by jgnat 153 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
When I speak of breathing, I am referring to punctuation. There aren't enough commas or periods in your sentences. Which means the thoughts run together like mud.
So I thought I'd addressed your comment? People do awful things under all sorts of banners. It would be going on with or without Jesus.
So jesus teachings are harmful to you then kate - just so you know.
@ Tec, I've blasphemed against the holy spirit more times than I can remember, should I take what jesus said above at face value, or did he tell you something different off the record?
If you think that what Kate is doing is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit... then I'm gonna take a guess that you have not blasphemed against the Holy Spirit.
Kate is questioning, arguing, "expressing her thoughts" as she said... but that does not mean blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Nor does it seem to me that she is lying to the Holy Spirit (see Ananias and Saphira). I think one might have to know the Holy Spirit, to at least profess union with Him, in order to blaspheme Him.
Sinning against the spirit... as Humbled said... includes lying to the Spirit. Lying to yourself can lead you to commit a sin of the spirit.... because now you have convinced yourself that something wrong is good, or you have justified your wrong actions by convincing yourself that a lie is the truth. But that is not the same as blaspheming the Holy Spirit, either.
I prayed for many years and could have gone to the police but listened to elders instead of the spirit inside me, my gut feeling. This was telling me to go to the police. So waiting on God to show me the way was harmful. Then answers weren't clear, but at the time abiguous and confusing.
Okay, re-read what you wrote here. You listened to the elders instead of to the spirit inside you.
The spirit inside you told you to go to the police. The spirit inside you told you what to do. (You attribute that to 'gut feeling' as people sometimes do when the Spirit is speaking to them in the only way that they are willing to accept or that they can bear. If you can bear more, you can hear more, and you can come to hear more clearly as you can bear.)
Instead you listened to the elders. They told you to wait on God. While the Spirit (Christ) was telling you to go to the police. The elders were telling you to do something that was against what the Spirit was telling you to do. You listened to them, as many people DO, because they taught you not to trust the 'spirit within you'. They, and the world, teach that the Spirit does not speak and certainly He would not speak to YOU, little nothing that you are. (I am not saying that... but THEY say that) They also say, you have to be 'special' for the Spirit to speak to you. You have to be 'good' for the Spirit to speak to you. So that when you share something he has told you, they can accuse you of thinking yourself 'so special' and 'so good'. But then from the other side of their mouths, they also say that the spirit does not speak, that is crazy; anyone who says otherwise is mentally ill or a liar.
None of this is what God teaches; and none of this is what Christ teaches.
I hope you do not take offense at what i have said above. I am in no way judging you.
Because I have done the very same thing, and under less harsh circumstances than what you had. I know exactly what you mean when you say that everything was unclear and confusing. I too listened to others, over what the Spirit within me was telling me. So that my son suffered longer than he would have suffered had I listened to the Spirit instead of listening to what others told me. But I cannot blame God, and I cannot blame my Lord. Because my Lord told me what to do. I even followed his direction at one point. I removed my son from the situation and the people hurting him. But then I began to doubt what my Lord had told me, and I instead started listening to the scholars, the experts, the principals, the teachers, the counsellors... believing them over my Lord... and I followed THEIR direction. To the further suffering of my son. So I again did what my Lord had told me at first... but the harm had been done. When I saw how much pain that my decision to listen to others had caused him... well, I expect that you know the feeling, Kate. I sat on the steps and cried and cried, and I asked my Lord, "What do I do NOW?"
He said to me,
"Love him."
Nothing more I can do than that. He will do the rest.
Now, again, I am not judging you in the least bit. I know that you were abused also. I know that you were beaten down. So does my Lord know these things, and one day so will your son if he does not already know this. I know that you listened to those you thought told you the truth about God; when for me I knew that my Lord spoke... but then I listened to others who stated something opposite to him... and I then began to doubt that he HAD spoken to me to begin with. As I have said on many occassions... it is when I do NOT listen to Him and His direction, that i am led into trouble and hardship. Since my children are under me... this means that I may also lead them into trouble or hardship.
But we cannot change the mistakes that we made, regardless of the reason we made them. We can only move forward and do what needs to be done NOW. Your son knows that you are fighting for him, and that you love him. That is all you can do NOW. So keep doing it. You have no idea how much your love and your fight for him will mean to him and help him when he is free of his other parent, the one who is also not listening, but is abusing him.
There is something else that I will share with you as pertains to me also...
My Lord told me shortly after my son was born that these things would happen; that in 'forgetting' about him, I would allow him to be harmed. So I should have been prepared at the very least. But at the time I just thought they were nightmares (though I heard otherwise, but did not know that was anything than my own voice). Because I believed the same as most of the world. God does not speak. Christ does not speak. Dreams are only ever just dreams. (never mind the verse that says God speaks to men in their dreams, even reproving them in their dreams when they do not listen to him at any other time)
To think that God or Christ speaks is just crazy and stupid, right? Maybe that happened in the past, but it doesn't happen now, right?
Well, I was wrong. So is the world that thinks and teaches these things.
Had I know that He speaks... as I saidm perhaps I could have heeded the warnings sent to me. Or perhaps I could have handled things better when I saw them happening... because I had prepared myself and perhaps also my son FOR them. Regardless, not knowing/believing that Christ speaks caused me to ignore what may well have helped.
Same as how the false teachings that that the false teachers/prophets of wts taught you... impeded you from heeding the Spirit when He told you what you should do.
But your son will be coming to you soon right? As he is soon at the age where he gets to decide... even if your lawyers do not manage to remove him from his father's house first?
Keep fighting for him Sam, so that he knows he has your love.
Peace and love and strength to you and to your son,
tammy
jgnat glad you have relaxed a little, i now know you get my point.Anyway breathing to me means breathing, why pick me up on punctuation when you substituted another word for it? i am not a mind reader oops !! thats another thread or maybe not didn't jesus read minds?LOL .HEY why not try reading a little slower cooool man.
Jesus did not found Christianity. Paul found the Christianity that is dominant in the West. The Church Fathers fleshed out Christianity in their great councils under the nose of Constantine and other politcal leaders. Christianity was the state religion of Europe.
Elaine Pagels introduced me to the study of Gnostic literature. Her main selling point at a woman's college was that women were not discriminated against in Gnosticism. It grabbed my attention immediately. She pointed out how its teachings were not practical to be past down generations. It was in the late 1960s so a Christian protest movement was received enthusiastically. Thousands of years before we protested, communities of Christian met and protested. They were hunted down. I could read Jesus' sayings and the main elements of the canonical gospels in the Gnostic gospels. It was warm and familiar yet a very different message.
We also had to read The Last Temptation of Christ and Wisdom of the Desert, a collection of sayings by the early Egyptian monks compiled by Thomas Merton, who probably dated earlier students at the college. He lived across the street as an undergrad and was a prominent part of the university committee. I saw how related the generations were and how so much important religous stuff happened in my neighborhood. Elaine always brought up the subject of women or challenging of authority. We were challenging the federal and state authorities.
I saw nuances in the Bible and Jesus. As I said before, living with tension rather than the nonsenical certainty of the WTBTS. Perhaps it was my age and my major, Political Science, but I felt free. I never knew you could have a brain and believe in God. One could have open doubts about God and still believe in God. All my profs were even more radical than we were. I was not dealing with corporate lawyers but university profs. They accepted a cut in salary to question in their fields. My first church experience was scary. I used to wait until the clergy left to exit. Soon I was part of the community.
Dan Berrigan was part of the community. UN officials were part of the community. The arts, esp. protest arts, were stressed. I would just sit in isolated chapels that were secure. The KH appearance never brought me to tears. I would look at the stained glass windows.
My home city was a magnet for the Southern black church and civil rights leaders. No one thought you were apostate if you attended another church to hear Dr. King. All this richness was under my nose during my KH years. There were countless books and opinions to read. The Christian sermon givers exposed me to Shintoism and Buddhism. To this day, I cannot get over the broad tapestry of belief and faith. If I never braved the NT course, I wouldl not know any of this richness existed. I might be Sister So and So. Entire protest movements may have escaped me.
I had an upseting incident this past year and ended up knocking on the bishop's door to tell him what I thought about the incident. The bishop was away from his office so I spoke with his top aide. It was important that he know my perspective. I mentioned did he appreciate how confusing and intoxicating coming upon the church was for me when I was a college student. Did he have any idea what Jehovah's Witnesses teach about men like him? Does he think Anglicanism is easy to learn with its old medieval English namesf or everything rather than a modern description? A door is never a door. Hallways aren't hallways. One needs a monastic dictionary.
He knew and said it was a miracle I was there.
