Perhaps I should try harder to understand God.

by nicolaou 52 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  nicolaou

  (Note: I've been somewhat of a ranting atheist for the last year or two but I've tried to be nice with it!)

  If a human father punishes his disobedient children by killing them he will be locked up if not executed. However, most people would concede that such a man must have had severe mental and/or emotional problems to have reached that point. The explanations, if they exist, do not justify the behaviour but attempt to understand it.

  Now what about God? And here I am talking about the god we are most familiar with - Jehovah, Yahweh, the God of the Bible.

  Read the Hebrew scriptures and you will find a mass of killings at Gods hand. Believe what you are told by many priests, elders and other christians and God is going to kill billions more! Why? What is it about God that has turned him into this monster?

  If we believe that he created the unquestioned beauty that exists, that he chose to give life to species great and small and to crown it all with his 'masterpiece', intelligent and creative humanity made in His image how do we explain his descent into the homicidal, butcher we are now confronted by?

  I'm going to assume that God exists, you don't have to try and persuade me of that. Just try and help me to understand His behaviour?
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  bubble

  Maybe god exists but the bible is all poppycock!
  
  Who knows really, none of it makes any sense.
  
  A loving god would not and could not, do or allow all those deaths, past, present and future.
  
  Thinking about it does your head in because you keep going round in circles.
  
  Love Bubble. XXX
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  Perry

  For me, I had to thoroughly understand two things in order for the nature of things to make sense:

  1. The multi-purposes of the humiliating suffering and death of God's Only Son, and

  2. Defining Freedom

  Even then it seems that there must be some other way.
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  Satanus

  His behavior reflects the thinking of people in and around the middle east several thousand yrs ago.

  S
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  jstalin

  nicoloau: I share your sentiment. God demands worship because he created me. Well, isn't that nice? And if I don't worship him, he'll either cut me off or damn me to hell (depending on your biblical interpretation). In addition, I'm gay, so he created me automatically evil. Nice.

  No thanks, I don't believe in such a being.
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  greendawn

  The God of the New Testament does not appear any longer like the God of the Old Testament and it's the OT image that the WTS projects the most, the NT one seems to have completely passed them by. The Jews and the JWs see God as Lord the Christians as a Father. That's an enormous difference.
  
  Thus the actions ascribed to Him by the dubs are in fact figments of their imagination, the judgement process will not be at all as fast and loose as they claim.
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  Satanus

  Greendawn

  The ot god just killed people on whims. The nt god waits until after people are dead, and then fries their souls for eternity, if he is peeved at them for not having faith in his son. Not sure if that is an improvement, but it took many centuries for the change in thinking to come about.

  S
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  Narkissos

  One underlying question is how we understand and deal with violence.

  Violence is everywhere in the "beautiful creation". And central to the paradox of human consciousness is that we both share in it and are shocked by it. A kind, loving God is a reflection of our so-called "better self". A violent, jealous, whimsical God is a reflection of our so-called "worst self". A "realistic theology" (not necessarily an oxymoron) has to articulate both. Positing God as pure "love" or "light," as Johannism does, ultimately makes him, and us, strangers to the world and to ourselves -- which is exactly where the Gnostic trend leads.

  Believing in God, or not, doesn't change much to this essential problem.
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  DanTheMan

  A kind, loving God is a reflection of our so-called "better self". A violent, jealous, whimsical God is a reflection of our so-called "worst self". A "realistic theology" (not necessarily an oxymoron) has to articulate both.

  This reminds me of the song "What if God Was One of Us?", which was popular when I was still a dub, and I remember being very offended by the premise. But it makes more sense to me now.

  What if God was one of us?
  Just a slob like one of us
  Just a stranger on the bus
  Trying to make his way home
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  IP_SEC

  When you were young and your heart was an open book
  You used to say live and let live