Warmasaunned,
It isn’t as easy as looking for proof in the Scriptures. And it might be that we are still looking for things the way we were taught when Witnesses. God is both more complex and much more simple than what we were lead to believe if we were once JWs.
Take your time in coming to a conclusion. Don’t expect it all to make sense. Remember if there is a God, it’s not a matter of academia but of the heart. Love doesn’t make much sense all the time.
Also don’t worry if your views change tomorrow from what they are today. And don’t worry if you’re thinking that a God who is there that you just can’t see or believe in (though you are trying or have tried) is going to judge you adversely because you can’t do that right now. That’s neither here nor there with God.
Be the best you can as a father to those children. Show them what some people don’t think atheists or agnostics or those without a religion can be and offer to others. Prove to your children and family and friends that using your mind, your heart, and not jumping to conclusions one way or the other is not a dead end street.
If there is a God, and you want to know him, you will in time. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but if you want to you will. After all, the theists often refer to God as the Hound of Heaven who is sometimes chasing us down to play when all we see is a dangerous dog who might hurt us. Often we don’t recognize God until he catches up with us because we don’t realize we are running away from we imagine is a threat.
And if you don’t ever believe in God in the end, that doesn’t make you some horrible person either.
And now, for some of you others…
Why is there an insistence on insulting the convictions of others on this board? Why should people result to calling other people “mad”? We haven’t moved so far from our Witness connections if that is where we still are.
We prove the Witness right when we do that. Insulting the humanity of others because of their convictions, whether they choose to believe in a deity or not, is never acceptable. Never!
If I hold to some conviction, be it atheism or not, and it doesn’t make me any better of a person toward others than the judgmental Jehovah’s Witnesses, then I belie any claim of value to my convictions. Who wants to be an atheist, agnostic or whatever I am if it leaves them in the squalor of Watchtower opinions that likewise devalues others whose convictions differ?
If we are insulting people, regardless of our convictions, then we are not faithful to our convictions or they are not what we claim or think there are at all. We are the worse of hypocrites for our stand against the Watchtower because we just “switched brands” and are still doing the same thing.
It makes it seem like it’s not the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses that is wrong, but the type of people that religion attracts. Perhaps it only appeals to the person who cannot see that they are nothing more than a triumphalist, to someone who cannot make any doctrine or philosophy peacefully work—and not because the belief is incapable of creating such but maybe because it is in the wrong hands.
If we eat at ourselves and our humanity and the beauty of exercising the freedom of conscience each deserves to express in the way they see fit, why did we leave those Kingdom Halls in the first place? The elders and the Governing Body did all that for us without us having to bother. Why do we keep acting as if we are crying out: "Let us not be outside here where those we hate cannot be insulted and reduced to labels, but let us return to the captivity of Egypt where we can be slaves again to the Russian Roulette ways of never knowing when we might be the next victim to the whims of a society that might officially cut us off because they don’t like the way we think!"?
Now it is great to offer our opinions, to share what we all learned, and to help people reason their way out of the trap of the Jehovah’s Witness religion. But when we start picking on people and the choices they make once they leave the Watchtower, then it wasn’t the religion that was bad, it was those of us who have to keep acting this way toward others whether we are in a Kingdom Hall or not.
And if that is the case, then we are all wrong, and someone needs to apologize to the Watchtower for all this. Oy vey, goyim, can't you learn from us Jews and not complain once you cross the Red Sea?
Whatever I believe in now is the truth. Whatever I believed in then was the truth. And whatever I believe in tomorrow will be the truth, even if each day has me believing something different. Behold, am I the Governing Body or just an ex-Jehovah’s Witness? Taste my fruit, thou shall never know the difference! [Insert triumphalist laughter here.]
