As I was growing up, I was raised to believe in the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. This, I am sure, is what the majority of us were taught as children. Along with this teaching is the idea that perfection was lost when Adam and Eve sinned. At that point, it then became a quest to get an individual back to earth who was perfect and could then be sacrificed to make up for the earlier lost perfection.
This is where JW's move to a different realm of belief. Most Christian religions agree with the above paragraph. For dubs, it then becomes the idea that only by living through the Great Tribulation and Thousand Year Reign of Christ will we then be able to have PERFECTION. Are we all on the same page? Good, because I have never been able to figure out how perfection could have been lost in the 1st place.
Really, how could this happen? God made perfect spirit creatures. He then made perfect humans, right? At what point did he create the idea of sin? It seems to me, that for Satan to have been able to sin, he would have had to know what sin was and what the difference between right and wrong was. Why would a perfect individual, without any prior knowledge of sin, commit sin? Who was he going to blame his sin on? He was Satan already, no way he could blame someone else.
I guess my thought is that there really is no way to justify the idea that a perfect spirit creature would or could introduce something that did not already exist. If we go with the idea that Satan is the originator of sin, as mentioned in the bible, then obviously that puts him on an equal ground with God. He was able to think of something that God did not. Before you blow a gasket, remember that the bible, God's inspired word, calls Satan the originator of sin.
This brings me to the next point that I was headed for when speaking of the Great Tribulation. When an individual finally gets to the other side of Armageddon and gains perfection, why wouldn't he then at some point decide to sin? I mean really, is it any different than what Satan is supposed to have done? If God, the great prophesier, couldn't have predicted that there would be "SIN", then where is the guarantee that these perfect people won't sin? The whole idea is preposterous.
Don't give me all the rhetoric about how God gave us free will and that's why Satan did what he did and all that nonsense. Let's just tell it like it really is: People are going to do what they are going to do regardless of what society says is wrong. Each society has it's own belief system and standards of conduct that may or may not conflict with the values of another society. Yes, there are certain things that are accepted as wrong across all cultures, but even these ideals are up for debate as to the seriousness of the crime in each culture.
I would also like not to hear anything about how the reason god tolerates all the bad in the world is because he is trying to prove to the angels that man cannot rule himself successfully. Are you serious? It is quite obvious to me that man is incapable of doing anything that is not motivated by money when it comes to world politics. There will always be wars and conflicts and pain and suffering and bad things happening, because there will always be humans. Any real god worth his salt would not allow these atrocities to continue. Any real god would not ask his son to die because he was unable to create something that did not think for itself. It's a bit like giving a lawnmower to an Eskimo without any directions, and then being upset when they use it to make whale meat into sausage. "I've created these humans and given them a perfect garden. They just can't eat from that tree. Why? Because I said so."
This is quite a long post just to get to the idea that perfection is a relative term that is unobtainable for any creature, including God. When there are rules, there will be sins. We are told that "God made man in his image". If God were perfect, we would not sin. Why? Because we would not be able to commit an "idea"(pick a sin) that is contrary to a principle that is based upon a made-up set of ideals created by an entity who demands perfection from people programmed to sin. To not sin, is to not be human. The 2 are synonymous and have never been anything but.
CCS