Jehovah's Witnesses talk a lot about love. Of course such terms can mean different things to different people. Let us take a look at what it means to them. The Watchtower magazine regularly prints articles on the subject and the latest available on the Watchtower Library CD was published in 2003:
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Love Is Indispensable
REGARDLESS of age, culture, language, or race, all humans have a hunger for love. If that hunger is not satisfied, they are not happy. A medical researcher wrote: "Love and intimacy are at a root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing.
Indeed it is. Who can disagree with this? But the Watchtower doesn't wait long until they try to derail the whole discussion:
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Yet, modern society, especially its media and popular role models, often places more emphasis on wealth, power, fame, and sex than on the human need for warm, loving relationships. Many educators stress secular goals and careers, defining success primarily in those terms. True, education and the cultivation of one's talents are important, but should they be pursued so single-mindedly that one has no time for family and friends? An educated ancient writer who was an astute observer of human nature likened a gifted but loveless individual to "a sounding piece of brass or a clashing cymbal." (1 Corinthians 13:1) Such people may become wealthy, even famous, but never truly happy.
Brooklyn never miss a chance to harp on how horrible it is to get an education, have a career and make something out of one's life. Somehow doing that is incompatible with "love" in their world. All who are presently Jehovah's Witnesses and all of us who has been Jehovah's Witnesses know very well that pursuing an education and career takes a lot of time, but we also know that being a faithful Jehovah's Witness attending all meetings, doing all the preaching work and everything else a Witness are supposed to do according to the Watchtower, is even more time consuming then anything else. We know that it leads to having even less time for one's family and friend's then people pursuing education and career. An Elders wife and children certainly don't see him much, and when they do he doesn't have much energy. So all that drivel about there are such an atmosphere of "love" in the Witness community is just pure nonsense. The only difference is that in addition to not being truly happy, many Jehovah's Witnesses aren't even wealthy but dirt poor.
Then the Watchtower continues:
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Jesus Christ, who had a profound understanding of and a special fondness for humans, put love for God and neighbor at the very heart of his teaching. He said: "You must love Jehovah your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind. . . . You must love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:37-39) Only those who followed these words would truly be Jesus' followers. Hence, he said: "By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves."-John 13:35.
How, though, does one cultivate love in today's world? And how can parents teach love to their children? The following article will address these questions.
Some very ambiguous statements are made above. According to this you should love your neighbor and then Jesus followers should have love among themselves. As we all know our neighbors are quite rarely any disciples of Jesus. How far did Jesus love really extend? One thing is quite clear, it is far from any unconditional love. What kind of "love" is it that the Watchtower wants to "cultivate"? Let us try to find out.
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Genuine love is more than just affection or sentiment. It consistently acts in the very best interests of others, even if they do not fully appreciate it at the time, which is often the case with children when loving discipline is involved. A perfect example of one who shows unselfish love is the Creator himself. The apostle Paul wrote: "My son, do not belittle the discipline from Jehovah, neither give out when you are corrected by him; for whom Jehovah loves he disciplines."-Hebrews 12:5, 6.
Already here the argumentation goes terribly wrong. The God of the Bible is so very far from an example of unselfish love as we can come, well for any kind of love really. And that is of course why the Watchtower doesn't bother to mention one example of this, but find it sufficient to merely make the unfounded claim. The quote from Paul about "disciplining" being equated with love is the gospel of power and control which haven't got much to do with genuine love.
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Teach Love by Example
If you are a husband, do you esteem, or set a high value on, your wife and treat her with honor and respect? If you are a wife, are you loving and supportive of your husband? The Bible says that husband and wife should love and respect each other. (Ephesians 5:28; Titus 2:4) When they do, their children see Christian love at work firsthand. What a powerful and valuable lesson that can be!
Parents also promote love in the home when they adhere to high standards for the family in regard to things like entertainment, morality, and goals and priorities. Worldwide, people have found the Bible to be a great help in setting such family standards, providing living evidence that the Bible truly "is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3:16) Indeed, the moral precepts and guidance for life found in just the Sermon on the Mount are widely considered to be unsurpassed.-Matthew, chapters 5 to 7.
Again we see a very shallow form of reasoning when the article just repeats old claims and clichés that ring hollower every time they are printed. What most Jehovah's Witness children do see from their parents is a hopeless power play, brought on by the Bible based macho culture where only those with a penis can decide anything. In marriages where you have a smart wife and a dumb husband this sometimes go spectacularly wrong. So children learn manipulation, hypocrisy, lying and deceit. In an environment completely inundated with detailed rules for everything isn't suited for anything even resembling love. Trust and freedom has to be present for genuine love to grow and thrive, and those are a rare commodity among Jehovah's Witnesses. The claim that the Bible is "beneficial" for anything good and moral is to say the least a very ambiguous and dubious claim.
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When the whole family looks to God for guidance and adheres to his standards, each individual feels more secure and children are more likely to grow to love and respect their parents. Conversely, in a home with double, flawed, or loose standards, children may become exasperated, angry, and rebellious.-Romans 2:21; Colossians 3:21.
It certainly must be an extremely bad human being who can fail to be far better then the God of the Bible, most of us don't go in for genocide, ethnic cleansing and extreme favoritism, and we do not order wholesale slaughter of people who disagree with us. It is indeed extremely easy to surpass God's standards. We also know that there is a lot of Jehovah's Witness children who are "exasperated, angry, and rebellious", and we know very well why.
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How All Can Cultivate Love
The Bible foretold that "the last days" would be marked by a lack of "natural affection," that is, a lack of the natural affinity that family members usually have for one another. (2 Timothy 3:1, 3) Yet, even those who may have grown up in an environment that lacked affection can learn to cultivate love. How? By learning from Jehovah, who is the very Source of love and who demonstrates love and affection to all who wholeheartedly turn to him. (1 John 4:7, 8) "In case my own father and my own mother did leave me, even Jehovah himself would take me up," said one psalmist.-Psalm 27:10.
Anyone with even the most superficial knowledge of the Bible knows that the above quote described the conditions that the writer could observe among his contemporaries. Anyone with half a brain knows that there has never been a time since the dawn of man that doesn't fit that description. It is just as meaningless as saying: "When the grass is green, the sky is blue and it rains, then we will know we live in the last days" As for the ludicrous babbling about "Jehovah, who is the very Source of love" it should suffice to look at recent events like 9/11 and the Tsunami disaster to realize how completely stupid and hollow such incredible nonsense is. Yet the Watchtower article continues this sickening, creeping, crawling, lickspittle, servile, toadying to "Jehovah" in a barrage of texts describing how wonderful he is:
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Inspired Fatherly Guidance
To cultivate a warm bond with someone, we must get to know that person well. By revealing himself through the pages of the Bible, Jehovah invites us to draw close to him. However, reading the Bible is not enough. We must apply its teachings and experience the benefits that result. (Psalm 19:7-10) "I, Jehovah, am your God, the One teaching you to benefit yourself, the One causing you to tread in the way in which you should walk," says Isaiah 48:17. Yes, Jehovah, the very personification of love, instructs us for our benefit-not because he wants to restrict our freedom with needless rules and regulations.
An accurate knowledge of the Bible also helps us to grow in love for our fellow humans. This is because Bible truth teaches us God's view of humans and shows us the principles that should govern our dealings with one another. With such information, we have a solid basis for cultivating love of neighbor. The apostle Paul said: "This is what I continue praying, that your love may abound yet more and more with accurate knowledge and full discernment."-Philippians 1:9.
To illustrate how love can be properly directed by "accurate knowledge," consider the fundamental truth stated at Acts 10:34, 35: "God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him." If God assesses people by their righteous deeds and godly fear, not by their nationality or race, should we not view our fellowman with similar impartiality?-Acts 17:26, 27; 1 John 4:7-11, 20, 21.
Anyone who has read the Bible and actually has noticed what is printed there would feel more like loathing, nausea, abhorrence, aversion and disgust and would of course not feel any inclination whatsoever to "draw close" to such a revolting entity. The above quote reveals to what extent people who write such deceitful mendacious articles needs to close their minds to all reality and truth. Only, smoke, mirrors and fantasy will work in their twilight world. That's' what they try to pass on as "accurate knowledge" which turns out to be extremely inaccurate in the real world. Under no other circumstances do Jehovah's Witnesses demonstrate how extremely perverted their alleged "love" is as when it comes to their practice of "shunning". Such a practice require a kind of switch on/off love that can only exist in a perverse society. It is almost as perverted as the more universal Christian "love" that in the final analysis can only be extended to people who convert from other inferior, "false religions" to the only true religion, the religion of the elite, Christendom.
Norm