Hollywood likes to make movies "inspired by" actual persons and events.
When they do, many critics point to the various facts which have been changed in the creation of the film.
A male character may be transformed by screenwriters into a female.
The actual location of the true incident becomes a different country altogether.
A tall person may be portrayed by a short actor.
The decade of the true incident may be switched to a totally different time period.
Names are changed and characters may be added or removed.
Things never spoken are quoted as though actual. Motives are suddenly attributed to people opposite to reality. And so on.
In other words, in Hollywood, being inspired is just an excuse to make up an entertaining tale that will generate revenue.
Why tamper with the truth?
The dumb movie-going public won't know the difference anyway.
I would like to suggest the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses has something similar in mind when crafting teachings, doctrines, histories and chronologies "based on" the Bible. I'd like to call it Jehovah's Witnesses' version of HOLLYWOOD INSPIRATION.
What kind of inspiration might this be?
First off, they refuse to admit it is inspiration while, in the next breath, attributing their literary creations to the same sort of divine direction usually reserved for actual inspiration.
HOW do we parse that? They are led by Jehovah's spirit but NOT inspired?
How are those two statements different from each other? There is a distinction being made.
I would like to know the difference it makes.
Jehovah is the editor of the magazine, angels direct the preaching work, they are the mouthpiece of god and YET, they are not INSPIRED?
HOW do you break that down and make it understandable? How does the rank and file publisher attending meetings put that clearly in their mind???
Inspiration actually means "divine direction." I.e., anyone who is inspired certainly is divinely directed.
So how is it the anointed Governing Body is divinely directed--yet--uninspired?
That dog won't hunt!
If Jehovah's holy spirit is urging a certain understanding of scripture you'd be perfectly safe in assuming the understanding would be entirely correct. How then does one account for an understanding which is demonstrated to be wrong and in need of adjustment or reversal?
1. Jehovah's spirit urged a correct understanding and the Governing Body resisted it by substitutiing a wrong one instead.
2.Jehovah's spirit did not urge any understanding but the Governing Body proceeded with a counterfeit feeling of authority just as powerful.
Regardless of which of these proposed reasons may apply--by attaching a penalty of disfellowshipping--the Governing Body
is willing to gamble with the "life" of any unconvinced member who spots a flaw and calls them out on it.
Further, a person who is one of Jehovah's Witnesses, may NOT obey personal conscience, directed by prayer to Jehovah, telling them a Governing Body teaching makes no sense. (Examples might involve blood transfusions for a dying child, a molestation issue concerning reporting a crime, etc.)
When the Catholic Church changed the teaching on eating fish on Friday instead of meat, the Watch Tower published a mocking article rhetorically asking about the fate of members excommunicated who violated the wrong teaching.
Wouldn't the same mockery be fitting for the Governing Body when a teaching is reversed for which members were kicked out?
There is an apparent devil's bargain the Governing Body offers to the rank and file member.
To wit:
If you do as we say and don't question our credibility you are allowed the right to keep your JW friends and family.
If you call us out on a wrong teaching and you are later proved right--you remain a mentally defective Apostate who will
die at Armageddon.
You will not be allowed the opportunity of a fair hearing by other members because of "marking" and isolation and name-calling labeling.
Truly, the Hollywood Inspiration of Watchtower presidents and resident gurus such as Fred Franz has generated as much revenue over the years as a successful Hollywood blockbuster "based on true events." But, contrast and compare the penalty for refusing to buy a movie ticket with refusing to go along with a false teaching in your religion and losing your loved ones.
On the one hand, you maintain the right to avoid hype while letting others indulge as they please if you choose to not see a film. On the other hand, you are faced with intimidation invalidating your conscience and threatening you with extinction if you question a Watch Tower teaching.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
Couldn't we say the Governing Body is operating out of full awareness of their own tendency to make fools of themselves?
Why else resort to making it a THOUGHT CRIME to exercise the right to decide what meets the test of reality and fact?
Truly, by shutting up their critics and avoiding the discussion in the first place, the Governing Body has drawn an arbitrary line
in the sand. They reframe the argument into a false context of LOYALTY to "God."
This is phony because--when they are proved to have taught a wrong teaching--God clearly had nothing to do with it in the first place!
Are we to assume being "anointed" makes you a member of a special buffoon class of bumbling clowns exempt from responsibility for jackassery?
By demanding you be LOYAL instead of submitting humbly to evidentiary debate, the GB never has to apologize and pay damages for malfeasance.
Or, so they'd like to think!
Recent public lawsuits have directed a bright spotlight on another error of understanding. Legally, they CAN be forced to reckon with the consequences of MISPRISION.
Are you familiar with that word, misprision?
Every Governing Body member should be forced to wear a T-shirt with that word imprinted in giant BLOCK LETTERS.
MISPRISION = ME
When you have an authority and duty to care for others and yet you mislead or subvert them, you are guilty of misprision.
For about ONE HUNDRED YEARS, millions of trusting people have been misdirected, put in harm's way and otherwise treated as slaves and lackeys
without wages. Those in authority over them subvert the will of God in a treasonous will of their own making.
In reality, this is their own Hollywood Inspiration in a mythical tale they are eager to particpate in as though it were true.
Seven geriatric gentlemen, like wrinkled versions of Dungeons and Dragons dungeon masters,
spin a whopper of story in which they are elite co-Messiahs, kings, priests, judges and overlords of the Watch Tower kingdom.
It would be merely sad and pathetic were it not for the fact:
the dumb-Kingdom Hall-going audience won't know the difference.