Can you answer: What is "The Truth™"?

by serenitynow! 63 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Mad Sweeney

  "The Truth" according to JWs is the religion itself. "How long have you been in the truth?" means, "How long have you been a JW?"

  Jesus' words, "I am the Way, and the truth, and the life," are ignored by the Borg. Often, they will link "the truth" with "the good news of the Kingdom" as YKNOT says, but that's just a word game they like to play in the BorgLit. The good news of the kingdom to JWs is that if you want to be a subject of the kingdom (rather than the alternative - DEAD), you need to join the JWs. They believe it is the truth, until you ask them about God committing genocide against little Chinese children and then it's not quite as hard-and-fast "truth" anymore.

  I feel like I've posted this Mark Twain quote a dozen times lately. It's a favorite!

  "We are always hearing of people who are around SEEKING AFTER TRUTH. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who THOUGHT they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. THAT WAS THE END OF THE SEARCH. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on the market. In any case, when he found the Truth HE SOUGHT NO FURTHER; but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors. There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers of Truth--have you ever heard of a permanent one? In the very nature of man such a person is impossible. However, to drop back to the text-- training: all training is one from or another of OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, and ASSOCIATION is the largest part of it. A man is never anything but what his outside influences have made him. They train him downward or they train him upward--but they TRAIN him; they are at work upon him all the time."
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  civicsi00

  YKnot nailed it. And when I realized this "truth", I knew THEN that I was in a completely false religion.

  It's hard to get a JW to simply state this. They don't even realize it's their raison d'etre (did I spell that right?).
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  Pika_Chu

  Truth is that which like-minded people agree on, but no one can prove definitively. I prefer the truth which is at least the thoughts free from logical fallacies and the things we can verify with repeatability. Even then, I no nothing with certainty and neither does anyone else.
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  moshe

  JWs have the Truth and they preach the Good News of the Kingdom, but when they are pressed to show in the Bible what it is, they get rattled very easily. Three spread out verses in the Bible does not equal the "Truth" that the JWs think they have.
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  jgnat

  As usual, godrulz quotes multiple truths to go along with his multiple gods. Of course, his shingle is hung on the "right" one.

  As I tell my husband often, truth stands on it's own. It is owned by no-one.
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  godrulz

  Huh? What multiple truths? I support biblical, historical, orthodox Christianity on the essentials. Peripheral issues like Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Open Theism are debatable and believers have freedom to formulate convictions based on Bible without compromising the essentials.

  I affirm ONE God, not multiple gods like Mormons, Hindus, and JW with God and a god.

  I do not own truth, but I can believe truth. God is either triune or solitary. He is not both. Jesus is either God or created being, not both. One statement is true and defensible, while the other is false. We can show why Islam is not truth. We can also show that Christianity is true, not Buddhism. Relativism blurs distinctions between truth and error, but revelation demands absolutes (whether we find them or not).
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  wobble

  How can you show that Christianity is true ?
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  godrulz

  Scripture. This is not circular if the Bible is the Word of God (and there is a case to be made for that). The Deity and resurrection of Christ also makes Christianity unique apart from any other religion.
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  SouthCentral

  The truth is based on the bible.

  The bible is a subjective book, therefore the truth is relative.

  It depends on your interpetation of a subjective book.
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  OnTheWayOut

  The truth that most people are asking about is not the idea that there are "many truths" that seem to contradict. They are not looking for the subjective truths similar to "What is beauty?" or "What is artistic?" Rather, people are seeking to know how everything began and from where it came. Science can demonstrate a good knowledge of the beginnings of things, but since time travel is impossible, people with their own agendas will always muck that up and prevent us from saying that we can "know" the truth unless we agree with their belief systems based on myths and coming from man's primitive times.