If the thread has helped me, it has been in this way:
It forced me to critically examine thoughts that had long been submerged in my mind:
What will happen if I question the Bible God?
Will I have to then deny the benefits I have received from the teachings of Jesus?
Does it mean that I must deny any thing/principle/force that may exist if I do not believe the God of Christian Theism exists?
The answers are mine to deal with. There is mystery. I do not believe the God I was told of exists.
What is the loss? What can I do about it?
The loss of the Bible god and the retaining of Jesus loses me nothing. I and everyone else will die some day. The only change is I do not have to tell others they are subject to doom if they are not saved. But then I do not have to tell others they have a heaven to receive them and wipe their tears away. However, no one is the loser if I am wrong, for then they will have a pleasant surprise.
The benefit of having only love and justice as the best of Jesus' teachings, is the need to implement these in more practical ways. And really that is and was the most important thing anyway.
This thread will continue to reverberate for me. I almost would say it has been life changing. Not because I had not ever thought of these things. I just would not let myself openly deal with them. There has been healing from a corrupt religion and exploration of what remains to guide my steps going forward.
A Post script:
As for how cofty has moderated his thread--Though he is some years my junior he has reminded me of my father. My father came up through the ranks starting in WWII as a private, a sargeant in the Korean conflict and then went to officer candidate school. He became disillusioned with army politics and the callous abuse of young men in the ranks during Vietnam. I heard a soldier say of him."Capt. Dolan is tough but he's fair."
Cofty's trajectory through the JWs and Church (seems to have) put him through some of the same. He comes off as a bit crusty. But in my estimation also: cofty is tough but fair.
And I say it even though I have winced at his rough handling of fellow posters. I was one of my father's 9 children and we were a wild lot at times. He didn't often flatter our feelings with long explanations when he had to deal with us. We had to think about it. But he wasn't above conceding an honest point when it came up.
And it's been a hard thing to press our thoughts --not our feelings or what we were taught--- from the question the thread opened with. It's natural to take up a defensive stance after a hard hit. But the topic is a hard one. Smack smack smack! a lot of loosely held beliefs shattered (for me) that had cracks in them anyway.
No matter where our journey of faith ends, after participating in this discussion, we'll know that we walked through some fire to get there. And that's never bad.
Maeve
