Why isn't Jeehoober more like Jesus???

by DATA-DOG 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Island Man

  I think christianity is to some extent an attempt at reforming Judaism. Christianity is actually a synchretic religion fusing Judaism with popular pagan religious memes.(virgin birth, dying and rising savior, personal savior, etc) The originators of christianity had a lot of Greco Roman influence and so subtly fused certain Greco Roman ethics, philosophies and mythologies into the religion.

  By the first century, people who religiously subscribed to the Hebrew scriptures were growing in moral enlightenment due to the passage of time and exposure to other cultures, to the point that they came to see the God of the OT as being somewhat harsh even while being unwilling to drop him altogether. Christianity was created or shaped by that kind of environment. The kind, rule-bending, forgiving Jesus figure is an apologetics attempt at making over the image of the OT God; an attempt at saying in effect: 'We know these OT texts make God look really bad but he isn't really as bad as he seems because look how kind his son is. Look at his son. His son reveals his true nature so please don't get the wrong impression from OT texts that seem to suggest that he is harsh'
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  CalebInFloroda

  That would make sense, Island Man, except it is the Gentile Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures that makes G-d look bad. We Jews know that a lot of what is written and ascribed to G-d was really our own doing. If we saw a need to reinvent G-d we could have done so in the Talmud or Mishnah.

  Also it was the Jesus followers who did what you are saying, not the Jews in general. I for one don't see how the Jesus Story is more enlightened. A Messiah who is born of a virgin and get identified as the world's savior by heathen Magi astrologers? A Messiah who tells people to keep his identity secret, who encourages Jewish people to stop eating kosher? A Messiah who claims all Jewish expectations about the Messiah are wrong, that G-d didn't teach his people what to expect in the correct way, and that the promised Messianic age he was supposed to bring is merely symbolic of life in Heaven? A Messiah that dies and resurrects from the dead but appears only to a select few? Why not appear to the whole Jewish nation that was promised the Messiah by G-d in the first place? A Messiah that would eventually lead his followers to persecute the Jews with pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi Holocaust? That's a weird enlightenment and odd God of Love, if you ask me.

  Now back to this Watchtower illustration of Jesus coming down from heaven on a horse. He's wearing all white, so I suppose Armageddon occurs prior to Labor Day? If he wore such garb after that date it would be a fashion faux pas, and that can't be since Jesus is perfect, right? So the End of the World occurs before Labor Day, that's what I get that the JWs are trying to tell us from this picture.
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  LoveUniHateExams

  Wouldn't it make more sense for the Messiah to ride in comfort in a new car? - maybe.

  Although I think Jesus was tight-lipped about it:

  
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  DATA-DOG

  Good comments!

  Its all so watchtarded. For the sake of argument, let's say God is real and he/she/they created humans. Then humans rebelled and had to die. Let's say that there is some law that even God can't break. You sin, you die, God can't change that or the Universe implodes, fine..

  Why, for the love of God do WE have to suffer?? What did WE do? We were born, but we didn't rebel in Eden. We have been sentenced to death. That's fine if there is a law that God can't break, but he could sure as shit do something to help us out during this phase of our existence, right??

  Why make us get old and look and feel like shit? Why let kids starve and get molested? Do you follow what I'm saying? Can't we have plenty of food, good health, and lots of fun? Can't we have that NOW?

  Why couldn't we be made as happy as possible, then blink from existence, then be brought back? I'm no "God" but problem solved, universal law satisfied! God doesn't have to break his own law!

  You "sin", you "die", you are brought back! In the meantime, nobody has to starve, get raped, get brain eating creepy crawlies, get killed by animals, get killed by disasters, or become an old pants pooper.

  Am I to believe that God can't come up with a better solution? It's bad enough that he could not forsee "Satan's" rebellion, but then to allow untold suffering just to fix it later..??? Come on! Seriously?!?!?

  Jesus proved that God had the power to heal, and feed the poor and downtrodden, right?? So why can't he do it NOW? We are walking the green mile and getting shit on. Some plan...

  DD
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  CalebInFloroda

  Yep, Data-Dog, the marvelous invention of "Original Sin" by Christians would make any deity look like a failure.

  Why would a Messiah perform miracles of healing for a few people, then swear them to secrecy but expect everyone to believe in him? Why not tell or heal everybody? If you are really of G-d then surely you know of our need for proof! If you want to save the world, why not show the world?

  When YHWH appeared to Moses, YHWH gave Moses signs to show everybody. Then Adonai told Moses that what he experienced on a small scale with the burning bush, the entire nation of Israel would experience on a large scale when G-d would bring them back to the same mountain and appear in a similar fashion for all to see as proof that it was YHWH who appeared to Moses. Miracles were not hidden. The nation as a whole was offered oracles and miracles publicly.

  But the Jesus Story is all about something that happens on the outskirts of Jewish society, of miracles and transfigurations only a few see, of a raising from the dead and ascension to Heaven that the Jewish public never witnesses. How is this the Prophet like Moses? Secret visions and non-public resurrections of Jesus in the New Testament sounds like Mormonism and the many cults where each and every preacher claims G-d spoke to them and no other, like the men who claimed they saw the gold plates of the Book of Mormon while no one else did. This is not enlightenment or a more loving deity than One who Proves Himself publicly.

  Even if you believe that the G-d of the Hebrew Bible is a myth, surely you can see that a G-d who gives everyone the opportunity to believe is far different from a secret club when you have to believe things that only a few select witnesses claim happened and then follow their direction or be condemned to hell because you want to use your mind and logic and prefer letting evidence speak for itself.

  It's like someone is trying to pass off the New Testament as a badly produced sequel to the Jewish Scriptures, where the promised protagonist never matches what is expected in the first volume and there is no real continuity between the two.