GRACE
You won’t find any in the New World Translation!
No no no.
You only find “undeserved kindness.”
(Ask yourself why you don't DESERVE kindness.) ???
Isn’t kindness basic decency??
If you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses you have a reason.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are never on firm standing with their god.
The “gift” they offer to appease Jehovah is constant service, meeting attendance, counting the hours on a never-ending treadmill - because- He is a “what have you done for me lately?” kind of deity.
Contrarily, the “gift” Jehovah gives His Witnesses violates perfect standards.
(A closer look)
God has the highest standards of “quality control” and that standard is perfection.
For Jehovah’s Witnesses righteousness and salvation are a quality control problem.
You aren’t perfect so you don’t deserve to be shown kindness … especially from Jehovah.
How odd!
This is a Master and slave arrangement where pity tests high standards for justification as to why any kindness at all should be shown.
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(Practical vs Irrational)
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Many (if not most) people say they hate their job - but - they go and do it anyway.
Better than starving, right?
We do what we must do in exchange for what we can’t live without.
Call it a “hard bargain.” To do otherwise is impractical.
The Boss doesn’t have to like you either - but - he has to pay you.
If you don’t please the Boss - he can fire you.
You can sue for wages if he doesn’t pay - but - you can’t sue if he doesn’t like you.
That would be irrational.
For Jehovah’s Witnesses, God has the right to destroy us for our imperfection and He is determined to do so - unless - a hard bargain is struck.
Consequently, a JW is a slave under bondage.
The Slave master is Jehovah. The JW follows orders unquestioning and without independent thought.
“Yassuh Boss!”
To expect kindness from such an arrangement is out of the question!
But as “normal” as this might seem to a Witness - it is way out of step with mainstream Christianity.
Distinctions and differences abound between the Watchtower view of God’s loving kindness and the distortion of motives.
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JEHOVAH IS a SELF-CONFLICTED God
Monstrous parents would starve a special-needs child for not performing
to high standards. Allowances and consideration is basic decency.
Parental love is fundamental to fair treatment.
Unstable people in dysfunctional families are wildly inconsistent, however.
A child would soon learn fear and unpredictability because basic ‘cause and effect’ doesn’t follow reasonable expectations.
Jehovah’s Witnesses live in a dysfunctional family.
Rank and file members in local Kingdom Halls see themselves as special-needs miscreants undeserving and worthless.
Having “inherited” sin - only eternal servitude and unquestioning toil keeps them alive.
They speak of Jehovah as a God of love - but it is at odds with basic decency.
If Jehovah God says you don't DESERVE something and yet gives it to you anyway...who is conflicted here?? God is conflicted.
Who is breaking their own moral code? God.
Who is violating what justice is all about? God.
Why - because it is willy-nilly, ad hoc, arbitrary, capricious, and whimsical.
At least - the Watchtower version is all the above.
The Watchtower teaching of "undeserved kindness", emphasizes the "undeserved" concept of salvation. (Being saved from God’s anger and punishment.)
Jehovah - kindness is undeserved even though Witnesses struggle mightily to satisfy the long list of tasks, activities, service schedules the Watchtower lays on them.
Jehovah's Witnesses have to earn while they learn, go door to door, attend all meetings, read all the Society's publications and never doubt the Governing Body's teachings.
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So, WHY DO WATCHTOWER TEACHINGS differ from mainstream Christianity?
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For over 100 years, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been wildly erratic about what they teach and believe and the results of the chaotic confusion are like broken auto parts from a junk car the owner struggles to keep running.
What was “Truth” along the highway is just junk (Old Light) and spare parts.
This chaos and confusion begins with a distortion of Old Testament Judaism.
In Judaism; only the person you sin against can forgive you!
If you steal from Moshe; only Moshe (the injured party) can forgive you. Or,choose not.
You cannot cut Moshe out of the picture and go over his head, so to speak, and get your invisible buddy in the sky, God, to forgive ON BEHALF of Moshe.
No, according to Judaism, the wronged party holds the key to your forgiveness and your obligation is to him.
The law of the Talon was a law of Justice because of the balance between the injury and the restoring of the injured party to equity. Fairness was key.
There was a system of fines, service and payback that would compensate a victim fairly. JEWISH LAW was PRACTICAL. It was worked out by Moses by constantly having to deal with day-to-day conflicts, arguments, injustices (perceived or real) over and over again. These arbitrations had to be practical to maintain peace.
At the conclusion of the ‘Old Testament’ the world was dramatically changing because Alexander the Great had conquered the world and brought Greek philosophy, law, language, and administration to Jewish society.
New Testament (Judaism)
In Christianity where every denomination gets informed by Holy Spirit, grace is all over the place, but, suffice to say:
GRACE intrudes into Judaism and destroys the practicality of the Law.
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Jehovah’s Witnesses can’t deal with the supernatural identity of what the Watchtower terms (lower case) holy spirit.
Christianity terms (upper case) Holy Spirit.
Watchtower says “active force” and impersonal.
Christianity says “3rd person of the Trinity”.
(Discussion follows of Christian grace and how it operates)
You can steal, fornicate, lie, cheat and commit mayhem and then turn to God and be forgiven by displaying a penitent heart. Even so late as on your deathbed in many cases. Yet, the people who you took from, injured, belittled, wronged and destroyed have no say in this transaction! The victims suffer the wrongs and God makes it even-steven on the scale of justice!
(Sinning against an “active force” is problematic for J.W.’s)
But, by way of contrast: the unforgivable sin in Judaism makes perfect sense.
In Judaism murder is the unforgivable sin. Why? Because the injured party NO LONGER EXISTS in order to forgive you!
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ANALOGY
Go into your garage workshop and construct a chair, then, stand back and say "That is GOOD!”
Next, invite your son or daughter to try it out and the chair breaks-----whose fault was it?
If it is the chair's fault for breaking--should you punish / forgive the chair?
That would be preposterous and silly.
But in Israel, in the O.T. once a year the sins of the people were simply pronounced over a stupid goat and it was sent out into the wilderness.
Why?
The builder of the chair is at fault. But - are you going to blame GOD??
No - so a ritual is created to blame-shift to the goat.
In the Old Testament, YHWH’s forgiveness is a ritual reminder : we are in no position to BLAME GOD for our broken chair (even though He created the chair).
Jehovah saves face by granting forgiveness and accepting the stupid blame-shift and the goat as a sacrifice.
In the New Testament, you also find the notion that what men forgive is forgiven, and what they don't is not (e.g. John 20:23).
It is a compromise, of sorts. Don’t blame God for being a “special needs” human and he won’t blame you for being broken.
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Fast-Forward to Modern day JW’s
So, why is it JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES do not DESERVE (from God) KINDNESS?
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:
Jerusalem, near the Pool of Siloam:
John 9
Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind
1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him,
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
IMPORTANT:
The disciples ask this question because it reflected rabbinic theology.
The rabbis wrongly extrapolated the general principle that sickness is a result of human rebellion against God (the Fall) to a rigid **casuistic **system which attributed each and every sickness to specific sins. In congenital cases like this one, some rabbis argued that the cause was pre-natal sin by the fetus; others argued that the cause was the mother's sin while pregnant.
(** Casuistry is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. This method occurs in applied ethics and jurisprudence.)
Using a bewildering misunderstanding of Jewish Law, the Watchtower has concocted the following:
The only sin Jehovah can forgive is a sin AGAINST HIMself.
Adam sinned directly against GOD. By proxy Jesus could act the part (ritually) of dying FOR that sin of ADAM and Jehovah could prove he forgives all Adam’s offspring i.e. anointed) by demonstrably raising Jesus from the dead.
Non-anointed are saved - not by Jesus - but by association with the “anointed”, i.e. Governing Body of the Watchtower.
Let that sink in
NO “there” there
The sin Jehovah forgives with Jesus' death is the “broken chair” sin of ADAM and not every sin all humans throughout history have committed.
Most of THOSE sins were by humans against other humans.
The “broken chair” sin : man refuses to accuse God for being broken
And God, in turn, overlooks their brokenness.
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WTF???
“Forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.”
Superstitious humanity was under the false impression that all their misery was passed down generation by generation inescapably.
A man blind by birth was thought to be punished for the sins of his mother and father.
The concept of how traits were inherited was a conglomeration of bad guesses and wrong ideas.
What a pregnant woman (or animal) SAW could actually MARK that baby and change their appearance or condition according to these superstitious people.
Jesus' prayer reflects these ideas. “Forgive us as we forgive.”
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Jews had their notions of forgiveness and YHWH’s love.
Catholic Christians had their notions.
Martin Luther had “grace” notions.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have their teachings.
AS AN EX-JW - I have come to terms with superstitions and the whole idea
There is any “TRUTH” as a teaching in the Bible.
Your mileage, of course, may vary.