DocHouse,
At one point I was capable of being just like you. I could live with the doctrinal "adjustments", and even tolerate the theory that the Almighty God could operate perfectly via an organization made up of imperfect men.
I began to wake up when I saw the hypocrisy of a religion who puts so much emphasis on honesty - to the point of it being the tilting point on a Judicial Committee, in case you don't tell the whole truth in a confession to the Elders - and then they go and practice historical revisionism, obfuscation of events, outright lies and glaring omission of inconvenient facts in order to look good in the eyes of their flock, when it comes to account for their own history. THAT, in itself, raised the first big red flag in my mind after decades of faithful service. Nevermind "theocratic warfare" - how come these people have to go to such great lengths to obfuscate the truth about their own history? If they can be dishonest about their own history (when it would be fairly easy to admit they were mistaken, had bad calls), then how much more willing would they be to be dishonest when it comes to doctrine? After all, didn't Jesus taught: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." - Luke 16:10
Upon further extensive research, I've also came to the conclusion that the Organization had also been dishonest about doctrine. To give you a small example, about the hope for Christians. The "earthly hope" is a poorly concocted religious HOAX, put simply. It's something that belonged to the ancient Israelites, and tied them to their aspirations towards their holy land, but it's NOT the hope presented to Christians in the Greek Scriptures. The only Christian hope is the heavenly hope. That's what the canonic gospels, the apostolic epistoles and Revelation clearly point to. The Watchtower has stolen that glorious hope from the masses and reserved it for a poorly defined elite of 144.000, something that reality is demonstrating to be a false claim. Religious deceptions such as these - and many more concocted in the minds of Rutherford and Freddy Franz, such as the murderous blood ban doctrine, the silly type/anti-type speculations, the absurd 1914 chronology - turned out to be nothing more than propaganda stunts to make the JW's look "different" than mainstream Christianity and carve a niche for themselves in the religious market. To them applies aptly the words: "Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." - Luke 11:52
So, they've been dishonest about their history and about their doctrine. But, they can all be excused because they act in the sincerity of their hearts, right? Wrong. Were the nazis who sincerely believed in the Nazi Party propaganda - and thus participated in crimes against humanity - excusable because they were sincere believers? No, they were rightfully punished based on their refuse to follow their conscience and ability to reason. If even the lower officers were condemned, how much more the leadership who generates and spreads that propaganda! That's the great sin of the WTS leadership since its inception. They know what they're doing. Doesn't matter if they do it while believing it - the surely know exactly what they're doing. It's not that they lack information at their disposal. The library of the writing committee in Bethel has many, many great scholarly works that they read - and go to great lengths to misrepresent, when they quote them.
But then comes another much more serious issue: The foundation of it all - the Bible. Just how reliable is the Bible? I used to think that I could live with an unreliable Old Testament ("Old Light"), as long as the New Testament ("New Christian Light") was rock-solid. After extensive, unbiased research (believe me, I went through more scholarly works that I can enumerate from memory), the results were devastating. The so-called "canonic gospels" aren't but a collection of quite inharmonic accounts about the life of Jesus, who have been extensively reworked a posteriori to paint a picture of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, the being that became god-like (or God, according to certain views) after his resurrection. But, tragically, that is a FABRICATED STORY by the apostle Paul and his followers, who eventually took over the charismatic jewish sect that followed this Rabbi Jesus. This fabricated story was designed to appeal to the religious palate of the Greek/Roman world, and it went on to become incredibly successful, but it has no roots in reality. Unfortunately.
Because the historical Jesus - and I am confident that he existed - was through and through a Jew, a teacher, a defender of the Mosaic Law, who had the liberty to re-interpretate it, like the most brilliant rabbis did, but who never intended to start a new religion, didn't see himself as the only begotten, pre-existent Son of God. Those stories were superimposed LATER into the gospel narrative, but it wasn't how Jesus regarded himself. He was an apocalyptic prophet of his day who ended up having his prophecies wrong, especially regarding the establishment of an earthly kingdom coming from heaven within his generation. Later on, his followers, on the wake of the shock of the destruction of the Jewish nation and the temple by the Romans in the aftermath of the Jewish revolts between 66-136 CE, concocted other supernatural explanations to overcome the obvious: Jesus was wrong in his prophecies. Yes, Jesus was a great teacher of ethics, but he was far from original, as history can easily tell you.
Now, you are free to believe in whatever you want, Doc. It's a free world, free speech, democracy, blah blah blah. No one is going to stop you from believing nonsense, or to dedicate your life to follow a myth. People have been doing it for millennia and mankind has survived and thrived. There are many positive things that Christianity - not to mention other religions - have offered mankind. Many atheists argue that such ethical achievements would have been attainable without the assumed existence of a deity. I think it's impossible now to prove that claim, so let's just accept things as they are. It's also no less truth that in the name of religion and deity much suffering has been inflicted upon mankind, making the observation recorded in Ecclesistes 8:9 a given: "All this I have seen and applied my mind to every deed that has been done under the sun wherein a man has exercised authority over another man to his hurt."
But the question is (going back to your OP): Who has in fact a rafter in the eye and is pointing fingers? From my decades inside the WTS, it's them who point fingers constantly at everyone else, while they have huge rafters in their eyes. Worse, they constantly add more thickness to that rafter, and indoctrinate their rank and file to become more blind to reality and to blindly follow them. And when you defend them and throw stones at the critics, YOU are the one with the ratter in your eyes. And frankly, God, if he indeed exists as a person and takes the least of care about us as his creation - which I'm strongly skeptical at this point - could do so much better than using the Watchtower. Or the RCC. Or the LDS. Or Scientology. Or ...take your pick. If God was really interested in our well-being, he wouldn't need to test us through faith. He wouldn't need to be an illusive being who only "reveals" himself indirectly through creation and a flawed, crooked book. He wouldn't hide behind the excuse that he's so powerful that "no human can see him and remain living". That's, sorry to say, bullshit. An all-powerful God would have no issues in making himself visible to every single human being, so that all could observe him and serve him based on EVIDENCE. Because, if you believe that God made us the way we are, then God would also know that we rather lead our lives based on evidence and facts, rather than in stories and faith.
Eden
