by leavingwt 41 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Who are you to doubt God who created the whole universe ? Just look out from window and see snowflakes how many of them and each and everyone created and directed by God to the final end .
You don't understand God so you don't understand the Bible and vice versa .
@PSacramento: I've noticed in this and other threads, you seem to believe that merely reading the bible (in the normal sense of the word "reading") isn't anywhere near enough to actually come to an understanding of what it potentially contains or the message(s) that the authors were attempting to convey. Considering, then, that a huge percentage of people today (and throughout history) are functionally illiterate and don't have years of their life to dedicate to the study of a single book, etc, if it were divinely inspired, how do you reconcile this burdensome requirement with the (generally accepted view(?)) that the God spoken of therein actually wants people to know and understand his message? If someone told you that your disbelief in Buddhism (only as an example) was due to it requiring years of intense research and meditation on your part to fully understand and thereby believe in it, wouldn't you find that rather...."convenient"?
In addition to the "grievances", I would add a fact. A group of men wrote stuff. Paul, or whoever used his name, wrote letters to groups of churches. At the time of writing, Paul himself would have considered his letters no more than that, letters. How come men of later times came to consider that "the inerrant word of God"? Origen himself had doubts whether Paul had actually wrote Hebrews, for example? And Origen was much closer to the fact than we are.
I suggest the following books on this topic:
Who Wrote the Bible - Richard Elliot Friedman
The Bible - Karen Armstrong
And I think OTWO will agree with me.
-MF31-
@PSacramento: I've noticed in this and other threads, you seem to believe that merely reading the bible (in the normal sense of the word "reading") isn't anywhere near enough to actually come to an understanding of what it potentially contains or the message(s) that the authors were attempting to convey. Considering, then, that a huge percentage of people today (and throughout history) are functionally illiterate and don't have years of their life to dedicate to the study of a single book, etc, if it were divinely inspired, how do you reconcile this burdensome requirement with the (generally accepted view(?)) that the God spoken of therein actually wants people to know and understand his message? If someone told you that your disbelief in Buddhism (only as an example) was due to it requiring years of intense research and meditation on your part to fully understand and thereby believe in it, wouldn't you find that rather...."convenient"?
I think that for the majority of people, "just reading the bible" is just fine, they don't need anymore than that.
For those that DO need more than that, Yes I believe that STUDYING the bible is crucial.
And the PETA Award goes to ....JESUS! for making a pact with the demons that sent hundreds of God's little creatures over a cliff to drown in the lake far far below, assuming the fall didn't break their sweat little necks.
There are book collection that contain thousands of hard-bound study books. Some of them centuries old. Some contain truth, but most are hopelessly outdated. They are a record of humans attempts to understand and make sense of our world.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the Bible as a book. The difficulty is that it was presented by the Christian church as the inspired Holy word of God. The truth, the whole truth & nothing but the truth. This got a lot of peoples attention and gave it a status that it did not merit.
Naturaly, people who believed it be the word of God feel duped and angry. At the end of the day, life is full of trickery. Once we see that something is not all we hoped it to be or expected, all we can do is move on and be more cautious in future.
Stand back and ask yourself: who was THERE at that moment watching and listening to these reported events and conversations and how incredible was their memory?
The apostles were asleep in the garden of Gethsemane while Jesus prayed and sweat drops of blood. So, who was listening and watching so as to give a word for word account of his prayer to his father about "let this cup pass"?
So much of the theology of disagreement hinges on splitting hairs over words spoken. Do we have the ACTUAL WORDS spoken?
Really now, before a word of the New Testament was ever written down all there was consisted of reports, stories, retellings and arguments!
Paul's letters even came before the gospels. Paul was clueless about Jesus' history, words and conversations with the apostles.
What are we REALLY basing our denominational Truths upon?
Fish stories.
Without the original manuscripts we have NO FOUNDATION for reference.
Those uncorrupt originals were not preserved. And yet.......just about every other ridiculous holy relic was!! Fingers, bones, splinters from the cross, holy shrouds, chalices---you name it----YET NOT ONE ORIGINAL WRITING!!
Makes you go: "Hmmmmmm", doesn't it?
Consider Papias; he made it his purpose to interview all the living eyewitnesses to Jesus and to question them carefully.
Where are his interviews? Destroyed by the church! He was branded an Apostate!
Sort of makes you go: "Hmmmmm", doesn't it?
The bible tells us not to contact the dead. Some of my relatives have the results havent been good.
I don't have any grievances against the Bible. I find it an encouraging read.
I just got back from my 77 year old uncles catholic funeral in Cleveland.
I was very impressed and comforted. The funeral was very bible based with the reading of comforting an
inspiring scriptures.
My brother is an ex Jw and feels the catholics and the bible are an instrument of controll.
The bible says the kingdom is for the meek.
And Matthew 18:3 says unless you turn from your sins you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.
The one sin we all have and must overcome to be with God is doubt. Little children do not doubt, they believe.
If you dont believe in God than you have no God and you are sending yourself into the biblical hell.
Whether in that hell you are concious or unconcious, the thought of it is still not very comforting.
I know this is all cirucular reasoning but if you are an intellectual and keep pelling away the layers of skin
of the onion you will have nothing but tears in your eyes when its all over.
I left the tower in 83 and spent a lot of time talking with a born again Christian at work, He would frustrate and
aggrevate the heck out of me as I would him. I was a agnostic, leaning towards atheist at the time.
I came to examine his faith under my microscope for 20 years.
His faith was: anything I or anyone else would say negative about the bible and God. He would turn around and find a positive
spin. He believed the bible was the word of God.
And he believed when we die we go to be with God, and being with God is a good thing.
Whether the bible is the word of God or is not,
I observed the comfort of his faith for 20 years and his comfort was more appealing to me than
the certainty and intellectual prowess of my fellow agnostics and atheist.
I encourage everyone to doubt and question and test your faith or lack of it, thats what we do here, on earth.
THe bible says each one has to work out his own salvation.
I just feel compelled at this time to put in a word for God and the bible.
Through out recorded history there has been the great debate. God or no God.
