Special Assembly Day

by Moxy 6 Replies latest jw friends

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  Moxy

  i hadnt thought there was much worth posting about this past weekends SAD on the theme 'submit yourselves to god - oppose the devil.' pretty standard stuff, i didnt take any notes and nodded off towards the end. but i do remember one item that ill share. it just made me particularly uncomfortable.

  again, submission was the theme. and in a talk that discussed the need for children to be submissive, the speaker used the example of the 42 children who make fun of elisha and get killed. now this is an account, of all the accounts in the bible, that i have been the least comfortable with using in a talk. the verse uses the word 'children' or 'youths' in different translations, and the bears that god sends to kill them when elisha calls down evil on them are said 'tear apart' the children in the NWT, or 'maul' or 'rip up' in others. its just the most disgusting image to use. often when a hear a speaker uses the scripture, he takes great pains to soften it, pointing out that the term 'children' could refer to young but mature men, or describing in detail that the apparently childish taunts were actually much more meaningful expressions of disrespect for jehovah. well this speaker didnt really do that. he speculated a bit on what the 'go up' part of the taunt meant with relation to elisha's office, but keyed in primarily on making fun of elisha's age. he did not discuss the age of the children but simply ended the discussion with the warning to the children in the audience to respect those older than them or, euphemistically, 'it might not go well for you in the future.' the message seemed raw and direct. children who make fun of older people may face a gruesome death at gods hands. i was squirming, looking around to see if anyone else looked uneasy underneath their bored expressions, but could not pick it up if it was there.

  a lot of the time when at meetings these days, i feel a general trend towards direct and simplistic statements as opposed to softened, reasoned ones. my biases do not permit to clearly say for sure if that is the case.

  mox
• 

  roybatty

  Another reason that I've always been confused about the God of the Hebrew scriptures and the God that Jesus taught.

  BTW, I heard that the Society recently made a purchase of several she-bears. Supposedly each CO will have one. What a way to keep the rank and file in line.
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  ashitaka

  Isn't it amazing how you don't even think when you read something so atrocious when you're a dub...you just glaze over it.

  The thing is, I was just reading about the Andrea Yates trial, and I just want to get sick when I read about what she did. It's terrible. But, in the bible, even more horrific things are said to have happened, and done to kids by God or God's decree.

  Sick stuff.

  ashi
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  Nannygoat

  BTW, I heard that the Society recently made a purchase of several she-bears. Supposedly each CO will have one.

  Yeah, they're called "CO wives" and "Elder's wives". Hahaha!

  Andi
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  belbab

  I have considered this text over the years and I have no problem with it, at least not to condemn God for an act of cruelty.

  The text says: 2Ki 2:23 Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead !"
  2Ki 2:24 When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number.

  In the Bible, any event that was not produced by an act of men was considered as coming from God, just as today, natural catastrophies are considered as acts of God. Elisha, just as John the Baptist, Jesus and others did not arise as prophets from schools and instruction from men, but standing up as prophets was attributed as coming out of heaven or from God. Jesus asked the pharisees, was John the baptist out of heaven or from men They knew John was born from a woman, but his activities as a prophet did not.

  The young men, teenagers probably, mocked Elisha, and it was stated in verses before that he had received the mantle of Eligah, so as others have assumed, they were telling Elisha to take off, take off like his predecessor.

  Elisha cursed them in the name of God, that is warned them of the dire consequences of defying acts of God or ignoring what is, in this case what we call nature of things. Elisha did not defend himself, he left it up to God or nature and the inclinations in the minds of the gang of youths.

  Fresh from success of taunting a man of God, they went on with supreme confidence to taunting two she bears. This gang had many members, much more than fourty-two as the text states. They were not playing hopscotch when those bears attacked.

  In my youth I nearly lost my life to a she-bear with cubs, partly due to my own over confidence. Recently, my son, while trail bike riding, inadvertanly, came between a she-bear and her cubs and saved himself by throwing his bicycle in front of the bear coming after him.

  There are equivalents in Society today, give a carload of youths, a supply of alcohol and a hot car or two and then see them street racing in the middle of the night, and then blame God for the disaster. Or put some explosives in the hands of an arab youth and then telling him to go for it, and then blame God for the repercussions?

  belbab
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  NameWithheld

  Fresh from success of taunting a man of God, they went on with supreme confidence to taunting two she bears. This gang had many members, much more than fourty-two as the text states. They were not playing hopscotch when those bears attacked.

  Ha ha, this is classic 'reasoning' to try and 'interpret' the bible and force it to meld into a person's scrambled views of a 'loving' god. Since it's impossible to put a 'loving' god as resposible for these acts, you MUST then pretend fact about things that are NOT specified. NOWEHERE does it even pretend that the attack on these 'children' where from their taunting the bear, and you do not accept the text at it's face value. So why even pretend to believe the bible at all? You just totally threw out the bible's version of the event and invented one in your own mind? SO why not just write your own bible? You know more than the people who wrote the one we have apparently! I find this quite humorous
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  Mindchild

  NameWithheld...a very good point indeed! The Bible would be rather boring if people didn't want to change it to "adapt" to a modern application. It would also be much more poignant if we didn't try to sugar coat the disgusting things in it. If we looked at the writings the way those people back then did, through their cultural eyes, we would see a vastly different type of Bible...it wouldn't be pretty at all.

  Belbab though did mention something interesting:

  In the Bible, any event that was not produced by an act of men was considered as coming from God, just as today, natural catastrophies are considered as acts of God.

  Well yes, nobody knew what earthquakes and lightning or any other natural catostrophic events were back in ancient times and all these were considered to be the acts of God's very pissed off at someone. People today, unless they are grossly ignorant, don't consider these natural phenomena to be caused by God's at all. The same can be true about people being demonized as there was no competent diagnosis of mental illness in Bible times. All of these writings from the scriptures in fact, are actually put together by people, who if were alive today, would be considered insane.

  If you want to believe in the Bible, that is a personal choice but if you are going to eat from that plate, you gotta swallow a lot of rat droppings with your meal.

  Skipper