Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou 168 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Lee Marsh
    Lee Marsh

    Nicolaou I am Lady Lee. My story is here many many times over.

    Beaten almost daily, attempted and finally raped over 4 years, sodomized at least once if not more, as a child under the age of 12. Deserted by my mother who knew what he was doing and just left me to him.

    When I finally did go back to her I was dragged to JW meetings, beaten at home, and where my stepfather and 3 uncles took turns with me. My mother went to the elders and was told to send me away. She made private foster care arrangements and told them I was a sex maniac and watch me constantly with the woman's husband and any other man of boy. I was 13! So I lived under what amounted to house arrest for the next 3 years.

    At 16 I went back to my mother where I was beaten frequently. Within a year was baptized and another year she forced me to marry a man I didn't like and barely knew. Certainly, never went on a date with him until after our "engagement" (with chaperone). She was in a hurry. I wanted to wait a year. Time from the "engagement to wedding was 5 weeks.

    After 15 years of marriage to him I was suicidal from his constant emotional and spiritual abuse. But I didn't want to be dead and "arranged" the end of the marriage by getting disfellowshipped.

    Did I pray? All the time.

    Did it help? Not one bit.

    So constant abuse for 35 years. A lot of praying. All I felt was alone to deal with it all. Abandoned by family and a God who never heard my prayers. Those scriptures posted earlier had absolutely nothing to do with my life. They were nothing but a lie.

    I thought often about dying. From about the age of 8 to 35. I came very very close to actually trying. But I am still here. And no, I don't believe God, any god had anything to do with me still being here.

  • Lee Marsh
    Lee Marsh

    Iriddle80.

    I am glad you found some inner peace. I have traced the abuse in my family at least 4 generations. But it stopped with me. I wasn't perfect by any means. I had to learn from my parent' mistakes and do something different. But I often had no idea what "different' was. But my daughter has taken the next step and improved on what I did. Hopefully her daughter will do even better.

    Your sister was a child and some leniency is expected. BUT she is an adult now and like you, nee4ds to accept some responsibility for the pain she caused. But whether she ever does that or not, YOU get to move forward.

  • DATA-DOG
    DATA-DOG

    If God exists, allowing suffering doesn’t mean God is not acting. Perhaps it’s a mistake to assume God thinks like we do. The Child/Train/Bystander scenario makes sense to us as humans, but it may not mean anything at all to God.

    We can’t be sure that God hasn’t allowed our consciousness to exist in physical form and that whenever our physical form dies, however that happens, whenever it happens, that we suffer any real harm at all, especially in view of existing beyond time/space. We could be spiritual beings having a physical experience by choice.

    A child falls into the path of a train, a Submarine crew is crushed to death, a newborn baby dies, you die at 100, none of it matters. It’s a blip on the radar..

    DD

  • Beth Sarim
    Beth Sarim

    All we need now is a civil war. To hasten and add to JW craziness

    More whacky-ness to follow.

    Thats sure where things are going.

  • incognito2014
    incognito2014

    I am totally baffled by the excuses people make for God.

    His timescales make no sense whatsoever. His lack of action makes no sense, his blaming everyone else except himself makes no sense (he created everything there is no one else to blame)

    Saying that he is on a different moral plane to us, whatever that means, then he can’t hold us accountable for our actions.

    Saying he has a plan that we don’t know, then he should tell us that plan clearly not with some cryptic book that is open to interpretation and then remain totally silent for thousands of years.

    The original post said would you do anything if a child was about to fall on the track. Its much worse than that would you do something if the children you claim to be the father to, every single one of them was about to die. Would you keep promising them that you would let no harm come to them, that you loved them and you wanted everyone to be saved and then just sit there and do literally nothing.

    The actions need to match the words.

    I can only conclude one thing, he doesn't exist or he doesn't care.

  • Beth Sarim
    Beth Sarim

    Incognito,,,,its probably the former.

    Its the easiest explanation

  • stan livedeath
    stan livedeath

    Just think of god as a figment of the imagination..then it all makes perfect sense and you can get on with living the rest of life.

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat

    I see a few possible scenarios:

    1. God has a reason for letting bad things happen that I don’t understand. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason. There are many things I don’t understand, or can’t understand even.

    2. God let it happen because he doesn’t meet our measure of goodness.

    3. There is no God, so he didn’t let it happen, it just happened by itself.

    4. God will undo all suffering in the reconciliation.

    5. Or something else I haven’t thought of.

    Some Christians would argue that we know God is good on other grounds so that, even when we can’t explain how God could let a terrible thing happen, the other things that we know allow us to believe in God despite this serious challenge to that belief.

    A possible scenario of conversation with God I imagine might be:

    Person: why didn’t you save the child?

    God: it’s okay he will be resurrected and have a good life in eternity.

    Person: that’s not good enough, what about the suffering he had now, the life that he lost now, and people who mourned the loss of the child?

    God: that’s okay, the future life will be so good no one will even care to remember the suffering of the past.

    Person: that’s not good enough at all! No amount of forgetting can undo the terrible suffering here and now.

    God: okay listen up. If you really want to know then this is how it is. I won’t just provide a blissful future. And I won’t just make people forget the terrible suffering of the past. What I will do instead is I will go back in time and stop the child from being killed. Is that good enough?

    Person: I suppose, but why did you let it happen at all?

    God: if I go back and stop it from happening then it never did happen.

    Person: can you really do that? It doesn’t seem to make sense.

    God: I’m God, what do you think? It’s no more difficult for me to prevent an accident last Tuesday than it is to prevent an accident next Tuesday. I’m outside time. It’s all the same to me. If I go back and stop it, then it never happened. You won’t just “forget” it, it will ever have been.

    Person: then why do we live in a world full of suffering here and now?

    God: well the plan is to prevent all this from happening at the time of the final reconciliation of all creation.

    Person: I thought the final reconciliation was just a consolation for all the bad that has occurred.

    God: it’s more complicated than that. It’s not just a consolation, or rectification, it is a complete undoing of all the bad that has occurred present and past as well as future. Not just “forgetting” about it, but actually making sure it didn’t happen at all.

    Person: why didn’t you tell us this?

    God: I did kind of tell you, but it is not easy for you to understand.

    Person: I still don’t get it because the fact is we are suffering here and now.

    God: indeed, and it can’t make sense to you how completely I will change reality, past present, and future, for the better, until I show you.

    Person: I’m still skeptical how this makes sense.

    God: I know.

  • cofty
    cofty

    My issue is not just the evil that god allows but the evil that he commits.

    God annihilates thousands of innocent children regularly in natural disasters. No amount of SBFs sophistry can excuse that.

  • LoveUniHateExams
    LoveUniHateExams

    I wouldn't let an animal suffer never mind a person - but, like me, you do.

    Animals suffer all the time in their natural habitat.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hedZrvGUFlI

    ^^^ Awww, poor deer ...

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