Dear all,
I posted my first thread a few days ago and some of you asked me questions I'm more than willing to answer. But there is so much I want to say to you there's no way I can convey all the information at one sitting, so I've decided to tackle one subject at a time, both for the sake of not boring you and because I'd love to know how you feel about each individual topic. It all began when...
I was three when my mother, a devout Catholic, began to study with the Witnesses. She immediately took me and my two older brothers to all the meetings (my sister had not been born yet)), never to miss any for the rest of my life (except three months ago when I abruptly discontinued meeting attendance).
I embraced the truth with all my heart. My inborn spiritual need was fully satisfied with the answers given by my mother and at meetings. Back then the work was banned in Spain, and that made going to meetings even more exciting: I was ready to be taken captive, tortured and killed for the truth without even blinking my eyes. The words "eternity" and "infinite" were among my favourite for as far as I can remember, and it felt wonderful to know I would achieve the whole grasp of them in time.
One thing troubled me though: I couldn't reconcile the concept of an all-loving God with the animal sacrifices required by Jehovah himself. Both things just couldn't live together in my little mind. Back then I was extremely sensitive to animal suffering (I didn't think of human suffering though) and every time the subject came up at meetings I felt revolted and extremely sad. My poor Mum of course could never come up with a plausible answer and I loved Jehovah so much I just learned to do my best to suppress the thought in order to calm down the hurt inside. Yes, my training in logic-killing and thought-burying had already started.
But apart from that I had a great childhood in the midst of my spiritual brothers, until, at the age of 21... But that is another subject.
Tell me, since I still don't understand the need for such sacrifices (why is blood needed for the redemption of sins? It reminds me too disquietlingly to blood-thirsty gods that demanded sacrifices sine qua non? Isn't it much more logical for Jehovah to have forgiven the Israelites' sins simply on the basis of their repentance?).
And... sorry, I didn't want to get into this much, much more delicate subject today, because I know many of you cherish and value Jesus' ransom, but since it's pretty much based on the same arguments, I must confess to you that recently I found myself extrapolating this to Christ's sacrifice: why did Jesus have to die on our behalf? Isn't it the height of injustice to make an innocent man shed his blood for human transgressions? Why couldn't Jehovah just forgive us if we are repentant of voluntary sins (we can't be repentant of involuntary sins, since we can't help being born imperfect -another injustice, by the way-, so sins due to imperfection shouldn't count at all)?
I've often heard it said at meetings that Jehovah wanted to be consequent with his own law: "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", but that law was given at Moses' time. It hadn't yet been enforced when the prophecy at Genesis 3:15 was uttered, so Jehovah wasn't obliged to make any perfect creature die to balance the scales.
Since the day that dawned on me I could never again make any sense of the ransom teaching. Please, please, those of you who consider it the utmost proof of Jehovah's love for mankind, don't be hurt by my words. Not long ago I felt the same way too.
I'll appreciate your comments on that.