Greetings Maestro Farkel, any JWD “Heavies”, wannabees and fellow Knit-Twits:
This thread was started as a challenge with the instruction to THRASH THIS!
My comments are not an acceptance of the challenge. After reading Paine’s essays I do not have any desire to trash them, rather, I would like to plant flowers in memory for him, and remove any weeds from his grave. I have heard of Paine before, but never knew any great details about him.
The era when he wrote his essays were a time of great upheaval and tribulation, the French revolution and the break-away birth of the United States. At times of travail new nations and the content of new times are brought into existence. Most often those introducing new paradigms are rejected. Ezechiel, speaking about the birth of a nation; (paraphrased) they are cast out in the field like a newborn still attached to its afterbirth, neither washed or wrapped. No one pities them, no compassion for them, only derision. But the universe says Live! Live! And they survive.
Such a one, I believe was Thomas Paine.
In his introduction he states regarding his article that, I intended it to be the last offering. He expected it to be a sacrifice and the end result would be leaving his blood on the prison cell floor.
He writes the reason for his article,
The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.
He summarizes his belief:
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.These words vibrate to the depths of my being.
Nov-Dec 2007 was a fortieth anniversary for me. It marked the time I was freed and awakened from JW shackles over my thinking and my life. Since then I have done a lot of thinking and waiting. Waiting for someone to arrive and corroborate and confirm my thoughts. During that time I watched many who in their parting from the ways of Jaydom have lost sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.For similar reasons as Paine, allow me to present my thinking.
In Chap II, Paine introduces his thoughts on Revelations. He says that religionists label their written work, the actual pages themselves’ as the Word of God.
His definition: Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.
The meaning of the word Revelation, as I see it, has changed down through time. All it means is an unveiling, a drawing back of the curtain on things unknown. The clergy of religions believe they can take out patents and copy rights on revelations. Why does one patent an invention? For profit, for self aggrandizement and ego enhancement. Consider the fairy tale of the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs ( which I consider as a revelation). The man that owned the goose, was quickly followed by the clergy with hands on his shoulder and behind them trailed the business men, the scholars and commoners, all greedy. The goose was the creativity of the man.
Whenever creativity arises, whether in a child, and inventor, an explorer, a scientist, a healer, and a searcher for the What-for of things, the curtain is drawn open to unveil the unknown and bring it into existence, into the light. Inspiration, a breathing -in has taken place. One cannot monopolize creativity.
Paine, in my opinion still stuck to some after- birth of religion, maintains that revelation only takes place when God reveals information to the first person, all the remainder only hear it by hearsay.
I do not believe that revelation stops with the first person; the first person may be the first to open up space for the introduction of the message, but he is only a channel, a window heaven, a first born. The following persons that hear the revelation and accepts it and resonates with it, forms, with the one who first received the revelation, a collective person. They become united in one mind. However if any second person, clings, keeps attached and identifies with his traditional thinking, he will take the new information as a threat and seek to destroy the new message and also the messenger.
My conclusions to this point:
The Bible has become crystallized. The book itself has been made into an idol.
The Bible with all its translations, omissions and additions, selections is not the Word of God. It is only a record of past events, some of those events have been labeled as myths because of obscurity that beclouds ancient accounts..But myths have meaning and I love the book. The Word of God is reality itself, the seen and the unseen, that opens to the understanding of man down through the ages.
Revelation continues daily, it expresses it self in many ways, song, dance, inventions, discoveries in science, discoveries in human behavior. No one group holds a monopoly on it, it breaks out spontaneously, out of the blue, in the most unexpected places.
That's all for now.
belbab
