WATCHTOWER JAN 2025: WHY IS THE WATCHTOWER OBSESSED WITH THE RANSOM?

by raymond frantz 75 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  TonusOH

  I don't think we would be compelled to love if we could not sin. I think it would be very difficult to justify hate if we could not sin. Having fewer excuses to hate seems like another benefit.

  Christians also believe that we cannot avoid sinning. Doesn't that mean that we are programmed to do so? Given the choice of not being able to sin versus not being able to stop myself from sinning, I can't see a reason to want the latter. Especially when we consider the potential consequences. I can't see myself doing something like that to another person; it would seem manipulative and extremely cruel.
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  Sea Breeze

  I don't think we would be compelled to love if we could not sin.

  That's the point, love cannot be compelled, at all. Your arguement seems to be that if we were born without free will, you would be OK with that. That would certainly stop sin. Easy, peasy.
  
  But, my point is how can a person receive love from someone else without it being offered out of their own free-will? It would be meaningless, common, of no special value..... and received as such.
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  Touchofgrey

  Love should be based on trust and respect.

  The love that the god of the bible is offering has conditions.

  The tree in the garden of eden placed before Adam and eve, eat from it and die ,if you truly loved someone would you put a test before them .NO .

  Through out the bible god gives laws and conditions to his chosen nation often described as his wife about how they should conduct themselves and even how they should dress a certain way to identify as different from the nations around them as a condition of remaining his chosen people, he actually describes himself as a jealous god ,and gives them numerous rules to live by so they would not lose his love for them.

  In the jesus story he tells people that they should disown their parents brothers and sisters and even their children and follow him as a way to show that they love him. (Abusive and controlling people do that to people that they claim to love )

  So by jesus/god putting conditions that you have to be born again and love him in a certain way is not love based upon trust and respect but on conditions that you have to follow.

  It makes jesus/god a narcissist who demands that people love him or suffer the consequences, he uses physiological manipulation and coercive control over his victims and if you disagree or leave him you will suffer the consequences eg suffer in hell ,whatever that is.
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  KerryKing

  I did a little lazy research and it seems that the word sin as we know it has only been used for about a 1000 years, so what was it before that?

  Language evolves and meanings change, this simple fact is quite difficult to comprehend for someone who speaks only his mother tongue. But when people base religious doctrines, and thereby use it to control, enslave and punish others, on the understanding of a meaning of a word, it becomes very very important to learn about the origin of the words, original versus modern meanings, you have to go back to the root.

  And even then, by focusing on individual words, we lose sight of the big picture.

  The Nag Hammadi library is a great source for looking at everything in the Bible from a different but not contradictory angle. See things from a non Pauline perspective for a change.
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  Sea Breeze

  So by jesus/god putting conditions that you have to be born again and love him in a certain way is not love based upon trust and respect but on conditions that you have to follow.
  
  

  How about all those "narcissists" that won't agree to an open marriage? Are they demanding that their spouses love them in a certain way?

  if you disagree....you will suffer the consequences

  So what? Same with a marriage. That is why it is good to know the rules before you enter into the marriage contract.

  Since Calvary, it looks like God only has one rule that would separate us from him - believing God. Since he made everything, the consequences of not believing God is for him to reluctantly grant the wish to be free of him and everything he made.

  Since people will be concious forever somewhere, it seems like an really bad idea not to believe God and experience an eternity of conscoiusness in nothingness, alone, abandoned, with only yourself to accomany you.

  That seems pretty dumb.

  God has set the bar so low - belief; that it seems like he is basically saying you can enjoy all of him and his creation if you just don't call him a liar, tyrant, etc. In other words, just don't act like a jackass towards him and he'll take care of your future.I personally find that offer rather acceptable.
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  TonusOH

  Sea Breeze: But, my point is how can a person receive love from someone else without it being offered out of their own free-will? It would be meaningless, common, of no special value..... and received as such.

  You seem to be saying that the concept of free will is just a description of our ability to make any decision. Is that what free will is? If so, it opens up a whole different can of worms. For starters, how can we ever be free of sin if that is what free will is? And, now that I think of it, why compel us with a sinful nature if we are supposed to have free will? The concept gets more and more convoluted the deeper we dive into it.

  If free will only refers to being given the choice to freely accept or reject God, that would not affect my ability to offer love willingly to another person.

  But this just reinforces my point: if my only options are to have free will with all of its attendant consequences, or be an unwilling automaton in a universe where no one ever suffered, how is the former the better option? And how is an all-powerful and all-knowing being incapable of coming up with an option where everyone is free to make choices without the endless suffering that the Biblical god has visited on us?
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  Sea Breeze

  You seem to be saying that the concept of free will is just a description of our ability to make any decision.

  Since the Fall, I don't think we really have the extent of Free-Will God created man with.

  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. - Romans7:23

  In other words, a moral virus, separating us from God entered into the family of Adam and holds us captive.

  if my only options are to have free will with all of its attendant consequences, or be an unwilling automaton in a universe where no one ever suffered, how is the former the better option?

  Again, love is a potential artifact of Free-Will. Automotons cannot love since they lack agency, volition and free-will.
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  TonusOH

  That means that free will can be modified -to coin a term- to have a limited effect. In other words, I could have the freedom to love, to choose to follow/deny God, and so on, while still having full mastery over sin. This, I think, is the ideal. With one exception, I would be free to live and love without risking eternal damnation.

  It wouldn't be perfect, but it would almost be sensible enough for me to believe that it was the design of a god.
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  Duran

  Since the Fall, I don't think we really have the extent of Free-Will God created man with.

  God directly created Adam and Eve. They directly disobeyed him using their 'freewill' to do so.

  Before they disobeyed, they were said to be perfect without sin.

  If they disobeyed out of their freewill and that induced sin to be in them, so be it.

  I can accept that they started off with perfection and told keep choosing to listen to me and remain perfect/sin free (not dying/not suffering, etc) but when you choose to disobey me you will lose your perfection and become sinful (begin dying/suffering, etc).

  But here comes the ridiculous unfair part.

  It was decided (by God) that Adam and Eve's children and every person born thereafter would automatically be born sinful/not perfect subjected to suffering and death, while claiming that they still will have freewill.

  This means that every human other than Adam and Eve are subjected to the penalty that is giving to someone who willfully disobeys, they receive that penalty without ever doing themselves the very act of disobeying. They are born having that penalty before they ever have a chance out of their own freewill to obey or not.

  So now if one is so-called disobeying today and if one is so-called obeying, both are dying/suffering being born with sin at no fault, no choice, no doing of their own.

  The one so-called obeying can say to the one so-called disobeying; 'Hey you should obey' and the one so-called disobeying can say, 'Why, what is going to happen if I don't, am I going to receive the penalty of sin (suffering/death), the penalty I already received at no fault of my own when I was born.'

  ______________

  Here is a question for you SB, if the wage that sin pays is death and being that Lazarus died, was he perfect without sin when he was resurrected? Why did he die again?
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  Sea Breeze

  I could have the freedom to love, to choose to follow/deny God, and so on, while still having full mastery over sin. This, I think, is the ideal. With one exception, I would be free to live and love without risking eternal damnation.

  The problem with trying to find an adequet correlation, is the magnitude of God. Some people don't like the fact that he owns everything. And, I mean that in the highest possible meaning of the word "everything". So, when we choose to reject God, who is good... we are at the same time rejecting everything that is, good. There is no other relationship that can come anywhere near the correlation of this.

  Some people may feel that this gives God an unfair advantage in the relationship. So what? Are we supposed to ask God to be something other than what he is in order for us to feel better about ourselves? Then we would have the unfair advantage.
  
  God is not asking us to be something other than what we are. I didn't ask to have a sin nature. It has caused a lot of problems in my life. He took care of that problem on Calvary. And, as far as all the screw ups that I have been subjected to by others, and the ones I am guilty of myself, God makes this incredible promise:

  Romans 8: 28 - "we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. 29For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified".

  The bottom line is that a member of our own species, Jesus - God incarnate, willingly took it upon himself to broker a deal, as a Mediator, that is basically acceptable to both parties. God doesn't have to be something other than what he is, and we don't have to be something other than what we are.

  He asks us to believe him, trust him, and love him. I can't always obey God. But, I can always believe him. And, it is because the New Covenant is such a sweet deal to all parties involved that I can for the most part enjoy the work that someone else has done in the past at Calvary, and the work that is continuing through Sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit.

  God is changing me while at the same time working with my free-will because I gave him permission to do so. It is hardly noticible most of the time. I did the math 20 years ago and decided that trust in other people was a recipie for diaster. Trust in myself was only marginally better. So, he's sort of the last to try. After 20 years, I can report that the plan works. I was a 4th gen JW.

  I like the fact that we have gotten to know each other without the pressure of the punishment of sin hanging over me. I like the fact that God has worked with my intellect and desires to craft a redemption plan , just for me - so that I can prove to myself what is that "good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God". - Romans 8: 28

  I have found the Lord to be very accomodating, and only hash on extreme occasion. It is acceptable.

  Sorry to ramble on a bit.