Just Fine » I agree, if God exists and is all powerful, surely he could make it clear. I pointed out to a Mormon once - so you are telling me God cares whether you drink hot beverages, but he doesn't care about the millions starving to death?
The problem is, everyone wants to set the policy and make the rules, and that just doesn't happen. For example, you begin your discussion with the Mormon by assuming God cares whether you drink hot beverages, strong drink or smoke cigarettes. (Well, yes, He does, but not even many Mormons know the entire story of the health code known as the Word of Wisdom.)
When that was given, the Lord said specifically that it was not by "command or constraint," but by a word of Wisdom. Well, the Mormons drank, smoked and hacked their way from Illinois and Missouri all the way to Utah and Idaho. When they got to the great Salt Lake and were instructed to build the Temple (it wasn't the first in Utah, btw), the project took them forty years. Brigham Young got up at one of first conferences and said, we've had this word given to us, not by commandment, and we drank and smoked the whole way out here. I propose we take all the money we spend on this stuff and we put it all towards the Temple fund. The people thought it over, it sounded good to them, so they voted what the heck.
So they did it. Fast forward forty years. The Temple was built, the church noticed its alcoholism and other health problems had vanished, no spitoons, no bars -- so we put it up for a vote to make it permanent and binding and it passed! So that's how it became binding. It was voluntary and made a covenant.
So historically it wasn't a huge doctrine.
As for those starving to death, dying from genocide and so forth, as unfortunate as it is, God is under certain obligations pertaining to our mortality. There are arguably good reasons He doesn't prove His existence and it's all been revealed, but morality and religion are all dispensed on God's terms and it all has to do with balance, free agency and obedience. It also has to do with a master plan we all agreed to before coming here, according to our religion. Suffice it to say that happiness and prosperity is all tied to obedience.
Atheists approach man's existence as an enemy to God, accusing Him of murder and hypocrisy. Mormons and most other Christians approach Jehovah's Witnesses as retrograde religionists. On a board of former JWs, the issue is atheism versus the governing body. One can be true, but not others. Many religions revere the name Jehovah, but not the claims, name or theology of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
"Well, they're all ridiculous!" atheists say, and on the surface I can understand that. But not from a human dignity standpoint. The blood transfusion issue, and especially shunning. But again, it's JW or nothing for most. And for atheists, God is a murderer. He advocates slavery and injustice. It's a somewhat inconsistent stance because, according to them, we're all going to end up dead anyway; yet God ultimately saves us from that in most religions.
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