Who started to manipulate the NT Bible is a different topic. Now you could fill a few Stadiums with Religious Leader types who abuse their authority- Priests, Bishops, Deacons, Elders, Presbyters, Rabbis and Monks.
The night I decided my C.O. was an apostate
by Olin Moyles Ghost 34 Replies latest jw friends
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darthfader
Debator,
The love you speak of "like a parent loves their child" is not the same love within the Organization. The love from the "elders" in the forms of rebuke and councel and "encouragement" is a manifestation of selfishness and self preservation - where the "keeping the congregation without spot" is the primary focus - not the care an feeding of the tender ones.
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Quandry
What is love? Does it allow for false biblical teachings?
Yes, exactly. Debator is right.
Love doesn't allow for false Biblical teachings like the generation doctrine...everything JWs teach they say comes from the Bible...yet are constantly changing it. Then there are the other teachings that have come and gone, such as the "vaccinations are like taking pus into the body" and "the 'ancient worthies' will be resurrected in 1925 and live at Beth Sarim" and of course, the flip-flops of the poor folks in Sodom and Gomorrah....are they false/true/false/true?
Good catch, Debator.
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Mad Sweeney
I'm sorry if I sound harsh but I always wonder at imperfection of men as a reason to be stumbled. Surely Jehovah's usage of King David and Moses both murderers would create a massive stumbling block for you?
First, "stumbled" is a loaded-language word that doesn't fit this situation either in the Dub definition OR the real definition. Second, the counsel in the Bible is to not stumble others, it isn't not to BE stumbled, so if anyone's guilty it's the CO, not his victims. Third, "men" can't claim divine guidance out of one blowhole and imperfection out of the other without branding themselves hypocrites.
As to the question, my personal answer is a resounding YES. The way YHWH killed innocents while letting the murderer/adulterer David continue to both live and rule as king is disgusting. The only conclusions to draw from it is that the events were misreported and thus the Bible is wrong about it, or he isn't worthy of my worship, or he doesn't even exist and the Bible is a work of fiction. I don't even know which of the three I believe but none of them make your god look very flattering.
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Pistoff
Debator:
You argue every point from a flawed position: that the bible is proven true, literal, and that the witnesses have the right interpretation of it.
There is no evidence that the cozy picture of congregational life and order the WT paints is even remotely true; no evidence that the congregations listened to Paul at all. No evidence that he wrote more than 5 or 6 of the books attributed to him.
Instead, ask how to view conscience matters based on Jesus life. Jesus lived as a hippie, a cynic type sage. He flouted authority when he believed it undermined justice, and turned conventional jewish law upside down. Jesus was an iconoclast.
Paul was not; he was an empire builder. All fine and good for Jesus to be a radical, but then that does not make for community building, does it?
And so Paul, definitely interested in building a community, gave simple minded people rules and standards; this is the same practice that Jesus REJECTED.
So, this is why listening to ELDERS or old dried up men from New York makes no sense to someone who gets the life of Jesus; Jesus basically said, don't need the religious structure, it is in the way, in fact, and corrupt.
The CONCEPT of God using men to direct other men is flawed and immoral. No elder I know, no GB member, knows more about the Bible than I do; I am not baptized to them, or to an 'organization'. I reject their authority over me, and you should too.
They certainly do not have 'holy spirit'. This is the group who thinks requiring 2 witnesses to child sexual abuse is a solid concept; that if a woman does not scream or fight a rapist, she is committing fornication.
I reject Paul's vision of belief, and behavior control that fundie religions have adopted, including Jehovah's Witnesses.