Where to start in regard to my visit with the elder and his
wife; a wife who sat mute throughout the discussion. They arrived on the dot
and we engaged in talk about the weather. This could have gone on for some time
but I brought it around to the reason for this particular visit. My reason was
that I felt "books" by man, were not authorized as the word of God, that the
only word is and has always been, the bible.
He ignored me completely on this point, totally ignored
this opening. What he did commence with was really strange.......It was his
history of abuse as a child.
He launched into his experiences and the damage
they had done to him. This lead, he said, to memory problems and the like.
After about ten minutes I stopped him by saying that I was not interested in
this subject for it plagues every form of society upon earth; including
yours'. He did a physical sort of jerk of his body, as though I had hit him.
I then reiterated my desire to speak about the things in the bible and discuss
them in a friendly manner that would be beneficial to all of us.
This lead to
an observation I had made concerning the pronouncement by God, at the end of his
creative span.......and he saw it was good. This brother did not like my
reasoning on this and commenced to search for scripture to prove my thinking
wrong. I let him know that this was a good thing and that I would stand totally
corrected but not upset if he should do so. I would like to add at this point,
that he was lecturing me in a fashion as to how I could imagine that God would
create anything less than perfect. So I tried to clarify my position on this
perfection word.
I won't need to go very far with you, suffice to say
that I raised the issues of the Edenic garden, the daily discussions with God,
the command not to partake of a certain fruit, the jealousy of Satan, the
temptation to go against this command/warning..... using free
will...........................
My point being that this perfection may just well be,
that of a spiritual perfection to compliment this physical perfection. I
included every Angel in this. He could not accept this angle and searched about
in Paul's letters, wherein, one of them says that there are degrees of
perfection. I said that degrees of perfection did not match a God decreed and
absolute perfection.
He then raised the issue of the Pharisee's in calling
Jesus "Good Teacher" and how Christ immediately referred them to a higher source
of good teaching in God.
To which I said that this may well strengthen the point
that even Christ would not allow them to pervert his standing before his Father,
thereby showing that Christ was aware of a future challenge in a mortal form.
This being his faithfulness to the end. Whereupon this would show him to be
absolutely the most perfect of all humans who had ever lived.
And so it went. This man could show me no other
scriptures and did not try to.
He asked me if I believed that God was
responsible for this worldly state of things.......NO
Do you believe in the Trinity? No
Do you believe in the authority of God.
Yes.
In the end it was a sort of mish mash of a visit, with
one potentially redeeming outcome ( barring that he may be marking me for future
exclusion at meetings.) They agreed to visit and only use the bible at these
visits. I then took a method and said, it they wished they could prepare in
the form of questions from the Organized book. Not on. Doesn't matter
really for I have this book.
What we agreed to was that we would pick a topic. In
this instance I suggested resurrection.
He did start to brag, really he did start to brag about
the JW knowledge of the bible as opposed to all other religions. That made me
stop him short. Straightaway I pointed out that the bible has been scoured for
clues and insights, going on two thousand years now and that this was not
about lambasting another religion. "Please don't do this as I find it arrogant
and dangerous" Were my words. How could he genuinely refuse me this request in
the face of what we are about to do? Perhaps in his mind he is sorry for me.
Who will ever know? I do know that this experience was NOT faith strengthening
in regard to the WTBTS assertion of an all encompassing and even superior
knowledge of scripture.
