Doctrine of Suppression - I sincerely want to know this...

by Gretchen956 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Gretchen956

  Watching the video of the street preacher at the District Convention got me thinking (always a dangerous proposition). There seems to be this history revolving around Christianity. Starting with the Romans, the idea began to be, convert through suppression, oppression, war and acts of violence. Whole cultures were swallowed up this way. Then when they had them, they burned dissenters at the stake.

  More recently, when the new world (the America's) were discovered, whole populations were roped in by those same tried and true methods (where disease didn't do the job for them). More recently than that, blacks were brought over as slaves by the boatloads. Forced to leave behind families, wives, husbands, children. Forced to work under harsh conditions, treated brutally. Now hispanics and blacks are more christian than their oppressors in many cases.

  What makes the tribal gods of the hebrews and muslims any different than the tribal gods of the africans? Or the Mayans, etc.? Why, when you see the methods and the horrifying conditions used to convert, do you not only embrace it, but become advocates more so than those who enslaved you?

  I just really don't get this. I hope you don't misunderstand. I truly believe that everyone finds their own path. I respect everyone's rights to do that. I'm just trying to understand this aspect.

  Sherry
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  eclipse

  I'm with you Gretchen, I don't get it either.

  There is no reality, only perception.

  Some people will believe that they need religion to find God.

  Many can find God without religion.

  Then there are those who don't need God, or have found God to be within.

  Either way, may whatever path the reader chose in life bring them peace, and make them a better person.

  If their Christian religion makes the reader a nasty, judgemental person, then maybe the reader should take a look at why they are letting their Christian religion mold their personality and their behavior towards their fellow humans.
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  FlyingHighNow

  Gretchen, darling, good to see you posting this day.

  Human beings can take any religious belief system and use it to oppress and control. Anyone who wants to wield power and knows anything of psychololgy can distort religion to control/power or for gain.

  I don't believe for a second, the stories in the Bible that contradict love. I don't believe for a micro second that JC taught anything but love and including all of God's creatures in his love. I believe in God and Jesus, but I also believe in Universalism. I believe God loves all people, no matter what they do or don't believe, what race they are or what sexual orientation they belong to. God is perfect love and one day his/her (I think God is both genders combined) will balance things out. Good will conquer evil once and for all one day. That's what love will accomplish and God is love. Perfect love.
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  Gretchen956

  I'm always interested in what makes people tick. I remember being about three years old and looking at someone's eyes and thinking, they see out of their eyes too, I wonder what they are thinking? That wonder has never left me. And for some reason I'm always ashamed of our seeming need to come from a place of being treated with intolerance and turning around to treat others the same way. Several groups I'm aligned with tend to do that, I think it's deplorable.

  In this case (conversion by suppression and the swallowing the gospel of the oppressor), I think there is a psychological reason for this, I wonder if any of us that actually did go on to college would know that aspect. I was thinking that the germanics and the celts and the norse also succumbed and were swallowed up, though I don't think the religious fervor is as strong in those cultures (2 of the 3 my own).

  Be interesting to see if anyone has anything to say about this.

  Sherry
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  nvrgnbk

  More recently, when the new world (the America's) were discovered, whole populations were roped in by those same tried and true methods (where disease didn't do the job for them).

  You may find this relevant Gretchen: "The Spaniards in Mexico and Peru used to baptize Indian infants and then immediately dash their brains out: by this means they secured these infants went to Heaven. No orthodox Christian can find any logical reason for condemning their action, although all nowadays do so. In countless ways the doctrine of personal immortality in its Christian form has had disastrous effects upon morals...." Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian,35.

  You may also enjoy the following book:

  God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism

  Today the dominant religions in the world are monotheistic: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. At one time, though, the dominant religions in the world were polytheistic and only Hinduism remains to carry on any sort of explicitly polytheistic tradition. How did this dramatic shift occur and what has it meant for western culture?

  Summary

  Title: God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism
  Author: Jonathan Kirsch
  Publisher: Viking Compass
  ISBN: 0670032867

  Pro:
  • Engaging book that tells history from the perspective of those who lived it
  • Shows how the fate of the world can be altered by the life of a single person
  • Argues that monotheism has been a hinderance to religious liberty and freedom of conscience

  Con:
  • None

  Description:
  • History of the triumph of monotheism over polytheism in the West
  • Focuses on the success of Constantine the Great and failure of Julian the Apostate
  • Argues that had Julian lived, polytheism would have returned as well as greater religious tolerance

  
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  Gretchen956

  FHN, Thanks for the reply but you don't answer the question. Its not about bible teaching, its about the methods of becoming a believer. Its about why you would embrace the tenants of someone that may have killed your entire family or enslaved you. I'm asking about the psychological and sociological aspects. I respect your sincere belief, and think its wonderful.

  I know this stuff isn't going on today except by terrorists. I'm really not addressing the right now.

  Hope that clears up the question.

  Sherry
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  PrimateDave

  Sherry,
  
  I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but check out this link here.
  
  Dave
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  GentlyFeral

  I'd like to expand on what eclipse said:

  Whoever we are, our ancestors were probably dragged into the Christian Church by some kind of oppression. But after that fades into the background of history, the possibility opens up for reclamation of the sacred by whatever means happen to be available.

  There's a wonderful, though highly academic, book on precisely this subject: Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America, by Theophus H. Smith (Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-506740-1). A few tidbits taken from notes I made when I read this book:

  On African-American renditions of the Biblical creation myth:

  It was left to Zora Neale Hurston to present "folk tradition in folk terms," describing more explicitly "how the [conjure] tradition 'made over' the Bible into a conjure book": "Six days of magic spells and mighty words and the world with its elements above and below was made (Mules and Men)." "The exalted nature of this claim," explains Smith, "can best be appreciated by comparison with another celebrated claim for conjure... which finds wider representation in folklore sources: conjure as a Mosaic tradition." Hurston has quite a lot of beautiful things to say about it.

  I've been inclined to dismiss this on literalist-historical grounds; but if you view this as "the colonized" appropriating the power of "the colonizers - as a devout Christian way of regaining "power to the people!" - well!

  I told Jesus a while back that I would come to him in public when he revealed himself as the God of the Hippies. Under the rubric of James Weldon Johnson and those generations of African-American preachers, he may have done it already. But I need to read [Johnson's book] God's Trombones, first.

  She [Hurston] also insists that Moses did not just bring down the laws of God from Sinai, but ordered God to meet him there and give him those laws! This, it seems to me, is (also) Jewish - it reminds me of Abraham arguing God down to "ten righteous men" in Sodom, of the rabbis of Prague telling God to "stay out of" a dispute about the holiness code, of the mother who scolded God for letting little children die no matter whose they were, because "it ought to break your heart!"

  On the significance of Moses as a symbol of liberation:

  Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is "a premier instance" of the Moses figure. If he did not appropriate it himself, he certainly accepted it ("I've been to the mountaintop! ... I have seen the promised land ... I may not get there with you"). So, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation functioned as the first of several Exodus events in (African-)American history.

  In short, by whatever circuitous historical route one finds oneself in a state of religious or political oppression, is entirely natural and human to rewrite the meaning of whatever religious stories you grew up with, to re-forge the plowshare of the slave into the sword of the freeman.

  gently feral
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  JamesThomas

  Good for you Gretchen, for waking up.

  What makes the tribal gods of the hebrews and muslims any different than the tribal gods of the africans? Or the Mayans, etc.? Why, when you see the methods and the horrifying conditions used to convert, do you not only embrace it, but become advocates more so than those who enslaved you? ... I just really don't get this.

  I don't have an answer to these questions specifically, and it's way easy to get lost in the minutiae. However as to why it is we generally embrace deities, my sense is it comes down to a couple simple things: First, the mind sincerely desires to honor its Source, and unable to find an object for its desire, it creates one (big mistake). Second we come to strongly identify with the mirage; and so we fight not to awaken from our slumber. For who would I be without my god?

  j
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  FlyingHighNow

  Gretchen, I see what you are getting at. I don't think that people who were forced to be Christians really embraced it. And it's possible that the ones who were forcing it were not as many as the ones who taught of a kinder God.

  We watched a film, a true story, about a man from the mountains in India. He came to the USA to translate the Bible into his native tongue. A missionary had gone to his village a generation or two before and brought Jesus' real message of peace and giving to its people. Before the missionary had arrived, there was all kinds of tribal warfare and murder and violence. After he arrived and taught them differently, they became a peaceful, much gentler people. If I remember correctly, the missionary was expelled after a time because of government prejudice against Christians. The man left not knowing what the results of his work would come to be.

  The young Indian man looked up the missionary, who had now grown to be an older man. The missionary had done a lot of good in the village and the young Indian man wanted him to know how his message of love had helped in a far reaching way.

  I cannot remember the name of the film. I'll have to look for it. But it drove home the point to me that not all who spread Christianity arrived with a violence and force. The ones who brought Christ's true message of love transformed peoples, rather than strong armed them.

  I know that I have always, whether I was in an agnostic time or not, knew that Jesus never sanctioned that type of force you speak of. Perhaps his true message was able to get through to at least some of those peoples' children and that is why they still embrace it now. I believe most Christianity and Judaism is polluted by the designs of men and women who wish to have power and control.

  If it's ugly and it's not loving, it is not from God or the Great Spirit if you will. One thing to keep in mind: Judaism, Christianity and Islam all spring from the God of Abraham. And Universalists will tell you that if Joshua claimed he was told by God to go into cities and slaughter men, women and children, then you are hearing Joshua's twisted reasoning, not God's. Or someone who is quoting Joshua and lying about what he said.

  From what I can see, most Chrisitans I know are very kind in their view of God and his tolerance. Even though we see a lot of ugliness done in the name of Christ, we know he never preached that. And perhaps a lot of those hispanics and blacks can see that God is about love, rather than hate and intolerance. And that is why they still embrace the religion that was sometimes forced on their ancestors.