Jehovah and Satan and universal sovereignity - so what?

by DrJohnStMark 11 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • jabberwock
    jabberwock
    If the almighty is the creator and all powerful and wise, there is no need to prove anything to humans. According to the watchtower he's very insecure.

    Yes, exactly!

    I think the ridiculousness of this particular Witness belief is highlighted by an illustration (from the Bible Teach book) that they use to explain it:

    Imagine that a teacher is telling his students how to solve a difficult problem. A clever but rebellious student claims that the teacher’s way of solving the problem is wrong. Implying that the teacher is not capable, this rebel insists that he knows a much better way to solve the problem. Some students think that he is right, and they also become rebellious. What should the teacher do? If he throws the rebels out of the class, what will be the effect on the other students? Will they not believe that their fellow student and those who joined him are right? All the other students in the class might lose respect for the teacher, thinking that he is afraid of being proved wrong. But suppose that the teacher allows the rebel to show the class how he would solve the problem.

    Jehovah has done something similar to what the teacher does. Remember that the rebels in Eden were not the only ones involved. Millions of angels were watching. (Job 38:7; Daniel 7:10) How Jehovah handled the rebellion would greatly affect all those angels and eventually all intelligent creation. So, what has Jehovah done? He has allowed Satan to show how he would rule mankind. God has also allowed humans to govern themselves under Satan’s guidance.

    The teacher in our illustration knows that the rebel and the students on his side are wrong. But he also knows that allowing them the opportunity to try to prove their point will benefit the whole class. When the rebels fail, all honest students will see that the teacher is the only one qualified to lead the class. They will understand why the teacher thereafter removes any rebels from the class. Similarly, Jehovah knows that all honesthearted humans and angels will benefit from seeing that Satan and his fellow rebels have failed and that humans cannot govern themselves.

    Something like this happened a few times when I was in school. In most cases the teacher just told the student to sit down and be quiet. Sometimes, the teacher would hear the student out, but only if the student was sincere and needed a better explanation of the material. I could never imagine a teacher allowing one of the students to confuse the whole class with something they knew was wrong to begin with.

    None of the other students felt that one of their classmates knew better than the teacher and they would even get annoyed by the interruption. We had enough confidence in our teachers' knowledge and experience.

    Still, the teacher wasn't perfect and it was possible that the teacher was wrong and the student was right. Of course, with an omniscient teacher this would never be an issue.

  • glenster
    glenster


    For your God concept to be credible, you have to have the same world whether
    there is a God or not--children born with disabilities, starvation and poverty
    in the 3rd world, people who die in unfortunate ways anywhere in the world, that
    everyone dies, etc. It can't be an all-beneficent God concept or we'd all live
    in heavenly circumstances forever.

    The Bible God has God provide everything so have God's prerogative (or sover-
    eignty) but was never meant as an all-beneficent God any more than the writers
    ever thought we all live in heavenly circumstances on Earth. The best you can
    do is be glad of your chance at life and what you found in it whether you be-
    lieve in God or not--if you add God like Job, you're glad of Him for providing
    the chance to do that. The Devil's stance in the story is to not even do that,
    which isn't an outlook I'd recommend whether you believe in God or not.

    I would take Genesis figuratively for theological teaching, and some of these
    things seem to be matters of interpretation. But I disagree that the story has
    it that the Devil told Eve the truth: God tells Adam and Eve they'll die if they
    eat of the tree and the Devil lies to her that she won't--she'll be a god. The
    Tower of Babel can be interpreted as God preventing people from creating some-
    thing better than God with a tower to their own virtue only if you think they
    had a chance to. It's about people putting more stock in selfish human pride
    than the God who gave them the world to be that way in (not that they'd actually
    build a tower so high they'd go to heaven and be better than God--how would you
    provide eveything after it's already been done? They'd just run into thinner
    atmosphere and be very cold like on a mountaintop) and God interrupting the
    folly of it by letting them prove it: people are so prone to being 'centric they
    can't get over unimportant differences.

    I also don't see the merit of the contention that for someone to think that
    they'll be shown right even if they let someone have their say with an opposing
    stance (as God lets the Devil, as adversarial lawyer, do in Job) proves insecur-
    ity or tyranny--I'd think it would prove the opposite. Otherwise, having people
    die whichever way for committing to the opposing stance (notably in stories in
    which God makes His presence clear with interventions) would be God's preroga-
    tive, not a false assumption of it on His part. Rebelling against the source of
    life, whose making His presence known, isn't a good strategy....

    The tower builders' and Devil's stance in those stories isn't just a stance
    about God but that people should consider themselves as paragons of virtue or
    such. People aren't all-beneficent, either, or there wouldn't be the list of
    links of people getting too 'centric about belief or non-belief choices at the
    next link. (I could have added equally long lists of people causing grief due
    to getting too 'centric over matters of race, nationality, income level, age,
    etc.)
    http://www.freewebs.com/glenster1/gtjbrooklyn43.htm

    So much concern might be given to complaining that God's not all-beneficent
    that people may forget to try to see it the other way around, too. (Think of
    George Burns in "Oh, God": "I look down, I can't believe the filth.") Would
    you want all of them to live in your house forever? Whether you believe in God
    (and a Babel tower builder or a Devil whose argument is that people should con-
    sider themselves the ultimate) or not, it's a pretty disappointing show that
    even with whatever towers or knowledge of good and evil, common human selfish-
    ness is unfortunately all-too appropriately named. Crime isn't just a result of
    people not knowing better (from trees of knowlege of it or anything else), but
    what's worse is that even if they do, human selfishness has too many act self-
    ishly anyway.

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