natural world.
The Society’s resistance to nature worship made for a very tense relationship. On one hand we are required to look at “Creation” to verify to ourselves how awesome a Creator we have, but no matter “how wonderfully we are made,” we are not allowed to “worship the creation.” First of all the burden of proof is circular, but then you’re not even allowed to go hog wild with that initial circular reasoning. Added to that, we have to still wear clothes unlike how things were in Eden, and not just comfortable pieces of cloth for modesty, but non-casual clothing that we would not wear for equivalent yard labor now? Something was amiss.
There’s also a Marxist/anti-Marxist angle to consider: The multi-bedroom residences that look out over very high visual value terrain, frequently including a lake, are, for some older people who remember, not precisely signals of wealth, status and hierarchical hegemonies. It used to be in the heyday that such a rural setting of 4, 5, 10 acres with high visual value mountains or waterways was affordable on one income, assuming it was sufficiently far from the city proper. However, there was always a high degree of apparent yard maintenance for such vast tracts of estate. WHO is it that has to do all that, and WHAT value is accrued by doing it? Is the meaning of Paradise to sit on a tractor and mow acres of grass every week just so that it can be in tip top shape when the future-traveling cartoonographers from the twentieth-century WTBTS stopped by to take a snapshot? Doesn’t such saturation in the work of creating such a Paradise reduce the very value placed upon the Paradise-ality of such Paradise? The only way to maintain the Paradise-ality is to have an anti-Marxist hegemony of property owners who “appreciate,” and the non-owning laborers who make, the Paradise-ness of Paradise. I.E. the residents of such a place could not retain the same cathexis placed upon it by modern JWs if they themselves were responsible for maintaining its Paradise-ness.
I would love to see a hard-core ass-kicking article in an archaeology journal that traces the emergence of the |idea| of “““““paradise””””” from the pre-historic Mesopotamian climatic peak for horticultural gathering (non-argricultural) up through the initial usages of a nostalgic Hebrew “garden” up through the Greek deployment of sacred geography, up through the Hellenistic incorporation of gardens within domestic architecture, up through Roman pastoral poetry which re-located political discourse in meadows, up through the locus amoenus or “pleasant place” of Middle Age and Chaucerian symbolic moral discourse, up through Naturalism’s response to Enlightenment via sentimental landscape art, up through the Industrial Revolution’s urban encroachment up and along comparatively scenic river-valleys, up through the emergence of evidence that man was in fact polluting the atmosphere, long before we knew about global warming. I’d like to see that.
Caligirl, consider this: What precisely do you associate with the ocean? Would I be too far off the mark if I guessed that it represented openness, freedom of perspective, visual confirmation of limits, and the implicit capability, right and inevitability of self-deterministic travel? If there is an antithesis to the Society’s ideal of a patrilocal Eden, perhaps the ocean is it.
I think the promise of the paradise is what keeps my Mom involved in the organization. She ALWAYS brings the Paradise up w/ me in conversation. She wants to see her Father again.
It's funny because she makes fun of other religions that believe in things that seem so "out there" - but SHE believes in a future Paradise.
Anyways, I feel like the Paradise is from within. I don't think it'll happen on planet Earth.
We make our own reality. I have lived in Hell and in Paradise. Right now, i'm kind of in the middle but - I need to work on that.
I also don't believe in Paradise on Earth because then, life would be boring. Why would God create a life where you can't compae good and bad experiences? How would we learn? Why would we strive for anything? Wouldn't we get complacent?
Paradise lost it's appeal when I realized that the cruel, gossipy, hypocritcal JWs at the KH would be there too
I concur
