Posts by TonusOH

75

God won't lift a finger to help you.

by nicolaou in

sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.

if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.

pathetic diversion.

TonusOH

Halcon: Meaning that as human beings we can still define something as good or bad, apart from how God defines it.

If our defintion contrasts with that of God, we are wrong, aren't we?

Halcon: "We should know" implies we deserve to know.

I said "we should want to know." It is natural to want to know what you are about to get into, especially if it's a decision that will last for an eternity. It is also natural to think well of someone who prepares us, but to be highly suspicious of someone who will not quite explain the most important and crucial facet of our lives.

Our sense of fairness should tell us that Job's expectation of an explanation was perfectly reasonable. We might decide that God doesn't owe him one, but it's the sort of thing we would expect from someone with a sense of personal responsibility and who believes in accountability. Jehovah clearly believes in accountability for everyone else, but exempts himself from this policy. Which is another reminder that his moral and ethical rules do not apply to him.

Being helpless to do anything about it isn't a good feeling either. To exist at the whim of an unpredictable being, with a set of equally-unpredictable moral rules, is not a fun way to spend eternity.

15

The Good News Is: The Great-Crowd-Of-Other-Sheep Do Not Exist

by Sea Breeze in

the watchtower conflates two different groups into one fictional church-age group that according to the watchtower, are saved by works and faith/membership in the jehovah witness organization.

according to watchtower, only the now mostly dead 144k receive the promises of god regarding justification .

everbody else missed the boat and must work for their justification for a thousand years.

TonusOH

I hadn't thought about that difference, where the heaven-bound were essentially vetted, while the paradise-bound still had a very long test ahead of them. It's no wonder that so many consider themselves part of the anointed.

75

God won't lift a finger to help you.

by nicolaou in

sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.

if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.

pathetic diversion.

TonusOH

Halcon: What is heaven? What is the afterlife? We don't know what these things are...

But we should, shouldn't we? It's not just that heaven is the goal to aspire to, it's where we would spend the rest of eternity. If there is one thing we should want to know clearly and unambiguously, it's what heaven and the afterlife are.

Halcon: Job himself said "will we accept only the good from God?"

This runs into a similar (and much more important) issue. God wiped out almost all life on earth once, and this can only be a good thing, since it was done by God. In 1 Chronicles 13:9,10 we read about how God became incensed at Uzzah for a normal human reaction (reaching out to steady the Ark of the Covenant when the oxen transporting it lost their footing) and struck him dead on the spot. This was also a good action, because it was carried out by God.

Thus, the word "good" is meaningless in this context. God could decide to send all heavenly souls to hell for a period of a million years, just because he felt like it. And it would be good. There would literally be nothing wrong or bad about that action.

Halcon: what could we do about it? Absolutely nothing.

Right. Which means that we are the eternally powerless puppets of an unpredictable titan, who can --and will-- do with us as he pleases, and for whom the terms good/right/moral/fair are meaningless. We expect that this god will act only in a certain way, a way that we define as good or righteous. But this isn't how we have defined him. Job expected God to act in a certain way, too. He... miscalculated.

If that is the governing power of the universe and all existence, I'm not sure I see a difference between heaven and hell.

75

God won't lift a finger to help you.

by nicolaou in

sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.

if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.

pathetic diversion.

TonusOH

Halcon: The book confirms that we have as much, or as little, depending on what God sees fit. This message is clear throughout the entire Bible.

"What God sees fit" can be literally anything. For one, standards of moral or ethical behavior are inapplicable to him. God's actions are good, just, merciful, etc because they are performed by God. Second, the Christian view is that humanity cannot redeem itself without God, and is therefore never able to earn anything better than condemnation from him. However he chooses to treat us is deserved, at best. Regardless of circumstance.

Based on these descriptions and explanations, there is no reason to expect that the afterlife will be pleasant for anyone. We cannot earn heaven. God can take it all away at any moment and without explanation. You have no reason to believe that he will treat you in a way that you would define as good, or kind, or merciful. These terms are meaningless when applied to him. It is not a matter of understanding him, either. The explanations cannot lead us to any other outcome.

75

God won't lift a finger to help you.

by nicolaou in

sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.

if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.

pathetic diversion.

TonusOH

Anony Mous: because if you read it from the JW perspective, it is indeed horrendous.

I agree. They treat it as a literal story, and it really doesn't work as a literal story. I also think it doesn't work if we make certain assumptions that are based in a modern Christian understanding, such as the Devil being evil or the personification of evil. Or Yahweh being infallible, pure, or perfect.

If we read the story as a fable or moral lesson, and view the Devil as a counselor instead of a force of evil, it makes a lot more sense. In this version, God isn't necessarily boasting to Satan about Job; he is asking what he thinks of his (God's) decision to protect him. When the Devil points out that this skews the situation, Yahweh is agreeable to having Job put to the test. They are not in opposition as much as they are working together.

In the context of a fable, the many deaths and the loss of livestock is not as jarring. It's just 'movie violence.' The reaction of God to Job's expectation of an explanation also makes more sense. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. Expecting a chaotic world to make sense is potentially counterproductive. God is as much an agent of the universe as he is its designer.

When we define god in the Christian sense --all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, etc-- the story takes on a much more sinister tone. A being in such total and complete control shouldn't be acting as if anything is out of his hands. Which means that everything that happens --including everything that goes wrong-- is a deliberate decision on his part.

43

Is 1st Century advice on marriage still relevant in today’s modern world?

by liam in

republicans want to make a law that forbids ‘uncontested divorce”.

they based this on this scripture.. matthew 19. is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”.

4 “haven’t you read,” jesus replied, “that at the beginning the creator ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ so they are no longer two, but one flesh.

TonusOH

If I had to guess, I would think that the blood policy is on the GB's radar. It's more a question of figuring out how to deal with it. The way they interpret Acts 15:29 is shaky, to say the least. This would mean two things: one, they would have to admit that they had it very wrong, obviously wrong, for decades. Two, they now have to deal with the fallout from people who lost loved ones (including children!) or nearly died due to the policy (including my mother... twice).

They will probably try to quietly allow for a 'conscience matter' option, then wait a few decades more before finally reinterpreting it to allow for transfusions. To make a wholesale change anytime soon might open them up to a lot of lawsuits and some very heavy criticism.

3032

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars (continued)

by Simon in

jw
friends

uh oh, looks like the mega thread gave up the ghost, so while i investigate / fix it just continue the discussion here .... it's been a long 9 years lloyd evans / john cedars.

TonusOH

As entertaining as that sounds, I would be worried about an ex-elder who started divulging information given in confidence. But the thought that Evans might suffer a few sleepless nights over the possibility is amusing.

75

God won't lift a finger to help you.

by nicolaou in

sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.

if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.

pathetic diversion.

TonusOH

Konagirl: God is the presiding judge of His court. We aren’t. But the accuser, the devil would like to be.

God is not only the judge, he is also the jury and the executioner. What the devil wants is irrelevant, since God is the only one who can take final action against anyone and everyone else. We see this in the book of Job-- the devil admits that he is unable to lay a finger on Job, because God has protected him.

More to the point, God does not have to allow any of this. Since he knew that Job was a genuinely good person, he should have dismissed the devil's request. Since God is fully capable of forgiving us at any time, his demand for blood sacrifices is unnecessary. One must wonder what it says about this god, that he allows suffering and even demands it as part of the process of forgiveness.

And we must also note that the story of Job opens with God bringing up the subject of this one man and his pious devotion. It seems to me that Satan could have ended the conversation by pointing out that, in a world full of humans, Yahweh had managed to find only a single one that earned his approval. What is Job's reward for being unique amongst humanity for his loyalty and goodness? Being put through a series of truly horrible experiences, including the loss of his children.

Getting rewarded afterwards still doesn't negate his realization that his life could be upended at any moment, no matter how devoted he was to serving god. This is the nature of Jehovah, a being whose nature is unchanging. This is god, forever.

75

God won't lift a finger to help you.

by nicolaou in

sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.

if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.

pathetic diversion.

TonusOH

Konagirl: the scriptures tell us that it was Satan, who demanded to “sift” Job as “wheat”.

According to the story, Satan asked to be allowed to visit those horrors on Job, his family, and his servants. God, who could easily (and reasonably) have told him "no", agreed to allow the Devil to massacre people and livestock, strike Job with an illness, have his wife advise him to 'curse god and die' and sent so-called friends to break him mentally. Job only expressed his belief that god would explain why this had all happened. It is a reasonable thing to think, if Jehovah was the kind of person Job assumed him to be.

But, no... Jehovah excoriates Job for having the temerity to expect an explanation for the terrifying experiences he had been put through and the suffering that he was, even then, still enduring. Job was forced to apologize to god for this apparent display of hubris. Only then did god restore what had been brutally taken from Job (although his first ten children and countless servants remained dead). Job would now spend the rest of his days knowing that he had better be unquestioningly loyal to Jehovah, because who knows what fate might suddenly and unexpectedly befall him and his family?

This is another example of the problem with the way we excuse god's behavior as always good. God can take care of you and give you an amazing life, and then suddenly rip it all away and put you through the most traumatic experience, for no particular reason. And if you dare to wonder why you were made to suffer in such a terrible manner, he might also dress you down and demand an apology. And also, he won't take responsibility for any of it. It's your fault. Or someone else's. Not his.

3

Meet up?

by KIMSILVIO in

hi 👋 .

just wanted to leave a message saying hi 👋 i’m going to england in november, if anyone wants to catch up or organise a meet up with me, let me know via dm or twitter dm .

TonusOH

I'm afraid it's too long of a drive for me.

But I hope you have a safe and fun trip.