Compare and contrast JW "forgiveness" with Judaism and Christianity

by Terry 25 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Terry

  UNDESERVED kindness: (A rich word-choice from the beloved green NWT bible.)

  Ask yourself why you don't DESERVE kindness.

  If God says you don't DESERVE something and he gives it to you anyway...who is conflicted here?? Who is breaking their own moral code? Who is violating what justice is all about?
  The Watchtower teaching of "undeserved kindness", emphaizes the "undeserved", which is a distortion of the NT concept of grace.

  The kindness in the sense that those who receive it don't really deserve it is undeserved in the sense that it is freely given to everyone with no preconditions of merit or deservedness; it is not a kindness that is earned.

  Can we appreciate that there is a HISTORY behind forgiveness? Is it something we can explore?

  The Catholic teaching on grace was institutional as contrasted to Protestant teaching of unencumbered "gift".

  Catholics had to a. Attend Mass b. Confess sins and do penance or pay c.Be absolved by the priest

  Protestants had to depend on the teaching of the holy spirit by reading their own bible.

  Jehovah's Witnesses have to earn while they learn, go door to door, attend all meetings, read all the Society's publications and never doubt

  the Governing Body's teachings.

  Judaism....we'll get to in just a moment...but first....

  So we have forgiveness in 4 dimensions to discover and explore!

  1.Judaism 2.Institutional Catholic 3.Mainstream Protestantism 4.Jehovah's Witnesses

  In Judaism; only the person you sin against can forgive you!
  
  If you steal from Moshe; only Moshe (the injured party) can forgive you. Or, not.
  
  You cannot cut Moshe out of the picture and go over his head, so to speak, and get your invisible buddy in the sky, God, to forgive ON BEHALF of Moshe.
  
  No, according to Judaism, the wronged party holds the key to your forgiveness and your obligation is to him.
  
  The law of the Talon was a law of Justice because of the balance between the injury and the restoring of the injured party to equity. Fairness was key.
  
  There was a system of fines, service and payback that would compensate a victim fairly.
  
  In Christianity where every denomination gets informed by the holy spirit grace is all over the place, but, suffice to say:
  GRACE intrudes. GRACE to the rescue!
  
  You can steal, fornicate, lie, cheat and commit mayhem and then turn to God and be forgiven by displaying a penitent heart. Even so late as on your deathbed in many cases. Yet, the people who you took from, injured, belittled, wronged and destroyed have no say in this transaction! The victims suffer the wrongs and God makes it even-steven on the scale of justice!In Judaism murder is the unforgiveable sin. Why? Because the injured party NO LONGER EXISTS in order to forgive you!

  Interesting fact: Not one person in 100 can tell you what the sin against the Holy Spirit is or even WHY it exists.
  
  But, by way of constrast: the unforgiveable sin in Judaism makes perfect sense.

  If you go into your garage worshop and construct a chair, then, stand back and say "That is GOOD!, then, invite your son or daughter to try it out and the chair breaks-----whose fault was it? If it is the chair's fault for breaking--should you forgive the chair?
  In the OT Yhwh's forgiveness (including for bloodguilt, cf. David and many Psalms, or the introduction of Isaiah, 1:16ff) is not from the kind will of a victim. Forgiveness is a ritual
  reminder of the necessity FOR forgiveness which NO HUMAN (the victim is dead) can give.
  
  
  In the NT you also find the notion that what men forgive is forgiven, and what they don't is not (e.g. John 20:23). This is not a CHRISTIAN idea, but, reflects the status
  of Jewish law and teaching at the time.

  So, why is it JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES do not DESERVE from God KINDNESS?

  The only sin Jehovah can forgive is a sin AGAINST HIMself. Adam sinned directly against GOD. By proxy Jesus could act the part (ritually) of dying FOR that sin of ADAM and Jehovah could prove he forgives ADAM (and all his offspring) by demonstrably raising Jesus from the dead.

  The sin Jehovah forgives with Jesus' death is the sin of ADAM and not every sin all humans through history commit. Most of THOSE sins were by humans against other humans.

  Get it?

  Discussion?
• 

  botchtowersociety

  I think this is not accurate comparison.

  In Christianity, asking God for forgiveness does not mean a person doesn't seek it from a wronged person.

  In Judaism, forgiveness from God is also sought. Jews celebrate Yom Kippur, which is the day of atonement.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur
• 

  Terry

  Forgive us our sins,
  as we forgive those who sin against us.

  A portion of superstitious humanity was under the false impression that all their misery was passed down generation by generation inescapably.

  A man blind by birth was thought to be punished for the sins his mother committed.

  The concept of how traits were inherited was a conglomeration of bad guesses and wrong ideas.

  What a pregnant woman (or animal) SAW could actually MARK that baby and change their appearance or condition according to these

  superstitious people. Jesus' prayer (by whomever the bible writer really was) reflects these ideas.
• 

  Terry

  Jerusalem, near the Pool of Siloam:

  John 9

  Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind

  1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

  The disciples ask this question because it reflected rabbinic theology. The rabbis wrongly extrapolated the general principle that sickness is a result of human rebellion against God (the Fall) to a rigid casuistic system which attributed each and every sickness to specific sins. In congenital cases like this one, some rabbis argued that the cause was pre-natal sin by the fetus; others argued that the cause was the mother's sin while pregnant.1
• 

  Terry

  Here is an example of the uninformed non-scientific ideas of what GENETICS was all about:

  Genesis 30: 37 Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. 38 Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, 39 they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. 40 Jacob set apart the young of the flock by themselves, but made the rest face the streaked and dark-colored animals that belonged to Laban. Thus he made separate flocks for himself and did not put them with Laban’s animals. 41 Whenever the stronger females were in heat, Jacob would place the branches in the troughs in front of the animals so they would mate near the branches, 42 but if the animals were weak, he would not place them there. So the weak animals went to Laban and the strong ones to Jacob. 43 In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and female and male servants, and camels and donkeys.
• 

  Terry

  In Judaism, forgiveness from God is also sought. Jews celebrate Yom Kippur, which is the day of atonement.

  Keep in mind that we are looking at all this in a META way and not On the ground, so to speak.

  What they Jews thought was all about THEIR ideas.

  We have a hard time separating what humans think, what they believe and what it means from some kind of OBJECTIVE HISTORICAL REALITY.

  Once you drop GOD into the picture you are not dealing with history qua history. Historicity is out of the picture.

  The only PRACTICAL forgiveness is what we grant each other.

  Superstitious forgiveness is remote control button pushing with "God" doing all the heavy lifting.
• 

  Terry

  In the Opening Statement I asked the question:

  So, why is it JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES do not DESERVE from God KINDNESS?

  The point is that the Watchtower Society wants to BROKER THE DEAL. The power of forgiveness is that of the Catholic Church selling indulgences

  in the time of Martin Luther.

  You "deserve" by earning. The GB gets to put you through your paces on your way to getting (earning) your diploma (graduating at Armageddon.)
• 

  jgnat

  My favorite article comparing the Jewish concept of forgiveness with Christian:

  http://www.crosscurrents.org/blumenthal.htm

  I admit to favoring the Jewish version.

  In the Christian version, anyone who begs for forgiveness must be accepted. I think this can lead to abuse. As the article above notes, the Pope may ask forgiveness in the Christian pattern, but his admission does not meet all the requirements of Jewish repentance.

  I disagree with your assessment, Terry, that Christian sins can be enjoyed to the n'th hour, so that "grace may abound". (Grace is another one of those words that the Jehovah's Witnesses stole from their members). This flaw has already been well-argued against by Paul (Romans 6).

  Christians see sin as a separating agent between themselves and God, and forgiveness being required first from God to remove that separation. From a Protestant Christian point of view, the first repentance must come between the penitent and God. The separation removed, the renewed person strives to live up to the promise of his newly-washed robes. I have seen some new Protestant Christians driven to seek out those they have wronged to make it right, but this is in no way a requirement.

  Catholics see the penitence and forgiveness pattern to be ongoing through life, very much like Jehovah's Witnesses. Catholics go to a confessor; Jehovah's Witnesses go to their elders. The church leaders in both cases dispense judgement and action required of the penitent. I would add that Jehovah's Witnesses connect imperfection with sin, so may dismiss a particular failure to their pre-paradise condition of "imperfection". i.e. "Forgive me, I'm imperfect."

  I am learning a little more of the five-fold requirements of Islam. Emphasis, as with the Jewish faith, is on behavior here on earth. Be good. Treat people right.
• 

  Terry

  Speaking of DEATHBED CONFESSION!

  Christian Spurling 1901-1994

  Confessed to: faking the famous Loch Ness Monster photo

  In 1934 a doctor named Robert Kenneth Wilson offered a picture to the Daily Mail newspaper. Wilson told the newspaper he noticed something moving in Loch Ness and stopped his car to take the photo. Wilson refused to have his name associated with it so the photo became known simply as “The Surgeon’s Photo.” For decades this photo was considered to be the best evidence of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. In 1994 at the age of 93 and near death Christian Spurling confessed that the surgeon’s photo taken 60 years ago was a hoax and the mastermind behind it was his Stepfather Marmaduke Wetherell.

  In the early 1930s, sightings of the Loch Ness Monster became commonplace, so Spurling’s stepfather who was a big game hunter was hired by the Daily Mail newspaper to investigate. Wetherell found some huge tracks leading to the lake that he proudly displayed to the press. When the Natural History Museum investigated they quickly discovered that the footprints were a hoax. Wetherell was humiliated when the newspaper reported this and for being fooled by the prank. For revenge he asked his stepson Chris Spurling who was a professional model-maker to make something that would fool the public. Spurling started with a toy submarine and then added a long neck and small head. The finished product was about 45 cm long, and about 30 cm high. Wetherell then went down to the lake and took some pictures of the “monster”. To add respectability to the hoax he convinced Dr. Wilson whom he knew through a mutual friend to develop the photo and sell it to the Daily Mail.

  Interesting Fact: This deathbed confession is often mistakenly attributed to Roger Patterson of big foot fame. (The Paterson Film) Paterson died of cancer in 1972 and in this case swore on his death bed that the footage was authentic and he had encountered and filmed a large bipedal animal unknown to science.
• 

  Terry

  Judaism

  Main article: Confession in Judaism#Deathbed confession

  The Talmud [ 1 ] teaches that “if one falls sick and his life is in danger, he is told: “Make confession, for all who are sentenced to death make confession.”” Masechet Semachot [ 2 ] adds that “When someone is approaching death, we tell him to confess before he dies, adding that on the one hand, many people confessed and did not die, whilst on the other, there are many who did not confess and died, and there are many who walk in the street and confess; because on the merit of confession you will live.”