Would you sacrifice yourself?

by Half banana 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Xanthippe

  Christianity was all about Jesus dying painfully and the religion promoted the notion that followers would do well to imitate him literally.

  Yes Christianity is a religion that promotes martyrdom and self-sacrifice. We had this a lot in the memorial talk. If Jesus had those six-inch nails hammered into his hands and died an agonising death for you, the least you can do is pioneer, go to bethel, sell your house for the kingdom and so on.

  The way I feel now is, self-sacrifice is all very well but what's in it for me?
  
  
• 

  Half banana

  Yes Xanthippe, we humans do things because we see some benefit in doing them. We might help a friend or family members but what's the point of literally sacrificing yourself? I have been asking myself what is the motivation for martyrdom? Why did they go so willingly to their deaths?

  In the first place they were convinced by a story and saw others happily living by the hope it generated.

  But is there some perverse node in our psyche or even in the cerebrum which gets turned on by certain types of religious thinking? I reason that the idea of belief in a certainty of religious hope is made 'real' to believers by others demonstrating it by laying their down lives --and taking pleasure in doing so.

  Marcus Aurelius saw those happy delusional faces willingly go to their deaths and called them exhibitionists, and perhaps that is closer to the fact of the matter?
• 

  Xanthippe

  But is there some perverse node in our psyche or even in the cerebrum which gets turned on by certain types of religious thinking? I reason that the idea of belief in a certainty of religious hope is made 'real' to believers by others demonstrating it by laying their down lives --and taking pleasure in doing so.

  Yes I think it's all about the belief in life after death and as you say it's made real to believers by watching others gladly lay down their lives.

  It has always been believed that life after death is a reward a person has to strive for either in a life of self-sacrifice, adherence to religious rules or through a martyrs death.

  
  
• 

  cha ching

  I am with you Xanthippe/ Pale Emperor, lie to the beasts and survive!