Perhaps these are REALLY revealing questions!

by Terry 32 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Terry

  We treat the OTHER differently the more we know about them.

  If we meet a powerful official we act, talk and think differently while in their presence. (Rather than a homeless person, a gang member, a saleman, etc.)

  This says much more about US than about the other person.

  How much more so this affects how we think and act concerning who we worship!

  QUESTION: How would we treat GOD (worship, prayer, theology) differently in the following modalities?

  1.God is three persons in ONE

  2.God is a singularity of individual personality with a separate "son"

  3.God is an intelligence without name or knowable identity

  4.God is female

  Just curious what your answer would be and WHY.

  Why do I ask?

  Because.....isn't this what denominations are all about? OUR view?
• 

  journey-on

  It is so hard for me to answer questions like the above because I have come to see the Divine (God if you want to call it that) so differently. I have difficulty explaining my perception (which is based, btw, on my personal experiences) so using the word "treat" doesn't seem to apply. We don't "treat" God, we interact with Him/Her.

  For me, it makes sense to understand GOD as Pure Consciousness of the Highest Order. We are like a tool that when working optimally resonate with the frequencies of this consciousness energy (I know you hate that word, Terry). So, if...

  (1) God is 3 in 1, it would simply mean to me that it's like a step-down energy similar to a transformer. Depending on the level of energy required to conduct your desired intent, you would have three levels of power to access. Of course, YOU (the tool) must be in working condition. But, all is the same power, same properties, same constituents...just a difference in degree (a step-down).

  (2) If God is singular with a separate "son".....same thing as #1 above. Semantics. When the "power" passes through the "transformer", it becomes a separate "entity" but just like it's "father", it contains the same divinity. But, now it can operate on a different more down-to-earth level....more useable to the human frequency.

  (3) If God is an unknowable intelligence, #1 and #2 still apply but without a relationship component.

  (4) If God is female (receptive rather than positive), then WE are the energy that gives to Her.

  Okay, Terry, go ahead. Tell me how whacked-out my perception is. But, remember, it comes without a theology.
• 

  saltyoldlady

  Terry - I like your threads. They are always examples of excellent thinking. In fact I am rather in awe of your brain power and not at all sure I can match wits with you but I'll bite this once - wish I had a printer so I could print your comments off - I have to operate from memory which at my age ain't too great - but my choice in this list is #2 - probably because that is what I was indoctrinated with for 40 plus years. Hard to step out of a mold - but it might well have been the biggest drawing hook for me to become a member of the WTS of all. It made God someone I could relate to as a father and have a personal relationship with - some would say that relationship is "imaginary" at best and I'd have a difficult time to convince anyone else of any thing different but emotionally I am very wired into it. And everything that happens gets interpreted with that set of "rose-colored" specs hooked atop my beaked nose. This makes God someone I can look to for guidance, help, support - all the things a Father does. And it makes Jesus Christ my brother - that is another relationship I have come to love. So I have anthropormophosed God - think I just made up a word there but you get the thought.

  The first choice seems to be where most of the Christian world today lies - and I have contemplated the results of such a belief. For one it makes God "mysterious" - difficult to relate to. For two if Jesus Christ and God are "one" (leave the Holy Spirit out of this for a moment) it makes it possible to contemplate my being "One" with God, translates to "equal with God" for former WTS adherents and of course a big no-no. I have reasoned (if we can call it that - probably not - rationalized a better term) - that people choose #1 because they want to be "gods" themselves. A very slanted and ugly characterization from a WTS adherent view. I know there are "tons" almost literally tons of scriptures using the terminology of Jesus and God being One, One in many many different ways. We used to like to specify "in union with" rather than just straight One.

  I have been recently reworking this area in my theology - a long ways from finished yet but I have come to see ever so many ways that Jesus and Jehovah are One or in agreement and even have accepted the idea that the Alpha and Omega terminology that used to hook us up in Revelation disputes might be reconciled as Jesus having been given Jehovah's title there, also as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, which some could say belongs only to Jehovah. I am currently "fighting" my way through John and it is literally a fight because his writings are most often the ones we used to argue about at the doors.

  I get so angry at people that say Jehovah's Witnesses teach Jesus does not have "divinity." (And I'm not even one anymore - LOL) But the way I read the words Jesus is "divine" - of the source of God and we too are given "divine nature" through him so we can be one with other believers and Christ even as Christ is one with his Father. It seems what they mean by three in one is something different than what I am perceiving and for me it borders on Satan's ploy "You can be like God" - I want to avoid that at all costs so I prefer choice #2 over #1.

  #3 seemed to "depersonalize" God for me - it may actually be a more accurate representation scientifically - it just alienates and separates Jehovah from me. To me he has emotions as well as mental capacity - to intellectualize him makes him cold. Recently I was watching a DVD by Thomas Bearden (a nuclear physicist) who described the particle world outside of time and space dimensions. That is a difficult one to wrap the mind around but technically speaking it seemed he was saying all particles are "One" outside of these separation devices of space and time dimension. So to say Jesus, Jehovah, and the Holy Spirit are "one" may be correct. I am not sure how to handle that in my emotional, spiritual, or physical makeup. In fact I even separate Holy Spirit off into its own little category too - as WTS taught us - easier to classify and understand but Holy Spirit does seem to display personality characteristics to the nth degree so how does one answer those quandries?

  Your 4th point or view I've forgotten already. But at least I've made a stab at it and that is all it is I realize - stabbing in the darkness trying to glean light - how is that for an oxymoron. But I do think your threads are worthy of far more response than they are garnering. Maybe others feel spell-bound by you too. Hope not.
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  saltyoldlady

  Oh now I see why I forgot #4 - LOL, rolling in laughter actually! Being a 30's brat myself the idea of feminizing God is outlandish! But why not? Who are we to say what His gender is or that He even has gender. We have made him "male" because of our culture I suspect and we don't want to call Him "it" because again that depersonalizes God. Jesus gave him the Father persona and so I accept that but then I also accept Scripture as having "some kind of authority" in my life even though many arguments are out there arguing differently. And I see many on this Board that do not accept the Bible as divinely inspired any longer or even doubting there is anymore than a First Cause. That saddens me but I am trying to adjust my thinking to comprehend this.
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  The Finger

  Surely to be Omniscience, (is the capacity to know everything infinitely) he is all of the above?

  I would treat God with the deepest respect possible as you don't know what your dealing with.
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  thetrueone

  God is female. ..... Imposable ! the god of the bible is far too cruel as a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticide, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully..... Quote from Dawkins .

  The sexuality of god is one that never gets categorically analyzed, well you don't expect a woman to make the earth shake,

  cause a great flood or part a sea so people could walk through it do you ?

  God is all powerful so therefore must be a male..... theologically speaking of course
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  thetrueone

  Gods have always been an expression of human ignorance of the world mankind lives in, past, present and most likely into the future.

  Its also mankind's variance of imagination that created the demographic variance of denominations we have in the world today.

  The war between religions is really a war of imaginations expressed through human ignorance.
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  journey-on

  thetrueone, no offense, but Terry did not specifically indicate "the God of the Bible". Step outside your hatred of all things biblical, and contemplate for a moment with an open mind the possibility of an Infinite Power.

  Gods have always been an expression of human ignorance of the world mankind lives in, past, present and most likely into the future .

  Your above statement, thetrueone, may not be an accurate statement although you postulate it as a dogmatic fact.

  Gods, or rather the concept of God, may actually be a part of man's evolution toward something higher. It takes thousands of years for evolution to become evident, and man's inititial acknowledgement of the creation process may have been expressed in a way that sounds archaic to us today, but it may actually have been the beginnings of an evolutionary spiral upward .

  Over time, the expression may become more scientific sounding, but the Power we now call God, will not have changed. It will just be expressed in more modern scientific terms.
• 

  Tuesday

  The answer for me is I regardless of the form of God they're still God and I would treat them as such.
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  thetrueone

  1.God is three persons in ONE

  2.God is a singularity of individual personality with a separate "son"

  Sounds to me like he was theorizing on the god of the bible.

  Gods, or rather the concept of God, may actually be a part of man's evolution toward something higher.

  I would have to agree with that, in that mankind's increasing evolution of knowledge of the universe of which we are a part of.

  A higher lever of understanding of the natural world rather than the spiritual world which previously gave answers to the probable past unknowns.