Trading a real sense of LIFE and DEATH for the Watchtower metaphors

by Terry 9 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

Terry

The saddest of all the sad things my eyes have beheld was this one sunny day on a grassy green knoll that led up to an outstretched oak tree beneath which was a tiny coffin with a little red balloon tied on, dizzily dancing in the gusts of summer wind. The poignancy of that red balloon wrenched my heart with the ugly beauty of it all. Such a small coffin! Such a beautiful day! We laid my 8 month old grand daughter to rest. Sudden infant death.
DEATH. So...ugly.
If this had happened when I was a Jehovah's Witness I might have stood there with a smug sense of complete understanding...
Here a tale begins.....
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It was by osmosis I discovered the colorful Disney-esque world of religious scenarios under Jehovah's Witness instruction.
Since it was the ONLY such instruction I had up to that time I was indoctrinated by it. I was about 14 years old.
My best friend, Johnny, (himself a Jehovah's Witness) introduced me to a road trip to Wally World and handed me the
Watchtower map and set me off on an amazing adventure. It was a 20 year drive with wrong turns all the way!
In the end, I sat in an empty parking lot staring at a mere nothing. That nothing was MY LIFE.
I had been taken for a ride. My life was about as real as a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
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By totally immersing myself in a fantasy world where invisible persons were at war with one another (and myself!) I sought to preserve my life according to the scenario by becoming a baptised, door-knocking, rank and file JW.
I started living my life according to a FICTION. It seemed wonderfully exciting and real at the time. But, no doubt about it: it was FICTION.
Belief in a life defining fiction is CRUEL!
(Lying to a dying cancer patient that a crackpot treatment is curing them is sadistic!)
I was sent door to door doing something very similar! I was lying not only about the cure---but, the disease itself!!
Llife squarely depends on the quality of our sense of reality.
Would you rather your children play with real friends or imaginary ones? What if they are 40 years old and still talking to imaginary friends?
Would your rather save money for retirement or blow it all now because you believe Armageddon makes saving irrelevent?
Would your rather see somebody let their child die when a medical procedure can save them just because they've been taught they are under a 2,000 year old injunction?
Life is practical; life is where the rubber meets the road. Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. Life is real and NOT a metaphor.
Religion, the Bible, Christianity can throw metaphors around like crazy and IF you embrace it with warm hugs and a teary eye like it was a hot meal on a cold night, you end up thinking you have a clear, real picture of how life really works!
Becoming a Jehovah's Witness is living and thinking and reasoning--not with facts---but, with metaphors.
If you wish to build a table, for example, you need tools.
What if you didn't know what tools you needed, where they were located or how to use them--but; you did know what a table was supposed to look like??
What would you do? Most people would ask somebody else to build the table for them!
We can't do that with our THINKING or somebody else ends up THINKING FOR US and we just have to accept it without a fight.
LIFE to the early non-scientific thinker was the INFESTATION of the human body with a GOD MAGIC called the SOUL.
To Jehovah's Witnesses, Adam WAS a soul and a PERFECT human as well.
Adam was not a perfect person. Demonstrably so!
Perfect is as perfect does.
Adam failed his very first and only test of perfection DID HE NOT?
How can Adam BE perfect while failing to be?
According to Jehovah's Witnesses, this message about Adam, Jehovah's Justice, redemption by Jesus is a STORY WHICH ALL JW'S MUST TELL
and life and death hang upon others WILLINGNESS to BELIEVE it.
Do you realize it makes more sense NEVER to hear the Gospel preached than it does to listen? Because, logically, if you don't hear you stand a better chance of not being judged worthy of death because of ignorance!
The preaching work kills more people than it saves
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We are talking about JUSTICE.
Justice cannot be subjective in the practical sense. It can only be made to appear abstract by failing to define it
Food for thought: think about these few ideas...
To be created in the "image" of a being who cannot be seen (lest you perish) is a comic touch indeed!
Either Jesus was a god or The God or he wasn't.
He received adoration, worship and forgave sins.
IF Jesus were a god or The God he was not equal to Adamunless Adam was a god or The God.
Adam's nature was human nature and not heavenly nature. Where did Adam fail? Adam failed to be heavenly.
You may as well condemn a rabbit for not being a bird.
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Sin is behavior.
How do you inherit behavior?
Why would we inherit a condition of behavior?
What is the mechanism for the passing on of this inherent nature?
St.Augustine invented this fallacy.
"Why am I being punished for Adam's sin?"
"You're not, you're being punished for your own sins."
"How do you know I've sinned?"
"Everybody sins."
"How do you know that?"
"Because it's in our nature."
"Why do we have such a stupid nature?"
"We inherited sinful nature from Adam."
"So why am I being punished for Adam's sin?"
"Your not, your being punished for your own sins."
(Meanwhile, inside an active Jehovah's Witnesses' mind...)
So let's flashback to Eden and what God could have done. Adam sinned. He could have been put to death, along with Eve. God would have executed Satan as well. Then he'd just make a brand new couple, and start over. Is that justice? YES.
But God didn't do that. Because if he had, technically when Adam died, then the several billion of his children would have died as well and all those potential people from Adam's DNA would never have been born. God could see into the future and see all those potential people. Abraham, Daniel, Moses, Ricky Martin, Goldie Hawn and Brad Pitt! What a LOSS. What a shame these people would never be born...
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If I demanded the death of all mankind because someone scratched m y new truck in the parking lot people would call me wacko and have me instatutionalized, but when someone invisible does the same thing people worship him.
We OWE IT to the people we love to be honest with them.
The life we have is contingent upon how we maintain it. Make-believe waxed fruit does not nourish our physical body. What makes you think make-believe waxed beliefs can do any better?
If you ever go skydiving never let another person pack your parachute. That is what Skepticism is all about. You are responsible for the jump, the freefall, the rip cord pull and the moment of truth: WILL YOUR CHUTE OPEN?
It is all up to you.
If I demanded the death of all mankind because someone scratched my new truck in the parking lot people would call me wacko and have me instatutionalized, but when someone invisible does the same thing people worship him.
We OWE IT to the people we love to be honest with them.
The life we have is contingent upon how we maintain it. Make-believe waxed fruit does not nourish our physical body. What makes you think make-believe waxed beliefs can do any better?
If you ever go skydiving never let another person pack your parachute. That is what Skepticism is all about. You are responsible for the jump, the freefall, the rip cord pull and the moment of truth: WILL YOUR CHUTE OPEN?
It is all up to you.
journey-on

Thank you for this sensible, well-contructed, well-written essay.
Memories are paused frames in our life's story. The one you paused to breathe in the stark reality of a tiny coffin with a red balloon and which you chose to share with us today must have been a pivotal point in your life's track.
In one of the last conversations I had with a PO and his wife I told them that I didn't think doctrine mattered two hoots. It side-tracks you and gets you all caught up in beliefs rather than life. I told them that how you lived your life and how you treated others was what was important.
You cannot be a Jehovah's Witness and live an authentic life. If you define or limit yourself in a framework of someone else's doctrine, you cannot know who you are, what you are, and why you are. This truth is what will truly set you free.
Terry

Thanks, and I think this is why a great many Jehovah's Witnesses lead double lives. Neither of those two lives are genuine.
WontLeave

I encountered a similar question from a Bible study once: Why do we all have to suffer for Adam's sin?
No, it's not fair. Likewise, what happened to Job wasn't fair. Neither he nor his family and servants had done anything do deserve what happened to them. But that's the whole point: Under Satan's regime, nothing is fair. Only under God's Kingdom will all be made equitable.
And he will certainly render judgment among the nations and set matters straight respecting many peoples. - Isa 2:4
If we only have one shot, how frustrating and unthinkable is it for all the children born into crippling poverty, with horrible birth defects, with AIDS or other deadly diseases, into abuse which leaves them mentally and emotionally ruined, or just to parents who raise them with upbringings that will take decades to recover from, if at all. Many here feel the better part of their lives were taken from them by brainwashing and isolation from alternatives, or worse.
If this is "the real life", many people are screwed out of the gate and there's nothing they can do about it. Think about the population of the earth and contrast that with the population of truly modern societies. Even though China is industrialized, for example, there are so many people there, only a small fraction have been elevated by a flourishing economy. About - what? - 10% of the planet live in a country where making something of one's life is even a possibility? And out of that ~10%, if one is born into a family where education is scorned, work ethic is exchanged for entitlement, a lifestyle of squandering resources on appearances rather than true substance is promoted; that culture will probably take hold and ruin the rest of that one's life.
The saving grace we have, as imperfect, sinful people that Adam didn't, is forgiveness. Perfection can't be forgiven, because perfection doesn't fail to remain sinless but choose to sin. Satan can't be forgiven, neither can the fallen angels or the first couple. Nowhere is any remorse on their part indicated, either. When we fail, when we succumb to imperfect human failures, we can regret it, repent, and be forgiven.
Everybody found worthy of being the type of person God wants in his Paradise will have equal opportunity to enjoy life to the full. Anyone not found worthy, their lives were temporary anyway and "all is vanity and a striving after wind" (Ecc 1:14). This may sound harsh and JWs' (and many other fundie churches') idea of judgement is harsh. In the light of the true Judge, Christ, it's not bad at all.
The JWs are under the impression the elders hold the keys to Paradise and if they DF you, when Armageddon comes, you're screwed on their say-so. All based on their enforcing man-made rules and human interpretation of God's rules - What arrogance! This attitude alone will probably send many of them straight to Gehenna. The JW idea that only 7M (or less, if their hours aren't up) JWs are making it to the New World and 144k JWs are going to fill all the seats in Heaven is one of the most mind-numbingly idiotic teachings of all.
Keep in mind, the entire reason religion exists is to confuse people, and the entire reason for the churches is specifically to make God and the Bible look ridiculous. It plants seeds in our minds that taint our understanding, even when looking right at the Bible. It takes a massive personal effort to empty our cup before filling it with Bible truth. I am still finding areas of my understanding which, when close examination of Scripture is done, are bent toward a preconceived false idea. Every time I read the Bible, I find "Wait, did that just say what I thought it said?" verses that fly in the face of something I thought I knew.
Quentin

"... I think this is why a great many Jehovah's Witnesses lead double lives. Neither of those two lives are genuine."...(Terry )
Yes, that's why a jw, alone, or in a group who gets far, far away from any jw's they know will go nuts, do all sorts of non jw things. I remember running into Johnny once in Dallas. We were both waiting for the movie theater to open. After intense, but subtle questions to me he relaxed. He was going to see "Saturday Night Fever". Something he could not do anywhere NEAR his home, or the town in which he lived. I believe at the time he was an elder. Double lives, much the same as some Church goers sin all week then make up for it on Sunday, God's grace. A jw makes up for it by being a stuanch meeting attender and getting their monthly qouta.
thetrueone

Neither of those two lives are genuine.
So true Terry, well written story by the way.
I found most JWS characters to be precariously pretentious.
Living inside a series of stories as told in the bible, but not truly living in reality.
Terry

The closest word I can pull out of my hat is HYPNOSIS to describe the befuddled sense of consciousness a JW has
when they talk about their core beliefs; like a child who has memorized a long poem he has to recite.
If you ask a fresh question and come at it from a completely new angle there is a moment when they start to awaken and go from
"cruise control" to actual thinking.
It is a beautiful thing to awaken one of these slumbering folk and jump start their conscious rational side!
"I never thought of that" is the highest compliment!
alias

Sin is behavior.

How do you inherit behavior?

Why would we inherit a condition of behavior?
Love that.
alias
Terry

It has taken me years to discover that I don't actively THINK about things I ALREADY believe.
These "belief" things seem to go into a lockbox in a dark corner with a 'Do not Disturb' sign on them.
Aren't most of us like that?
We assign a completely different category to things BELIEVED. It is as though they are assets earning interest in a safe Bank account.
But, if we pull them out into the light of day and pick them up, handle them, ask questions about them and suddenly SEE THEM FOR THE FIRST TIME...a different perspective may startle us into asking: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THING???
In the play INHERIT THE WIND there is a snippet of cross-examination between the clergyman and the attorney that sums it up:
Matthew Harrison Brady: I do not think about things I do not think about.
Henry Drummond: Do you ever think about things that you do think about?
Quentin

But, if we pull them out into the light of day and pick them up, handle them, ask questions about them and suddenly SEE THEM FOR THE FIRST TIME...a different perspective may startle us into asking: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THING???
Did that with evolution. Had the standard anti-evolution belief, till I began to STUDY what evolution was all about. Now I don't get unhinged over the subject. Same thing with an atheist. I can sympathize with WHY they believe what they do. Especially if their former jw's. It does US justice from time to time to examine our core beliefs. Pro and Con......
How can you understand a thing unless you know it.....How can you know a thing, unless you understand it?

Trading a real sense of LIFE and DEATH for the Watchtower metaphors

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