by little witch 30 Replies latest jw friends
Aside from the "Anointed" ( you might call them Christians), JWs reject the body offered by christ and so are not his adopted brothers. they do not live under the new testaments heavenly hope. The "earthly paradise" substituted by the WT is just what you think it is, a carrot, the materialistic mans paradise.
To live forever as Sisyphus does not appeal to me.
Will
I guess there is no real happiness now? If you wait your whole life for something better to come along, you'll never enjoy what you have now. So many people make themselves miserable doing that, and the whole "paradise earth" thing takes it to another level.
paradise sounds boring anyway... whatever will we rebel against?
I made a pinata
Pinatas are used in birthdays and are therefore pagan. Jehovah hates pinatas and hates those who use them. He will rid the world of pinata owning evildoers on the great day of his wrath.
Paradise seems to be the carrot on a stick for witnesses, but little information seems to be offered.
All they can go off of in their description of paradise, is the three scriptures they bend to fit their own doctrine on this........Psalms, Isaiah, and Revalation.
One says they will build houses, eat from their own vine, no strangers will bug ya, wolves will love sheep, kids will play with snakes, nobody will be hungry or sick. That's why you will always see pictures with all these things, jam-packed into one picture. White and Black women walking through a field of daisies with a basket full of vegetables and bread for there hard-ass working men who are high on a ladder, swinging their hammers, smiling away on a house just being framed for their neighbor who's playing with snakes with the other kids. The sheep and wolves are ALWAYS sleeping under a tree too.
I still say the GB smoked opium before they prayed and made decisions to write fantasies like this.
Gumby
Wow I am shocked. Well good. I hope millions of witnesses enjoy their new found freedom and beat the crap out of 5 million pinatas :).
I always thought it strange that men who hoped to live forever in heaven tried to describe a paradise earth. That would be like a good nun or a good monk trying to describe what sex was.
Blondie
Paradise earth would become boring, wouldn't it?
Air travel has only been around only 100 years, and we're already bored with it, complaining about the coffee on the flight or try to nap. We travel the whole world, and eventually get bored. Movies, VCRs, DVDs, computers, gameboys, x-boxes, palm pilots... they all lose their luster. The limits of earth would stifle eventually stifle joy--and this gives lie to the claim that paradise earth would be sufficient for our happiness. IMO.
When I was first shown paradise pictures (Paradise Book) I felt they seemed so.... unnatural. Plastic. It looked to me very much like a "LURE", as you state in your title. I was very wary, but I could not put my finger on what felt wrong. The people didn't look naturally happy. They looked drugged.
Thanks for a really enjoyable thread, LW, and I truly appreciated reading everyone's comments. One of the best I've read in a long time.
bebu
Question: If living forever in a paradise earth seems boring, then wouldn't living a normal-length life in paradise be boring too? necessarily? WHen I say paradise I mean someplace with reasonable weather and without civil war.
When I was a JW I always thought the paradise earth pics were silly, but that doesn't mean the concept is worthless. Also I never thought perfection meant never having disagreements. If you think about it without the WT's dodgy interpretations, it's a nice concept. It might happen one day, just not in the way the WT portrays it.
trumangirl.
I don't think most witnesses have the answer for questions such as communication, travel, etc. A common answer would be that it will be left in Jehovah's hands, and He will provide. This thought pattern is rather common among the witnesses, and that is to allow others to do the actual thinking, so they don't have to. For some, it overwhelmes them, so they welcome someone else making the decisions.
I grew up as a witness, and was one until my mid twenties. I never gave the paradise much thought, and if you were to ask me, I actually enjoyed life like it is now. I enjoy what man has made on the earth, and to have a lot of that gone, yes, I agree, life could be very boring.
I like cars, airplanes, movies, music, and many other things that some teach will not exist. I for one, would not want to listen to songs from the songbook forever, with nothing else.
I think it makes much more sense to believe that this is a stepping stone for what God has in mind for us. I don't think heaven is just sitting around with wings on. I think there is an entire universe waiting to be explored, and I think that just might be part of what heaven is. Forever to explore everything.
It might happen one day,
Pigs may fly. The future and past do no exist. All we have is the eternal present moment. And that's paradise.
