This morning in the shower I was thinking about why it is that JW's preaching (like I used to do) about a paradise with no wickedness really bothers me. I DON'T WANT TO BE THERE. If JW's are right and God is going to destroy the majority of people so that just those who happened to live at the right time, in the right place, etc. can live forever with a couple of men telling me, a woman what to do, no thanks. I don't want to serve a God who would give humans the ability to think and then tell them not think. I don't want to worship a God who gives me self-autonomy and expects me to quash it. It boils down to the fact that I could not live forever with a God who teased me with all these "gifts" and then didn't allow me to use them. Not to mention, that any God who will destroy most of his creation just because they won't join a church that most think are crazy, well that's just...crazy. No thanks.
It reminds me of a poem from the early 20th century by Countee Cullen
Yet Do I Marvel
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
to struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing;
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!