trying to understand the differences.
started this topic on the xjwsforchrist forum as well and would like to ask jwn posters the same question.
What cofty said. In the vernacular, spirituality seems to mean general, vague, feelings of grooviness with life, the universe, and everything. Religion, at least on this board, seems to mean people telling you what to do.
Oh well. I'm religious, just not spiritual.
....i am your servant.
i want you to determine how i should spend my time, what my priorities should be, and how i should use my resources and talents.".
this was in this week's watchtower, first paragraph.
Sad, really, when JWs invert the meaning of everything. Yet another reason why actual Christianity is sooooo much better than the near-atheism of the JWs. Actualy Christianity insists that all of us have a vocation -- some thing that we were made to do with out lives -- and that doing what God wants us to to means finding and living this vocation. If God has given you great athletic talent, be a great athlete; if he has given you a mind that finds math easy, develop that talent and use it; if you are happiest in prayer and service, be a religious, etc.
This is what it means to live as God desires: to be the man you were meant to be. The JW idea is quite nearly the opposite: deny your talents and interests and live a life that is a horrible fit for most people. Thus, as usual, JW-ism is anti-Christian and also anti-human. No surprise there, really.
if there were millions of angels in existence long before adam and eve were created, how come god's sovereignty wasn't challenged in heaven long before the garden of eden?
why did this so-called issue only begin when adam and eve appeared?
how could there not be a single rebellious angel before the appearance of humans?
Perhpas this question is better phrased as another core teaching of the JWs that turns out, after a moment's reflection, to have no grounding in scripture, tradition, or logic. Why wasn't the issue of universal sovereignty raised prior to the Garden? Why, indeed!
my italian friend loves going to the "feasts" that occur in italy, boston or nyc.
these feasts feature a "saint" with dollar bills pinned around her and they parade the saint in a long procession and chant "viva (whomever)".
they are quite serious about this and are proud to talk about the past generations of observers who appreciated the events.
WTWizard really, really hates something he knows absolutely nothing about.
my italian friend loves going to the "feasts" that occur in italy, boston or nyc.
these feasts feature a "saint" with dollar bills pinned around her and they parade the saint in a long procession and chant "viva (whomever)".
they are quite serious about this and are proud to talk about the past generations of observers who appreciated the events.
Stop the press, lots of guys steeped in anti-Catholicism as JWs remain anti-Catholic! Who'da guessed?
As for the rituals, I don't suppose I'd expect most xJWs to grasp them; even for me it takes getting used to, but we have all been subjected to the anti-religion / anti-philosophy that is the JW mindset. And Catholicism is a whole different mode of experiencing the world than most JWs are ever used to. I might experience the same thing if I were put back in time and witnessed a Roman or Jewish sacrifice. But, were I to see one and complain that I didn't experience a "religious feeling," I would know that's because my understanding of the people was deficient.
i kid you not.
the latest watchtower study edition has the following question under consideration in the "questions from readers" article on page 20:.
do jesus words found at matthew 19:10-12 suggest that those who choose to remain single have received the gift of singleness in a mysterious way?.
Sounds like a Catholic-inspired question, cedars. Catholics talk like this all the time: the mystery of divine love, the mystery of the cross, mystery of suffering. When we use it, we generally are talking about the idea of the mystery / sacredness of the thing being discussed, the connection being in the roots of the words, as I recall. So, Catholics might talk about religious celibacy as being a gift in a mysterious way the same way love within a marriage operates in a mysterious way.
sugested lead article title:.
f*@k we were wrong!
now is the hour to go to sleep.
"So Long and Thanks for All the Fish."
so... i am coming to the conclusion that pretty much all of the doctrinal stuff that i have believed for 25/30 years is built on a house of cards and it's about to come crashing down.
question is what do i replace it with?.
my intellectual head says that that whole thing is junk and there is almost certainly no god at all.
I would suggest, konceptual99, that you want to avoid a common mistake. That is, you need to make sure that you burn the house all the way down: don't reject the JW conclusions while you accept the JW assumptions.
I say that because of this last post of yours where you basically say that, if the JWs are wrong, then the entire concept of God might be mistaken. My brother-in-law suffers from the same error: because the JWs are nonsense, religion is nonsense. He has, as I helpfully point out to him, continued to accept the JW conceit that all non-JW religions are "false," even as he rejects the JW idea that JWs are right.
You gotta pull out JW thinking all the way, roots and all. Dont implicitly accept the bullshit Jw argument, where else is there to go? Rip it out and then (much) later, reflect on the philosophical and religious attempts to find answers to the central questions of human existence.
My thoughts, for what they are worth.
that's a quite exceptional level of amazingness
"in the resurrection neither do men marry nor are women given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven.
" (mathew 22:30).
also, what about their offspring?
I hope you take the question seriously enough to keep pushing beyond the easy observation the the JWs have no frickin' idea what they are talking about. It is also worthwhile to begin with the orthodox Christian teaching; that way, if you decide to reject it, you will at least know that you are rejecting the ancient teaching of the Church and not merely the results of some recent fan fiction.
There are two places to start. First, begin with the actual Christian teaching, which has always been a very direct insistance that Jesus was raised bodily. This claim was strongly criticized by most of the Greek world, who rejected the concept (both Christian and Jewish, as it happens) since they figured that escaping the body was more likely the goal of living a good life. Indeed, that's why there are all those stories of the raised Jesus having a body that still was wounded and why he did stuff like eat breakfast. If you buy those stories, it is perverse to suppose he was missing some parts.
We do have recorded his claim that in the new world, we wouldn't have marriage. Nobody said anything about getting laid, so you shold feel free to speculate until your heart is content. I would hold off on St. Paul's writing about the question for a while: it is notoriously difficult and lends itself to being painted with anachronistic and personal biases.
Anyway, in the Resurrection, you keep your junk.
