Chapter 5
I am not happy at all with today's study. I feel tired and stressed and I should've just postponed the lesson...I just kept thinking I'd feel better as the day progressed, and then I didn't want to cancel last minute. The whole lesson was on Jesus' random. I'm so irritated with having my sister say stuff like "do you believe Jesus gave his life to cover Adam's sins?"....she KNOWS I don't know whether the Bible is even the truth or not, so WHY would I believe this?!
I stayed calm and just said 'I'm not sure yet.'
During the lesson today, I was able to throw in there how this very nice pastor sent me a reply to a question regarding the Trinity. I forwarded it to my sis. It says:
The Trinity … WOW! I have a friend who says that the problem with the Trinity is that if you don’t believe it you lose your soul, but if you try to explain it, you lose your mind. Even the most faithful Christians sometimes avoid talking about it. I don’t know if you have read the bestseller The Shack by Paul Young. Young has an engaging portrayal of God the Father as a large, Black woman, God the Son as a Middle Eastern carpenter, and God the Spirit as a wispy, Asian woman cooking dinner round the kitchen table. I loved it.
In trying to explain it, I used to say that the Trinity is like water. It’s always H2O; two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. But it exists in three states, as a liquid when you pour it in a glass, as a solid when you drop in ice cubes, and as a gas when it evaporates on a hot summer day. “That’s the Trinity,” I’d say. “One God experienced in three ways.” But then I ran head long into the God revealed in the Bible that is known through relationships and you can’t have a loving relationship with a glass of ice water.
I think what I’d like to say to you is that belief in the Trinity is not so much about settling on a rational explanation of it, but about entering into a life-transforming experience of God’s presence in our lives. We are invited into a circle of life-giving love that is God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is beyond our explanation, but not beyond our experience.
I love Romans 8:11: “If the Spirit of him (God the Father) who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” In the text you have separate voices moving together at the same time. They are all here … Father, Son and Holy Spirit … working within us to bring us into the new life of the Resurrection.
Hope to see you on Sunday at our Place of Grace.
I was trying to show her that the jw's beliefs on how OTHERS believe in the trinity is false. They believe they form a "unity" or "one", but they are not the identically same thing.
At the end, she asked me what some of my other questions were. The first one was: why did god COMMAND them in the OT to build their church extravigantly and so detailed and devine, when now He doesn't want the Kingdom Halls to have ANY flare. ?
Her answer was eff'd up & confusing so she said she'd do more research on that.
I also asked if Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. "of Course." She replied. "Well, who was speaking when the accounts were talking aBOUT Moses and Jehovah?" She answered that all books of the bible were actually written by God and that Moses must have been talking in 3rd person. And that if god wanted, he would've had him write in 14th person. And that answer seemed to suit her just fine
Oh, and then I asked her if she ever went to the library to check on those references regarding YHWH's name. All the references I looked up said that "Jehovah is a false rendering". In fact, I thought somewhere in the jw literature, they admit it but say its the most well known name so thats why they use it. Since when were they okay using something that is false???? The conversation got a little heated at this point. My question was:
"Who first discovered that YHWH translates into the word "Jehovah"?"
She gave me a couple answers. 'The faithful and discreet slave have told so many truths, there is no need to NOT believe them on this.' "It was probably a group of men who discovered it." So I don't know how to further this discussion with her, although THIS is one of the most important things I need her to see. When this topic came up, it really simply turned stupid. I said, 'Okay, lets say you're the leader and your name is Tina, but people insist on calling you TorLona and telling other people that they should call you TorLona, would you be cool with that?' "she said 'if they were trying to do what was right, then it'd be okay.' I looked at her like "you-must-be-smoking-crack"....If I was part of a religion that teaches that we alone are the truth, and I'm calling my leader by a totally wrong name, wouldn't that piss the leader off?
Nuff Said. I'm goin' to bed.