Flawed Heroes

by jgnat 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  jgnat

  Sadly, your ideology leaves out a small percentage of people you deem essentially unexplainable. You have created labels for them like "psycho", "sadist", "pathological", "sociopath", "egomaniac" etc.... - sabastious
  
  I have not fleshed out a complete ideology. We haven’t talked about the small, apparently unreformable percentage that seems to take pleasure in cruelty. We haven’t come close to concluding that these people are unexplainable.
  
  http://www.ted.com/talks/david_r_dow_lessons_from_death_row_inmates.html

  
  http://www.wisdomofpsychopaths.com/
  
  ... lack of family … - sab
  
  Reverence for the family is a relatively modern concept. It certainly wasn’t around during Abraham’s time, nor the ancient Romans.
  
  Animals murder and rape each other all the time, we expect it from them. - sab
  
  I don’t expect that. Animals behave as animals do. They have strong codes for acceptable behavior, and less tolerance for variance than people have. What animals rape?
  
  http://www.cesarsway.com/training/dogtraining/Dog-Wont-Sleep-Through-the-Night
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  jgnat

  wasblind, more about Albert Schweitzer because, well, he is on my hero list.

  But in Alberts case I think he became a bit unhinged thinkin' he could atone for the sins of the white europeans who committed sins against blacks in africa I don't know his of his religious beliefs, but it seems as if he took on the roll of Jesus and thought that his sacrifice alone would be the answer - wasblind

  Schweitzer was a popular and accomplished organist and author when he took an about-face to train to be a medical missionary. Family and friends did not understand and did their best to dissuade him. Their failure to understand caused him a lot of anguish. In his words, "In the many adversarial debates I had to endure with people who passed for Christians, it amazed me to see them unable to perceive that the desire to serve the love preached by Jesus may sweep a man into a new course of life...I had assumed that familiarity with the sayings of Jesus would give a much better comprehension of what to popular logic is not rational. Several times indeed, my appeal to the obedience that Jesus' command of love requires...earned me an accusation of conceit.. How I suffered to see so many people assuming the right to tear open the doors and shutters of my inner self!" - Out of My Life and Thought p. 87.

  It was not white guilt that drove him to Africa, but a desire to follow Jesus' footsteps. The most literal way to do that is to be a secular physic to bring healing to the sick and comfort for the poor.
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  jgnat

  Schweitzer also introduced me to flaws in that hero, Jesus. "Many people are shocked upon learning that the historical Jesus must be accepted as 'capable of error' because the supernatural 'Kingdom of God', the manifestation of which he announced as imminent, did not appear." - Out of My Life and Thought, p. 59
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  cptkirk

  never really thought about that before, jesus did say that the kingdom would come before certain individuals near him at the time died didn't he? never thought of that, at least from the standpoint of him being flawed, that is interesting.....
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  jgnat

  Not only that, but he prophec ied that the disciples, when they were sent out, would be persecuted (Matthew 10:17-28). They weren't. They came back excited, bursting with the news of their success. (Luke 10:17)
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  cptkirk

  the language used in the cited luke verse is very curious. as a side point i mean....it raises so so many questions in such a very short paragraph of words. they beheld satan already fallen? you mean he conquered jehovah at one point? you have to be standing to fall, and from the generally accepted stand point of a christian, satan would have fallen similarly to adam, the moment that he chose to go against god. if you heard someone say 500 years after adam ate the fruit, i beheld adam already fallen, would that make sense? they would say he had fallen the instant that he ate the fruit. jesus told them the kingdom was at hand....seems really none of them have a clue as to what is going on, and 2000 years later not much has changed in that regard i guess. because there definitely seems to be a lack of continuity, we generally look for continuity when we are trying to validate something. if someone is falsely accused of a crime, we look for the continuity of their story to ascertain truth. i guess the irony is that even leaders of the jws would use this type of investigative mechanism (when making decisions), but they won't apply it to the bible. i wonder if they would then admit to using worldly techniques for vetting information.
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  jgnat

  Falling Satan is all over the bible (twice in Revelation, right?) and I have never sorted out a coherent timeline. Obviously Satan was already fallen in Eden. So when did he have time to become chief of the angels? You might be interested in the Gnostic version, which treats Satan as a counterfoil to God, and not all that bad. The idea is that we need balance to the two forces, a yin and yang.
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  EntirelyPossible

  Albert Einstein was a shameless womanizer who once told his wife to expect neither affection nor fidelity. Ben Franklin was a liar and a total dick that made up horrible stories all the time. James Joyce wrote letters to his wife telling her how much he love it when she farted during sex and that if he were in a room full of farting women he could pick the scent of her farts out of the crowd. Mozart wrote letters to his cousin about how it turned him on to think about crapping on her face and wrote a little ditty called "Lick My Ass".

  People are weird, even the ones we admire.