A few words about God.

by Etude 25 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Perry

  Nicolaou....I have the maximum freedom that will ever be attained in this universe. And yet, while there is tremendous freedom in Christ, I am paradoxically also a slave.

  But nontheless, I have been set free from sin, and it feels AWESOME!

  And yes, knowing is a sign of the new birth. If a person doesn't know they are saved, they probably aren't. The Holy Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

  I can tell you that this internal witness of the Spirit is profound. While God may at times speak a word or phrase into the spirit of a person directly, not all Christians have this experience. It has happened to me three times. In 60 years of ministry, my pastor stated that on only two occasions could he say God spoke to him.

  But, all Christians do have the internal witness of being part of God's family. This is not self delusion, it is tangible, measurable and memorable for the individual. I never had this confirmation as a Witness, even though as a witness I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit a time or two.

  Saved JW - Welcome!
• 

  Legacy

  Hi,

  Pretty heady stuff, but to me the idea of God/Jesus....get rid of all the big words & the psychology of it all...What the bible is simply saying is this...

  Drum roll please....BE GOOD & BE READY....Be Good covers it all, be good to one another....if God is to destroy & he will save some...BE READY...all the filling in the bible is just that...filling...Does it really matter that the Red Sea parted ? Does it really matter the if we know the ancestry of Jesus, if Mary was a virgin, if Joseph was Jesus's real father or step father...the names of all the prophets, if Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 or 603 BC...nope none of that matters, it's how we treat one another while we here & if we are going to be judged then get ready...

  Even if God does not exist, but his message of how to treat one another ain't such a bad message is it...we have all drifted far away from the message...

  Check this out...first God gave man 600 laws/commandments, then he broke it down to 10....now only two...now that's not such a bad deal, it's like you have a test & if you get 2 right, out of 600..or even 10...you get a hundred...his last two commandments: Love God & Love One another...that's all because we couldn't do 600, then we couldn't do 10, now God said, just nevermind, just do the 2 I told you. Don't blame God/Jesus for man's misinterpretation, because that is where the problem lies..us...when we admit that, then we can have a relationship with him. The OT are just consequences of what God warned folks he would do...how many times have your parents said, ok I'm telling you stop doing that...they remind us a million times, no they don't kill us. Think of it...the entire OT is about God asking the Jews to act right, turn back, etc...most of us have read the story...The Jews did to suit themselves...all God asked them to do was obey, they prayed to be released from Eygypt...so he released them...& we all know the story. They were a hot mess, but not to be so hard on the Jews, when they got scared they reverted back to the culture that they were familiar with while in Eygypt. It was a culture thing.

  So Don't be so hard on God, let's take a good look at ourselves....who hurts us..humans...

  Legacy
• 

  THE GLADIATOR

  Perry Nicolaou....I have the maximum freedom that will ever be attained in this universe. And yet, while there is tremendous freedom in Christ, I am paradoxically also a slave.

  Otherwise known as being a slave to self delusion.
• 

  Etude

  Perry:

  I’ve been very, very free since I stopped depending on something that will never provide answers. I looked deeply into holy books (not just the Bible) and pursued for decades what would reasonably explain the problems I see and would give me hope for a better future. While looking, I did it with deep conviction and trust. I was greatly deceived. I don’t place the entire blame on everyone else who influenced me. In the end, I have to bear the responsibility that I let someone or even myself convince me of things which were completely unsustainable.

  Oh, I felt certainty then. I was so damned sure about everything that I gave up my life to the WTBTS. The problem is there’s no logical or evidential way to demonstrate anything about God. If you really look throughout this site, you’ll find prolonged arguments that in the end leave you thinking that if you believe, it is because you want to believe and not because there’s any way outside of your own mind to confirm it. Remember one of the quotes above: “If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia”.

  Many people think that most of us who have abandoned belief in God did it over night; that we simply woke up one day and chose a different course. The fact is that most of us were dedicated believers. But after a time we started questioning the validity of our beliefs; not just in beliefs of practice but more deeply in the very source of the beliefs. I’m free to identify with anything I care to identify with. That doesn’t mean I’m doing the right thing or aligning myself with something real. There are too many examples of followers who drank the poisoned Kool-Ade or found a way to exit this world and go to the mother ship because of strong identification with the wrong thing. Credulous acceptance is not the road to freedom. It’s just another type of enslavement.
• 

  Etude

  Saved_JW:

  "If God was a real person, he certainly would have a credibility problem with me and I would be up in his face (while fearing he'd turn me into some sort of disgusting lower life form). I'd still do it. Goddammit, I want answers and he's been confusing the crap out of everyone for millennia." What is your position exactly?

  I was trying to be flippant. Obviously I failed to be humorous. If push comes to shove, I’ll take door No. 1. But really, an answer is weak and possibly meaningless unless there is a substantive reason or argument for it. My position is that – given all the problems with religious works (mainly the Bible, i.e. contradictions, omissions, morality, etc); with the manipulation of sincere individuals by religion in the name of God; with the glaring lack of evidence for even an inkling into a Supreme being…I could go on and on – it is impossible to prove or disprove the idea of the existence of God as a real entity. I think that it is not the burden of science to disprove that but the burden of believers to prove it. All Science can do is make no conclusion one way or another. But, since we can’t logically make a conclusion about God, it is perfectly logical to conclude we don’t know and it falls out of consideration. In reality, at least for me, it means there is nothing to know about God because what we can know is simply invented and has no basis in logic or reality. I hope that answers your question.
• 

  Etude

  Legacy:

  I’ve never heard it (the Bible or the message) condensed in such a way, but you’re absolutely right. All that excess fluff is really meaningless. What defenders of it will say, however, is that all the “fluff” acts as a foundation and adds “credentials” to the message; that it establishes provenance for the belief.

  However, it is that very “provenance” that falls apart on closer examination, to the point of making the message hollow and meaningless, especially in these times. It also gives the freedom to people to cherry pick and use whatever they want out of the message to do their own thing.

  We are humans; that is our nature. Why wouldn’t we invent something that gives us the credentials to be whatever we want to be? Well it seems to me that after several thousand years, we have. But that will never be the end of it. That’s how we hurt ourselves.
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  Jack C.

  Which god or God are you referring to? Your words about God are all true but I follow GOD the un-nameable source of ALL gods and Gods. Remember, Good cannot exist without evil just as up cannot exist without down or light without darkness. The trick is to keep them separated and pacified, a task that Lucifer failed in. Well, Lucifer tried to make it work but as of the end of the Picean age it's our turn. The Water-Bearer spoken of in the Gospels is in my Fathers house and pouring out his pitcher on the world as we speak...and the water is just fine.....
• 

  Etude

  Jack C.

  "Which god or God are you referring to?"

  Huh? Your comment is a bit cryptic to me. So, you follow GOD, the head of all gods and the head of God. Is that right? I don't know what that means. But in answer to your question, just take your pick. I use the world God as a proper nown for a (the) supreme being responsible for the universe. That is more or less the accepted definition of the western concept of God. So, if you follow whatever it is you follow, somewhere in your definition, I think I've got you covered. If you look at reality with an unbiased eye, you'll find that there is no "good" or "evil" or "light" or "dark"; and I mean that in a moral sense and not a physical sense. But even in a physical sense, those things are a matter of degree from the absense of one thing to a full compliment of it. Really, things simple "are". What we ascribe them to be depends on circumstances. For example: Killing is not bad. God (the one from the Bible) ordered his people to kill with extreme prejudice to rid the land of non-followers. Killing in war is acceptable. Then, at other times, killing is not. But even then, it depends on who's doing the killing. If it's a Jeehadist blowing up dozens of people, it's not just OK. It's holy! There are times when even the best of us has trouble figuring out what is right and wrong. This often arises during trials by our peers where someone has broken a law (with moral implications). I know you feel fine, good water falling on you about now. But around here, I'm feeling nice and comfortably dry.
• 

  Perry

  Oh, I felt certainty then. I was so damned sure about everything that I gave up my life to the WTBTS. The problem is there’s no logical or evidential way to demonstrate anything about God.... The fact is that most of us were dedicated believers.

  Oh I was a dedicated believer too... all the while rejecting Jesus as my personal savior. The bottom line is that we fell for the same scam that every other religious believer falls for, that we can DO something to improve our situation. God says you can't. This assaults our pride. One act of belief sold us into slavery to sin and death, one act of belief buys us out. But, that's tooooo simple for most.

  I did it and will tell everyone until I die how that utterly changed everything for me for the better.
• 

  punkofnice

  "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins

  ''God is a twat.'' - Punky