by Fernando 9 Replies latest watchtower bible
As ex Watchtower followers, we know much about the bad ideas and influences the WBTS somehow manages to extract, rationalise and justify from the Bible.
Some, like myself, will assert this is because they use an illegitimate template or framework, namely religion, which is not of God. This template or framework, it seems to persons like myself, distorts and obscures the Bible's central message and intent.
Have you managed to extract and keep anything good from the Bible? How?
I like the definition of love in, I think it's one of the letters to the Corinthians?
And the golden rule, but that is the same in all the major religions, so I guess it's not *really* something I would say I extracted from the bible..
tal
The one thing I managed to keep from the LIE-ble is how to use it to bash itself, the peoples that wrote it and use it as their history, and religions that follow or claim to follow it. That is about the only benefit from the LIE-ble.
Have you managed to extract and keep anything good from the Bible? How?
Fernando, there are scriptures that resonate with True North Principles, with positivism, growth, creativity, and joy. These are the ones that I keep.
I agree with Tal about 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV):
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Other scriptures that talk of helping one another, helping those less fortunate, forgiving one another, and loving ourselves would also qualify.
Another fave of mine from the KJV: 1 Thessalonians 5:21: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."
There is so much. Most of Jesus sayings, most of the Psalms, much of Paul which surprises me. My favorites are John 1, 3:16, the love quote in Corinthians. The principalties quote from Paul. Most of Job. There are even portions of Revelation that are tearfully beautiful.
Leviticus, Deutronomy, the letters falsely ascribed to Paul are turn offs.
Since college, I have often sat with the Bible and read the books as tho it were school work. No jumping around. I found so many blatant WT lies. It was so much a part of my life and yet I knew not. I pay great attention to the text. Only after I have thought what do I think, do I call a reputable seminary and ask for the leading commentaries.
Romans is another favorite book. The Torah is not my favorite. During the height of illness, I said Anglican Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer to myself. I was engulfed with Psalms. Rather than use the Lectionary itself, I read what I interested me. Sometimes I read C.S. Lewis,Thomas merton, Karl Barth, or Paul Tillich instead. Jung's Answer to Job was an electric shock to me.
Another reason was that in order to understand literature and art, one needs some Bible literacy. Jewish art circles types seem to know the NT better than most Christians.
@band
theres nothing almost good in Lev and Deu. For any percieved good idea there we must remmeber it probably meant something very different to the jews back then.
Jesus love your neighbour it must be remembered only applies to loving jews, he himself pretty much refused to talk to other races. He admits this himself, the idea to preach to the gentiles is not attributable to Jesus but was the initaiatve of Paul. Before people jump on me abut Mt24, one or two words hardly compares to the majority of his message which tells quite the opposite.
Reading the bible was very freeing and resulted in my going down the path to end up where I'm at now.
It would be so much harder to distinguish between good vs. evil, truth vs. untruth, if the bible had different contents. I am extremely grateful it was written the way it was. Made things so much easier.
Ritual Human Sacrifice
Rape in the Bible
Murder in the Bible
Slavery in the Bible
Evil Bible Quotes
Jesus Lied
God is Impossible
Biblical Contradictions
Synthetic Life
Fernando: This template or framework, it seems to persons like myself, distorts and obscures the Bible's central message and intent.
I would suggest that modern, loving, pacifist Christianity that embraces people of all nations and respects individual rights and independence, is far removed from the bible's original intent. I think we have blanketed the bible to satisfy our reality. Not that this is a bad thing. To embrace our fellow man and strive for peace is a noble goal.
I do not believe the bible has a central message. Different ages and texts are at odds with each other. Christians tie themselves in knots trying to reconcile it's component parts.
Fernando: Have you managed to extract and keep anything good from the Bible? How?
By eating the meat and spitting out the bones.
Proverbs 22:29 Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men.
Matthew 25: 34-40 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave Me a a drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in, Naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.
Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, Lord, when have we seen You hungry and have fed You, or thirsty and have given You a drink? And when have we seen You a stranger and have taken You in, or naked and have clothed You? And when have we seen You sick or in prison and have come to You?
And the King will answer and say to them, Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of these, the least of My brothers, you have done it to Me.
Psalm 50:10 For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.
Mark 9:38-39 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. 41I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.
The Stone Diaries, Motherhood, page 175: Of siblings reminiscing, "They shudder with the heat of their own dramas, awestruck by the doubleness of memory, the hold it has on them, as mysterious as telephone wires or the halo around the head of the baby Jesus. Memory could be poked with a stick, savoured in the mouth like a popsicle, you could never get enough of it."
Martin Luther King by Miller, page 285 "King told the crowd that he was often advised to slow down the pace of the freedom revolution, that time would tke care of things. But time is neutral.'It can be used constructively and it can be used destructively. Unfortunately, the extremist, right-wing elements use their time more effectively."...Racism, he said, was a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans. The Poor People's Campaign had to control this ... The campaign would 'call attention to the gap between promises and fulfillment - to make the invisible visible.'"
From Mark Twain in "What is Man?" We are always hearing of people who are around seeking after the Truth. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think he has never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who thought they were (permanent) Seekers after the 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 hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather.
Theodore Roosevelt, " It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat."
When I left the Watchtower Agency and set off on the road to destruction, atheism, agnosticsm,
I read the bible cover to cover numerous times.
I recall from my repeated readings that the book of Ecclesiates sums, up in my mind,
mans condition.
And at times when life bends me out of shape, i crawl back to my bible and read Ecclesiates.
Its a short book. It can be read in about an hour.
I find after reading Ecclesiates uplifted.
I have my funeral all arranged with my tombstone already in the cematary on it I have my favorite verse enscribed
Psalms 126:5,6.
Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy
He who goes out weeping
carrying seed to sow
will returnwith songs of joy
carrying sheaves with him.
