Excellent job, Blondie!
This article is classic Watchtower -- cult-think all the way. They start out appearing to talk about one thing, then subtly switch to another, dragging the poor, dumb cult members' weak minds along for the ride.
The justifications for God's behavior are ludicrous. They consist of various forms of begging the question, rationalizations, excuses and completely illogical attempts at reasoning. The article is self-inconsistent and consists almost entirely of circular reasoning.
We do not question God! Why? Because God always does what's right! How do we know this? Because God says so, right there in the Bible! How do we know the Bible has it right? Because God says so, right there in the Bible!
A better example of circular reasoning is hard to find.
The Society has sometimes argued that the Bible contains enough information to convince "honest-hearted ones" that God is completely just. But articles like this one admit that the Bible contains a good deal of incomplete information. Obviously, an objective person who looks at all of the evidence contained in the Bible is confronted with some major contradictions. Some stories paint God as the epitome of righteousness and justice. Others paint him as a moronic and petty tyrant. Many others are somewhere in between. What is this objective person supposed to do? Put away all of the negative biblical stories, and then judge that God is just. Why? Because God says to do that, right there in the Bible! How does the person justify in his own mind making such an incredibly non-objective decision? He must figure that when the Bible paints God as just, he has all the information. When it doesn't, the Bible must be giving incomplete information!
How supposedly intelligent people like Watchtower writers can spew this pap without suffering immediate and massive brain death is beyond me. They don't even acknowledge that problems like the above exist. Obviously they figure that by ignoring the problems, the JW rank and file won't think about them. But isn't that the objective of so many WTS publications? To get JWs not to think? "Get in the manger! Be an ass and don't think about hard things!" they say.
What the Society ignores, when spewing this garbage, is that in order not to be mere stupid robots, people must be truly convinced of something in order to properly claim to truly believe it. If they're under any sort of duress, like a threat of extinction or disfellowshipping, then not only are people generally incapable of making proper judgments, but according to standard principles of justice, any judgments made or actions taken under such duress cannot be held to be valid in a court of law. People need to have all the facts in order to make proper judgments. So when Watchtower writers argue that God will hold people responsible for their own eternal salvation because of judgments they make based on incomplete and contradictory information, they're being complete morons, and casting out standard principles of justice. Why do they do this? Because they themselves have fallen victim to the same cult-think that they're now charged with imparting to the JW community.
The Watchtower article stated:
"What would you think about someone who without knowing all the facts or really understanding the laws in-volved criticized the judge's decision? It would be foolish for someone to pass judg-ment on a matter without being fully in-formed about it. (Proverbs 18:13) How much more foolish it would be for mere humans to criticize "the Judge of all the earth"!-Genesis 18:25."
It's easy enough to show how self-serving this reasoning it, by turning it right around:
What would you think about someone who, without knowing all the facts or really understanding the laws involved, praised the judge's decision? It would be foolish for someone to pass judgment on a matter without being fully informed about it. (Proverbs 18:13) How much more foolish it would be for mere humans to praise "the Judge of all the earth"!-Genesis 18:25.
Of course, Watchtower leaders want no part of such clear thinking.
The article argued that God:
"holds to his righteous standards even at great personal cost. Consider an example. In giving his Son as a ransom for delivering obedient mankind from sin and death, Jehovah satisfied his just and righteous standards. (Romans 5:18,19) Yet, seeing his beloved Son suffer and die on a torture stake must have caused Jehovah the greatest possible pain. What does this tell us about God?"
Um, that God doesn't care about anyone suffering pain.
Consider the animal creation. Animal life of one sort or another has been around for at least a billion years. So far as paleontologists have dug up in the fossil record, predation has been a part of animal life for most of that time. The earliest forms of animals with hard parts, from 600 million years ago, show that the battle between predators and prey was well underway. The earliest trilobites, from 530 million years ago, sometimes show bites taken out of them. We know very well that animals today don't like to be eaten, so why would it have been any different long ago? Did you ever watch a TV documentary of lions killing a small elephant? It takes them about four hours, and it isn't pretty.
Given God's demonstrated ability to ignore, and even create, massive suffering in the animal creation and in the human realm, why would anyone expect him to be different with regards to "his Son"?
This is especially evident in the JW version of the "ransom" doctrine. Jesus suffered extreme pain for a few hours, and then inherited full control of the entire universe. Who in his right mind couldn't manage that, given the reward?
Some years ago, I wrote a piece on this topic, "God's Justice: Sin, Imperfection, and the Ransom Sacrifice". It can be found here ( http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/ransom.htm ). I sent a modified version of this to the Society, and their response (after I called in a favor from a prominent Gilead Instuctor) was essentially, "We're not going to answer your questions, but here are some fine excuses that we'd like you to use. Oh, by the way, don't ask unprofitable questions."
The Watchtower article stated:
"It would be inconsistent if our sense of justice and righteousness caused us to imagine that those same qualities could somehow be lacking in Jehovah. If we become troubled over a particular Bible account, we need to remember that because of our inherited sin, our sense of what is just and right is imperfect.:"
Right. Whenever we don't understand something, we must conclude that it's because we're stupid. We must never exercise our supposedly God-given thinking ability to arrive at conclusions other than that God is perfectly righteous and just. We might read an account in the Bible where God showed extreme favoritism toward people like David, but we must overlook that and conclude that God must have had his reasons.
I wrote a piece about how the Society requires JWs to be extremely stupid in this way: "Thinking Ability and the Watchtower Society" ( http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/think.htm ).
The examples the Society gives of Lot and Uzzah are transparent rationalizations that even a child trained in clear thinking could demolish. This is a good example of how stupid the Society has made rank and file JWs.
The bottom line of the article: No matter what you see for yourself, God is righteous and just. If you think otherwise, quit thinking and kill your mind so as to get life! Oh, and by the way, you should treat the people who bring you this wonderful information like they're God.
AlanF
