Posts by Nika Bee

If you believe the bible account then although the disciples had evidence of miracles and saw Jesus in the flesh they had to have faith that the things he had promised would come to pass. This would have been relevent especially when disciples were executed and christians persecuted.

Nutshell.

Though they had evidence for their faith (Christ, and all He taught and did, as well as the resurrection)... they still had faith in Him by having faith that all He promised would come to pass.

This is not how I understood nugets comment. I understood it in the following way, though I might be wrong:

Assume you believe in the bible account. Then the disciple had evidence for past facts (because they saw and heard them). But they had to have faith that the things in the future would happen. For these things there was no evidence, because it was the future.

I personally would say (always under the hypothesis that one believes in the bible account): Ther were some past facts, for which they didn't need any faith, because, according to the bible they were facts, they had evidence for these facts, by seeing them. These facts served as a base for their faith in future events - for which they didn't have any evidence, because it hadn't happened yet.

But I am not a scolar on this subject. I have a feeling, that it just comes down to how the word "faith" is defined. And as long as there is not a unique definition understood by everyone, it might be pointless to argue about it.

10

Service in a foreign country

by FadeToBlack in

jw
friends

i am not here on assignment.

we came here (poland) to take care of my wife's mother.. i was often asked when i returned to the us if it was difficult to participate in the preaching work in a foreign country when i was not fluent in the native language.

not at all, i replied.

Nika Bee

Hi Fade,

I am doing my PhD in math, and I am hoping to be able to stay in academia. It depends on where there are good post doc offers in my field. One of my class mates got his masters (or equivalent) in Wroclaw. My advisor is originally from Poznan.

I've a Ukrainian friend whose family lives in a small city. They also have some sort of country house, where they grow lots of vegetable and fruit. From what I hve heard it's a very nice place.

And there are no windows in the KHs in the US? The ones in Germany that I went to always had windows.

10

Service in a foreign country

by FadeToBlack in

jw
friends

i am not here on assignment.

we came here (poland) to take care of my wife's mother.. i was often asked when i returned to the us if it was difficult to participate in the preaching work in a foreign country when i was not fluent in the native language.

not at all, i replied.

Nika Bee

I had the chance to go to Warsaw this summer for a math conference.

I have to say I enjoyed it very much, it is definitely a country where I could imagine to live.

I am originally from Germany, lived for a while in France, and am at the moment finishing my PhD in th US. My time in Poland was a very relaxed and fruitful for my work, so I am considering applying for a job there.

I always enjoy hearing from life in other countries. Thanks for posting this!

29

Do you make any kinds of breads? Which ones do you like?

by Iamallcool in

jw
friends

Nika Bee

I am actually from southern Bavaria :-)

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

Nika Bee

It's funny, I give gifts to MY children when they are in need.

I imagine, you also don't leave your children alone for an unknown amount of time, with a cryptic manual on the kitchen table, that only some "special ones" of your children can understand, watching them in secret to struggle with the meaning of this cryptic letter, watching also what is going wrong in their daily life and what mistakes they make, how they get injured, without doing anything about it...

59

In 12 Lines or Less: GIVE US YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY POETICALLY

by Terry in

jw
friends

autobiography.

forever began at the day of my birth, but, it turns out that it was a lie,.

i am who i am when nobody's watching, then nothing is there to deny.. .

Nika Bee

Sorry

22

The BRAIN is awakening! Don't ignore it!

by Tech49 in

something happened recently, and i thought i would share a few comments.

first, lets set the stage..... if anyone is familiar with current events in the pacific northwest, you may have heard of the death of a beautiful young lady, whitney heichel, a short while ago.

in short, whitney was a young sister that was kidnapped and killed by a "congregation" friend.

Nika Bee

On cognitive dissonance: Cognitive dissonance is a scary thing. When I realised how I was manipulated it made me so angry. And it still makes me angry to think about the fact that this kind of manipulation is done. And unbelievable. It's against my nature, and I don't understand how it is done.

I had a "quick cure" through an accident and the aftermath. But it is so painful for me to watch people wrestling with this, or reading about it.

On experiences told on the stage in general: I always thought that the experience sounded scripted, as if they couldn't remember how to say it, because they would have said it in a different way. For example, since I live in Germany, they would normaly have told it in dialect, but of course on the stage it was high German. But I thought this was done, because they would get so nervous on the stage in front of all these people that it needed to be scripted. I never thought about the fact, that there could have been experiences that didn't exactly happen as it was told.

On this particular experience: As some have already said, I have the impression that they took advantage of her. It seems tasteless to me. I don't know what a psychologist would say to this.

269

Why does god kill children?

by Comatose in

i was thinking about all the accounts in the bible that indicate god kills children as a punishment or teaching experience.

1. kills all of egypts firstborn sons, who were innocent kids who did nothing to him or his people, who had no control over the decisions pharoah made.

how many times have you read that account or thought about it without realizing the devastating pain dealt to all those parents, and remembered those were innocent kids?.

Nika Bee

I once asked an elder about this. He told me, as far as he is concerned, it doesn't matter, because they will be resurected anyway. I asked, and the once who were killed in the flood? He just shrugged. As he seemed to feel, that this was a very unsatisfactory answer, he continued to talk about a "study he read somewhere" about how evilness was passed on from generation to generation and therefore it was justified that godd acted like this.

I was just speachless. And this in modern day Germany, only 50 years after the second world war, were every generation of pupils recalls the events from that time over and over again, and analyses them from every aspect.

In fact, the formulation that Comatose uses to describe this mindset:

As if people not a part of gods group are not like us or are subhuman and beneath our empathy.

strikes me as analogues to Hitler's ideology.