It's not WHAT you believe; it is HOW you believe.

by Terry 22 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Terry

  Very insightful post, Terry, thank you.

  I'd just add this, fwiw: on the big tragi-comical stage of the world, there may be room and time for all the hows, as there is for all the whats...

  But you reminded me of the following poem by Antonio Machado:

  I knew you were one of my favorites for a good reason. People who cherish poetry are very special!

  I'll share one of my most favorite poems with you now, Nark.

  Ozymandias

  I met a traveler from an antique land
  Who said :

  "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

  And on the pedestal these words appear:

  ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

  Nothing besides remains.

  Round the decay
  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away."

  —— Percy Bysshe Shelly ——
• 

  Aleman

  Dear Changeling,

  Don't tell me, You are an atheas (I hope I spelled this right). I know where your coming from but it's like a marriage. You don't just get married and expect that it will last forever. The pair have to work on many things together and avoid any other distractions or temptations that may want you to leave your spouse and get with that other.

  You ask your spouse to be faithful to only you and no one else. Why do you think Jehovah God deserves less? Because you don't see him?

  I see him every single day. Mabey not the way you want to see him, but I do see him. I see his power when thunder rolls, when the wind blows. I see his inteligence when my dauhter was born, or when I see the sun every morn. I see his justice in the kingdom hall how every one has resieved when they call, and I especially see his love every morning when I awake with a kiss from my wife and I go to sleep with a kiss from dauhter.

  Mabey you are one of the few that are alone and suffered traumatic surcomestances, and what makes you feel better is just to blame it on god. I once was one of those few. I used to belong to catholic beliefs, then latter to taoist & buhdist beliefs, then I turned to jewish beliefs and non denomination churches. I can tell you right now that the JWs beliefs are beyond all other churches, sects, and/or beliefs the only one to trully get it as close to correct as any one can ever get.

  God be with all the Brothers and Sisters in the organisation,

  -Aleman
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  Terry

  I can't say for sure if this life is all there is. Thiests would argue otherwise. But I think we can all agree that this life is all we can control at the moment. This life is all we are being asked to participate in. Our body, health and decisions may or may not have consequences in a great beyond, but they certainly do affect you now! If god exists, surely he would want us to be happy, and to take care of the life he (may) have given us.

  Intellectual honesty is the willingness to say "I don't know" followed by the willingness to be wrong when confronted with evidence distasteful or surprising.

  Once we "buy in" to a set theology or system of beliefs we end up defending them against evidence.

  I look back at my years as a Jehovah's Witness as a long, slow intellectual death. Strangulation by idiocy is putting it too mildly.

  I lost the ability to be alive in the here and now. Every focus shifted to beyond Armageddon and devalued every good possibility for self-betterment.

  I was a lousy husband, father, citizen and person. Why? Why? Why? Because I had ALL the answers; most of which involved the destruction of everybody and everything I saw!!

  Your comments demonstrate how far you've come in shaking off the stagnant certainty of indoctrination and ideology. It makes me think of Socrates words, "I only know that I know nothing." Honest skepticism about even our own viewpoint keeps us alert to what is real in this life.