by liam 129 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I am talking about what god's actions --as depicted in his holy book-- say about him, and am willing to use both god's and man's definitions as a basis of comparison.
It would help if you stuck to God's self definition. All confusion would disappear.
Halcon wrote:
It would help if you stuck to God's self definition.
Exodus 34 is the narrative of Moses re-composing the Ten Words or "Ten Commandments" on the tablets of stone due to the fact that he shattered the first. While I am not stating that I do not believe in other persons and their right to believe what they wish (nor do I know how any of you will come to your conclusions here), it should be noted that scholars and religious teachers do not teach that the words in Exodus chapter 34 are necessarily "God's self-definition" in the same sense as we were once taught by the Watchtower--in other words a literal self-definition of God, from God.
Watchtower, if we recall, is a literalist religion that ignores both genre and theology when reading Scripture, inventing ideas in an ad-hoc or as-necessary manner in order to promote a whatever-argument-seems-relevant-at-the-moment at the cost of both critical theory and wisdom.
Both Judaism and Christianity recognize that in the book of Exodus there is a symbolic meaning behind the shattering of the original Ten Words written "by God" and the eventual Ten Commandments that get placed into the Ark that are written on stone tablets by the hand of Moses. It is upon the tablets created and written by a human, a man, Moses, that Israel is placed into a covenant instead of the original set of tablets fashioned by God alone. This is not an accident in the narrative.
The storyline is not following a historic retelling at this point but a metaphorical one since it is describing a covenant between the Divine and humanity. The Law Covenant is between God and Man, and thus the second set of tablets is described as being written not by the "finger" of YHWH alone but via the cooperation of Moses.--Compare Exodus 31:18 with Exodus 34:1, 4.
The description of God at Exodus 34:5-7 describes attributes we commonly associate with God. But the truth is that God does not have "attributes." Attributes have to come from somewhere. We, as children, get our attributes from our parents.
The qualities described about God in Exodus chapter 34 are part of the complete narrative in which we read that God "came down in a cloud" and "stood with" Moses and "passed before him and proclaimed" these words. (Vss 5-6) God doesn't travel by cloud nor does God literally stand on planets. And if he literally spoke aloud, the Israelite people down below would have heard God* and had no need for Moses in the first place.
It's like the book of Revelation and the Watchtower religion: either the whole book is in signs, including the 144,000 who are up in heaven or the 144,000 are literal as well as all the other kooky weird things being described too, like the drunken whore of Babylon riding the beast--pick how you are going to read your book, either literally or as a metaphor.
It is the same here in Exodus. Either God has a literal finger and uses it to literally write with it on stone and His voice is so soft that it cannot carry when God talks on Mt. Sinai, but He can stand on the mountain and travel by cloud (kinda like Glinda the Good does by bubble in Wicked & The Wizard of Oz), or we are talking metaphor here.
Likely we are, since the offering of the Ten Words and the reissuing of the Covenant begins with describing God in human-like terms--in other words, understanding the people He is making a pact with are fallible, capable of sin (like the one they were just recently involved with at the Golden Calf), and thus the story here is telling the Hebrews of the need for a law covenant that can bend. This is why the Law gets "re-written," so to speak up to this day. It is a demonstration of what is known as responsa, or the need to add things as times change. Thus even the Torah is open to such things.
It is saying that human hands, not just divine ones, shape the Law that is given to the Jews, that it did not "fall from heaven" the way we now have it. These words are not meant to be confused with saying that God has qualities like human beings (it is the other way around, so to speak--even though, in reality God is Ineffable or cannot be truly understood).
In other words, the meaning of the narrative is not "this is God's self definition," as we were once taught by Watchtower, but that what it means to be divine is often found in what it means to be human.#
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*--This would be very true the first time Moses received the Ten Commandments, and thus the people down below would have never sinned or created the Golden Calf since they would have heard God's talking to Moses over the course of the 40 days of his departure. But apparently God's voice is much too soft to be heard or something, if it was meant to be understood as literal.
#--The Talmud tells us that fragments of the first set of tablets that Moses smashed were collected and originally carried in the Ark along with the new set (BT Ber. 8b). The teaching is that that which is holy retains its holiness even when it is broken. So too those of us who are elderly, infirm, disabled--we are not to be set aside for any reason, even if we too are "broken." What is divine is always found in what is human, no matter who or what we are.
Kaleb-In other words, the meaning of the narrative is not "this is God's self definition," as we were once taught by Watchtower, but that what it means to be divine is often found in what it means to be human.
On the contrary, it could be well argued that the Watchtower is just as responsible for the confusion someone like Tonus experiences regarding who God truly is for believers.
People like Tonus cannot fathom that God is both capable of giving punishment and giving reward. People like this perhaps once thought that God was a big teddy bear, yet that is not how the scriptures have ever defined him. If not the scriptures, then it falls on man for having caused this confusion.
One resurrection performed by Christ would suffice for believers. 100 resurrections wouldn't be enough for non-believers.
Well put.
If not the scriptures, then it falls on man for having caused this confusion.
That is also the point.
If the Scriptures are penned by men, just as in the Exodus narrative Moses takes part in the creation of the tablets that make up the Pact in the Ark, then the confusion is also not from heaven.
We are talking about a cult, the Watchtower, no less a cult than Heaven's Gate, with absurdity no less absurd than the most secret secrets of Scientology. The problem is not in the mythology they teach from, which they did not pen, but that people wish to be angry with myths.
It is not up to me to judge those who wish to pick fights with Bigfoot, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, or whatever else you wish to spend your time arguing with.
Kaleb doesn't exist either. He's just a name randomly picked out from a box mixed with AI responses cut and pasted at will.
Books and mythical figures in them aren't real either.
Halcon: People like Tonus cannot fathom that God is both capable of giving punishment and giving reward.
No, no. I understand that just fine. The point that I am (continually) making is that we should judge god by his actions. By his attitude. By his words and his approach. By all of them.
I have no issue with recognizing the nature of a being of near-limitless power and strength who chooses to impose his rules on the universe and the people he created. But we have to also recognize what this says about him, and not only try to define him by what we want him to be. For example, trying to lay responsibility for outcomes at the feet of his creation-- an attitude that does not make sense in any context, but moreso in this one.
We can go with god's self-descriptions, which seems to me to be the best approach. Who is this god? He is jealous. He is vengeful. He is given to anger, and that anger leads to precipitate action. Indeed, the god that most Christians worship today is shaped by the descriptions given by others in the New Testament. And these do not align with a being who uses his power in the manner Yahweh does in the Old Testament.
We have to take all of it into account, and not try to dismiss the stuff that doesn't fit. Either it fits --and god is very different from what we desire for him to be-- or it doesn't --and this god cannot be real.
The point that I am (continually) making is that we should judge god by his actions.
@TonusOH - And, it is the premise behind this proposition that seems so puzzling to others. You rightly use the little "g" when describing the god you imagine. That is a different God than the one you argue about with others. It is your delusional premise that you refuse to let go of that drives your arguments. Like the Watchtower, you use a definition other than the one commonly accepted in a dictionary when it suits you. Are you trying to improve the overall moral character of your rebellion against God?
Anyway, when we are all using the same definition, your argument immediately falls apart. William Lane Craig explains:
Given the dizzying complexity of life, we are simply in no position at all to judge that God has no good reason for permitting some instance of suffering to afflict our lives. Every event that occurs sends a ripple effect through history, such that God’s reason for permitting it might not emerge until centuries later and perhaps in another country. Only an all-knowing God could grasp the complexities of directing a world of free people toward his envisioned goals.
Just think of the innumerable, incalculable events involved in arriving at a single historical event, say, the Allied victory at D-day! We have no idea of what suffering might be involved in order for God to achieve some intended purpose through the freely chosen actions of human persons. Nor should we expect to discern God’s reasons for permitting suffering. It’s hardly surprising that much suffering seems pointless and unnecessary to us, for we are overwhelmed by such complexity.
This is not to appeal to mystery but rather to point to our inherent limitations, which make it impossible for us to say, when confronted with some example of suffering, that God probably has no good reason for permitting it to occur. Unbelievers themselves recognize these limitations in other contexts…Some short-term good might actually lead to untold misery, while some action that looks disastrous in the short term may bring about the greatest good. We don’t have a clue.
- William Lane Craig
KalebOutWest
The problem is not in the mythology they teach from, which they did not pen,
but that people wish to be angry with myths.
It is not up to me to judge those who wish to pick fights with Bigfoot, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, or whatever else you wish to spend your time arguing with.
Yep, words of wisdom KalebOutWest.
What's scary is people rest all their hopes, their lives, their family, on Characters created thousands of years ago by men who didn't even know that it's the earth that rotates around the sun, not the other way around. And now we are listening to those people as they describe to us what kind of Being the Almighty, the Omniscient, the Creator of Everything is like
If some random person that I never met is telling me the Sun Rotates around the earth, How in the world is he going to be able to teach me What God is like and what he requires of us.
I'll stick to Santa Claus. At least I know that if I'm not naughty but nice.......I'll get a cookie for Christmas
Tonus -We can go with god's self-descriptions, which seems to me to be the best approach. Who is this god? He is jealous. He is vengeful. He is given to anger, and that anger leads to precipitate action.
Once again you didn't finish the list. He is also loving, patient, peaceful, considerate, even compassionate according to Christ.
If some random person that I never met is telling me the Sun Rotates around the earth, How in the world is he going to be able to teach me What God is like and what he requires of us.
See, you did imply Jesus was lying hehe.
But what you stated above is due to the same common mistake we've been discussing. You equated God with limited man. You know man, based on your own comment above, is usually wrong about things and can't be trusted.
