Posts by Narkissos

23

Has Satan ever gotten your attention?

by Blueblades in

jw
friends

just to be fair (after asking has god ever gotten your attention?

and hear both sides of the story.

) has satan ever gotten your attention?.

Narkissos

LT, was Valis' creature your she-devil? I'd understand your description except the term "horrific"...

More seriously now, you wrote:

From a biblical perspective, I understand that Satan is refered to as a "he" (but then, so is the Holy Spirit, whom I suspect is a "she"). However I don't see anywhere that has Satan as the absolute opposite of "God". Yes he is characterised as evil, but not "absolute evil" as a counterpart to "God's goodness".

I agree that there is no archetypal opposer of God in the OT, but in the N.T., and especially in John, I think this is exactly what is meant by "the devil". He is the "ruler of this world", and is radically and eternally evil (with the same relation to God as the darkness has with the light in the Prologue):

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is the liar and his father. (8:44.)

23

Has Satan ever gotten your attention?

by Blueblades in

jw
friends

just to be fair (after asking has god ever gotten your attention?

and hear both sides of the story.

) has satan ever gotten your attention?.

Narkissos

To me the monotheistic/dualistic opposition of "God" and "Satan" results in a poor drama with two pretty boring characters.

Yhwh was much more funny when he was not yet God and could act devilish: see his good joke in the Tower of Babel...

The "personal god" I mentioned in the parallel thread ("has God ever gotten your attention?") is ambivalent -- more like the Greek daimon...

2

cutting the flesh

by peacefulpete in

jonny cash rerecorded a song by nine inch nails called "hurt".

the interpretation by cash was his own but the song actually deals with the practice of self injury called 'cutting'.

it has been a teen problem for as long as there has been teens.

Narkissos

The prohibition on incisions in Israel is evidently postexilic.

In ancient practice gashing was a common sign of grief. Jeremiah 16:5ff gives quite a complete picture of the mourning rites. Although the prophet is here forbidden to follow the general custom, in order to show the divine cause of the exceptional impending disaster on Judah, notice no criticism is made about the practice itself, which is not set apart from other practices (such as burial, lament, or elsewhere ripping the garments) which were never criticized in later law:

For thus says Yhwh: Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament, or bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the LORD, my steadfast love and mercy. Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them; there shall be no gashing, no shaving of the head for them. No one shall break bread for the mourner, to offer comfort for the dead; nor shall anyone give them the cup of consolation to drink for their fathers or their mothers.

Aside from mourning, gashing was also a way of calling on the god's mercy (such as in 1 Kings 18:28): hence the association with priestly function (Leviticus 21:5). As such it was also accepted in Israel as part of Yhwh's worship:

They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds; they gash themselves for grain and wine (Hosea 7:14)

The Ishmael story in Jeremiah 41 is interesting from a number of standpoints, since it shows the "temple destruction" by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 had not stopped the sacrificial service. Notice the description:

On the day after the murder of Gedaliah, before anyone knew of it, eighty men arrived from Shechem and Shiloh and Samaria, with their beards shaved and their clothes torn, and their bodies gashed, bringing grain offerings and incense to present at the temple of Yhwh (v. 4f).

So if there is an Egyptian connection to the Torah prohibition, it is probably not older than the Exile (when many Jews fled to Egypt as the end of Jeremiah shows).

13

Has GOD ever gotten your attention?

by Blueblades in

jw
friends

.

if so,please tell us how.some have said that god uses a number of ways to capture our attention.for example:have you ever had an important message to tell someone,but you couldn't get that person's undivided attention,yet you persisted and finally got their attention.there probably was a number of ways you tried.. has this happened to you personally?has god ever gotten your attention?what number of ways do you think it took for god to get your attention?

i realize that the answer to this question would have to be a personal experience that only you could believe has happened.. please share your experience in this regard for me,as it has not happened to me yet.. blueblades

Narkissos

Subjectively speaking, yes. Definitely. Way too much perhaps. Or not enough yet.

Before, during and after my JW time. "Words" and "signs" on the road when decisions were to be made (I've always hated to make decisions).

I don't believe there is a God objectively (never been impressed by "causal" arguments of creationism, for instance), but I must admit I often felt the need to gather reality and facts into a personal, imaginary face in order to make my own mind.

One thing I found particularly interesting in the study of Ancient religion (especially in the Near East) is the likely existence, besides the national, natural and social deities, of a "personal god/goddess" who cared about a given individual, family or clan. It was not "God", his power was limited, but he cared when the other deities didn't. Interestingly, when El Shadday reveals himself to Abraham in Genesis 17:1 the Greek Septuagint translates "I am your god". Evidently not the meaning of the Hebrew, but a very ancient concept maybe.

21

My Demonized Dog....

by desib77 in

jw
friends

what is the most off the wall thing you've heard from a jw?.

here is mine..... a month ago my dad (disassociated) gave me a dog named lucky.

trying to get lucky used to his new home and new people we put him in a kennel when we would leave.

Narkissos

Lucky's unlucky, or how JWs are "free from superstition"...

Reminds me of an urban legend I heard among JW, about a man who called his dog Jehovah and the dog killed him...

18

Should I be over it by now?

by astridkittie in

i was 16 when i disassociated myself from the jws after growing up in it, and i'm 20 now and still having issues with breaking the thought process i was brought up with.

i long ago realized the doctrine was wrong in the jws, but somehow i still find myself having issues with guilt whenever i stop to feel or act or think a way that's my own and not what someone else tells me i should feel/act/think.

other times i feel completely lost because i don't know how i'm supposed to feel or act or think at the moment and i know that's not the way i should be thinking, that there isn't a particular way i'm supposed to be inside, but... i still have the paranoia and the gut feeling that i'm doing wrong by being myself, so to speak.

Narkissos

(((((Welcome Astridkittie)))))

I guess I've nothing to add to what has been said thus far (I'd put JamesThomas' words on the very top of it...).

Only a nice reading I just found on another thread:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/27/66576/1.ashx

Take care,

Narkissos

37

Would You Stick Up For A Friend If They Were Being Dealt With Unjustly?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i knew many people in the congregation that were dealt with terribly.

but most times, people were afraid to talk to the elders or were afraid they might get shunned by the more prominent ones in the congregation.

so they closed their eyes to their own friends being treated poorly and carried on as if nothing really was happening.

Narkissos

I'm pretty sure I would have (even not for a friend), because I have repeatedly taken such a stance in other contexts (work for instance), even to my personal loss. I'm rather contemplative generally, but an injustice can wake me up and make me an efficient adversary. Just I didn't come across an obvious injustice in the WT when I was there. Had I, I would probably have been out earlier.

5

Osama bin Laden found...

by starfish422 in

jw
friends

courtesy of the onion: http://www.theonion.com/news.php?i=1&n=0.

tell me that first graphic on the left hand side doesn't look like a classic awake!

cover.

Narkissos

Lol @ Elsewhere

I need to start charging rent!

13

Do you catch yourself still thinking Witness thoughts?

by Leolaia in

jw
friends

i was with my boyfriend's family who are jewish.

having grown up as a witness, i always felt closer to jews than most christians (when you think about it there are a number of commonalities, like not celebrating christmas, having a "memorial" often on passover night that talks a lot about the israelites escaping egypt, the whole ot focus of the witnesses instead of on the christ of the nt, etc.).

anyway, it was thanksgiving and my boyfriend's aunt was there who was a holocaust survivor.

Narkissos

My feeling are very similar to Phantom Stranger's. The JWs are just a silly yet significant part of my history -- without having been one of them I wouldn't be what I am. I still relate mentally to them when I see some of them in the street (you can't miss them). I don't think I have many JW thoughts left -- it's an old story, but the very fact I eventually came to this board so many years later prove it is not altogether meaningless to me.

4

The Gospel of Thomas. Any thoughts on this?

by Freddy Krueger in

hey everyone, since being out of the society i have been researching many different texts and writings.

the bible is just one of many books that have been edited for content.

anyway, has anyone read the gospel of thomas?

Narkissos

The Gospel of Thomas is an essential testimony (1) to the oldest traditions about Jesus' sayings and (2) to Christian protognostic theology. Logion 12 is but one of many clues to the central role of James in the so-called Jesus movement, which has been consistently played down (although not altogether erased) in the NT. This has been discussed in a number of recent threads, such as:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/65283/1.ashx

Cf. also

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/65859/1.ashx

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/65882/1.ashx