by Bolthof 15 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Hi.
I meet up with a couple of jw once a week and it seems to me that every time I show them a verse that says something that contradicts their doctrine they say that it is a parable, a vision.. or a poem of some sort. What are your toughts about this ?
Hi Bolthof welcome.
Do you have an example of what you mean?
Difficult to tie them down on those texts to be honest.
Ecclesiastes does say that but then it also denies the resurrection. Revelation is a vision and the transfiguration is odd.
If you want to confuse them about life after death try Paul's letter to the Philippians. Paul is in chains awaiting trial and he writes about what may happen to him and what he hopes for...
"I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body" - Phil.1
It is almost impossible for them to explain why Paul wanted to die and go to be with Jesus.
Cofty - I love that point re Paul's desire to be with Christ....it reads like he felt "Christ" was the entry through some porthole to a glorified state, whether alive on this earth, but for him, preferably alive in another dimension. So he expected to join "Christ" in the "other" dimension with no down time after his passing from this earth.
I know you think it's all hogwash! - no argument - just interesting when we kind of try to make sense of scripture versus JW thinking.
At then end of the day we were all taught to rebuff difficult texts with a "this is what was really meant" argument. Sometimes the context and original language allows for more subtle or alternative interpretations but I long since gave up trying to twist others up in knots over texts from a book that is essentially a bunch of folklore.
Trying to convince a JW they are wrong based on texts like Phil 1 is an exercise in futility. The only time a JW starts to examine these details critically is when they are already receptive to re-examining far more fundamental teachings.
@Cofty (btw how do you quote someone in this forum?)
Sorry for the delay I am in the UK
Highlight the bit of text you want to quote and then press the button 3 from the left ""
Debating a Jw is very frustrating. Don't underestimate the possibility that they might go away with nagging doubts that will haunt them later.
Just as Patriotism is the last refuge of the Scoundrel, Metaphor is the last refuge of the Bible Literalist.
JW's start from the position that nearly everything in the Bible is meant literally, and that it is all true.
The more you show them that this cannot be so, the more they fall back on the excuse that it is Metaphor or Poetic or whatever.
They are Creationists, but point out the downright silliness of believing the Genesis accounts and they begrudgingly go a little way down the road of seeing them as mere stories, but not far down that road.
I have long wanted to ask them how they can be sure which bits of the Bible are literal and which not.
