The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences

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  DATA-DOG

  "I don't know" is an answer that will suffice." I agree 100%. Flamegrilled won't say, "Yes", because of the implications. Neither will he say, "No." He pleads the fifth on this one..

  One of the things that thrilled me about seeing that the bible teaches only one hope, the Christian hope, was believing that I was "anointed" as JWs would call it. I just knew that I HAD to partake according to the scriptures. The greatest thing about this belief was the hope that I would be able to help right all the wrongs of the world. I would dream about saving ALL righteous ones at the big A. [ I personally believed that very, very few people would be judged as wicked at the time.] I imagined the thrill of standing for justice and saving believers from demonic hordes, or evil armies. Whatever I could do, however YHWH would use me, I was all in.

  I would answer, "YES", to Snare's question. If I had the power to save others and insure eternal peace, I would do it. Even if I had to die myself, I would do it. A Loving creator who let's children starve and people die, just to prove a point, is beyond my understanding. If GOD can do anything, then there is no reason why he could not have stopped evil and preserved our existence. An omnipotent being with the ability of predestination could have stopped man's fall and preserved all the past and current populace, minus the horrors of evil.

  Also, I agree with Kate. The Devil rules or he doesn't. If he does, the only promise in the bible is that Christians have no "spiritual" breaking point. There is NO promise of avoiding death. In fact, the opposite is true. That means this life is a crap-shoot. I could be murdered or martyred tomorrow. I could get cancer next week. I could die behind the wheel. I could have a defective heart valve and keel over taking a walk. That is the reality of life.

  A GOD who protects the chicken population of a JW in Myanmar, but allows a bus-load of JWs to get decapitated on the way to a DC has serious issues. Letting an elderly sister drive to memorial and kill her passenger on the way to celebrate the most sacred night, is dropping the ball in my opinion. [ True story, happened last year] I guess the myriads of angels were busy controlling the humidity so the RNWT could be printed on time, mistakes and all...

  DD
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  DATA-DOG

  Here is a great post by Stuckinamovement, I have never forgotten it.

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/250009/1/The-Challenge-and-the-Result#.UuPw1tLnYdW
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  humbled

  Flame,

  You sense there is more than meets the eye about god questions--I sympathize.

  For me and theology-- it has to be simpler than much of what I have heard in church. The knowledge about "getting saved" from misery and from being a bad person has to have a simpler, better way of getting out to us.

  Death isn't the worst. But confusion, misery and pain suck.

  See we don't get to pick out how death goes. And myself and most the people I live around--hey, they don't have time to fret about who god is or if he is: they have to get ON WITH IT.

  Years back I saw a documentary about forest pygmies of Africa. They knew they were going to hell(yes HELL)because they killed and ate the forest elephants. But that is all they could do to live. they were caught in LIFE.

  I feel like that too.Caught in life. I have to grab what I can from what I think, what i can read, from places like this and run with it.

  At the end of this day, I figure god is love and love is god. If there IS a loving god he would understand how it is to be puzzled at so much suffering on the earth--and why I can't believe in Him if Christian Theism is right.

  As Apog has suggested, certainty is pressed upon us. But standing in btween is a place some find themselves (Hello,Kate, Jgnat et al) --and I think it isn't the result of being DIS-honest. It is because we honestly don't KNOW any better.
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  flamegrilled

  interestingly, is it prudent to worship a god, you know so little about regarding his morals and actions? Maybe get to know his motives for what appears immoral, before getting down on your knees?

  You have jumped two steps ahead S&R. Nothing in what I wrote tells you how much I know regarding his morals and actions. You asked a very specific question about a particular event, and I answered very specifically as requested.
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  flamegrilled

  We had more affection for them than the bible/christian God does for his children on earth. humbled

  I have no idea how you have measured this.
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  snare&racket

  Data dog, this answer makes you more moral than god OR more able than god, which by definition denounces your god as less than a god, as a human would have done more.

  as for the hope in the bible, which bible, which books, the jews didnt share your hope, the christians were expecting a returning jesus, the hope in the bible depends who you are and in what century. Why even subscribe to THIS bible as prepare for political reasons in Rome.

  Lastly, the bible does not belong to christians, the jews hold it as their holy book, the muslims do also, even the mormons subscribe to the bible. It is a jewish book, 3000 yesrs old. It reslly doesn't 'belong' to any of these evangelical american churches today, nor is it owned by a roman, pope led movement, nor does it belong to jews alone. It is a historical book intertwined with older myth.

  I see the bible as a historical insight into how peoole thought a long time ago. I find the bible quite hopeless, the judgemnet, the immoral acts using a deity to excuse them, the segregation by race, nobody stops and thinks 'wait a minute god chose ONE nation... That doesn't make sense!'. Data you may believe you are going toheaven, but the bibke says that is only because the jews screwed up.... Does that make sense to you?

  i appreciate this is folly, you have your beleifs and I wont change them. I just find it disingenuous to see 99 pages of people pretending to have answers to all these contradictions in the bible and in its god.
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  cofty

  Pretending there are things we don't or can't know for an absolute certainty is just playing silly word games.

  There was no Adam and Eve, no fall from human perfection, no global flood. These things are 100% certain.

  Whatever your chosen beliefs you don't get to invent your own facts. Deal first with reality and then add your myths if you must. People who are too lazy to fully investigate the evidence think they are are being open-minded by asserting what we can't know for a certainty. They are making a virtue out of willful ignorance.

  Christian theism is fatally flawed both because it it is internally contradictory and because it conflicts with reality.
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  flamegrilled

  OK, the "I don't know" answer is really just a restatement that God knows more than we do. It is not really a direct answer to the question which would have to look something like "logically if I had access to the same information as the all loving omniscient God and if I was going to act in the long-term interests of all humanity then I would act the same way as he did". Therefore the answer is NO. But the answer would not be NO without that additional knowledge. The answer for me would be YES, but that would miss the point of the question which was framed "if you had the powers that God had".
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  THE GLADIATOR

  By jove, I think I’ve cracked the mystery as to why god is so unfathomable.

  God is a woman!
• 

  Simon

  It's simple. Cofty and I actually agree that this whole discussion hinges on probability and not certainty

  Again, the old stalwart of theist arguments - trying to make out that it's all unknown and so 50/50. It really goes back to a previous part of the discussion where technically, atheists should be agnostic because there is not 100% certainty (but heck, theists should be more agnostic if you want to use that argument!).

  As I pointed out though, it gives way more credibility to the theist belief than it deserves because the probabilities are not equal at all. There is zero evidence for the god yahweh, lots of evidence against (including the fact that we know how the yahweh stories and beliefs developed).

  We're talking about an infinitesimal small chance of the hebrew god being actually real as described in the bible*, such a low chance that it doesn't warrant really being given a measure so for all intents and purposes we say we're "certain" just as we do with so many other things in life - we're "certain" that the sun will come up tomorrow even though there is actually a chance that it won't - but the chance is so small we don't bother with it, we certainly don't base out lives on the fact.

  * and the killer is that if the god of the bible does exist as described then the description proves he's not loving.

  So either he doesn't exist (most likely by far) or if he does then he is a monster. Either way, I'm not bending my knee to some hitler type.