Hello again,
This will be my first post with a specific topic. I posted here yesterday for the first time. I wanted to start by saying how nice it was to be so warmly welcomed by those of you that took a minute to say hi. I wanted to clarify something though. In my first post, I mentioned that I had lost someone close to me to suicide when they were df'd. It has been assumed and i am to blame for that that it was a friend of mine. The fact is that it was my brother. I am not sure why I did not say that right of the hop, i am guessing it was nerves, and not wanting to unload on my first go I guess. My apologies.
I was very heavily involved with the JW's while growing up. I was raised in the "truth" as the expression goes. My grandfather was one of the originals in my hometown. He basically ran the congregation before there even were elders. My father was made an elder when the elder arrangement was first brought in. I was destined for greatness. When I was in high school I even got the crap kicked out of me for being a witness. I was used as an example. The pressure after that moment was the reason I got baptized. I was pushed into it as an example to other youngsters. I remember all the people that I was not allowed to hang out with growing up as they were "bad". I gave talks at a young age, had all sorts of jobs in the hall, and was made a ministerial servant at 19.
Truth be told, there was alot they did not know about me. I had been having doubts since I was about 16. I had basically been leading one of those "double lives" I heard so much about growing up. If you can believe this, I would leave early for the meetings cause it was my job to open the hall, and i would be smoking on the way. I hid that for years, until, I got caught and was ratted out.
Anyway, the point of this post was to share my first feelings of doubt. I remember, shortly after being baptized, starting to really think about things and god and what it all meant. I could not seem to get my head around one thing. And that was why a loving god would allow the world to get so completley messed up. Even if he had some grand plan or vision, surely what was going on in the world at that stage had proved his point. Why would he allow so much in the way of pain and suffering if he really cared. And then a light went on and i started to really think about it.
First......to believe in god one must except a few things. He has no start or finish, he is all powerful and omnipotent. He sees the future, and knows exactly how it will all go down so to speak. This made me think. If that were true, then even before starting creation, before he made his first anything, he would have had to have known that Satan would rebel, and many would follow. He would have had to have known that Adam and Eve would mess up. If he is so all powerful, the end result of what he started should have been crystal clear to him (or her). My first question then was why go ahead with it. Why not, just not make Satan. Would that have not been easier. Look at all the horrible things that have happened in the world. Millions dead and tortured in wars. Disease, famine, and untold human suffering. For what. To prove some point about how man needs god.....how arrogant.
This lead me to believe that there are only two possibilities. If the above was the case, then a perfect god of unlimited love, created on purpose a system that was doomed to fail. He knew that it would fail and lead to all the horrors that our world knows. If you know something is going to happen and you do it anyway, that means you did it on purpose. So.....to sum up....
God either deliberatley went ahead and made what we live in on purpose, which is apparently impossible for him to do as nothing bad ever comes into his heart. Or he is falible after all......in that he created something that failed.
Just my thoughts....thats all
Feel free to lambast me if you all think it is needed