by stuckinarut2 56 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I think we all tried as hard as we could to believe it, but many had this creeping doubt. I remember I used to reason with my non-witness dad:
"Let's say it is all made up and we wont live forever on a paradise earth. Would living a moral and clean life that helps people be a terrible thing?"
Turns out yes..yes it is terrible thing. Good thing he never listened to me.
"Let's say it is all made up and we wont live forever on a paradise earth. Would living a moral and clean life that helps people be a terrible thing?"
One thing that really shook my faith was as a teenager I remember an older sister that everyone looked up to as she put in a lot of hours in the service etc. I was at a door with her once and someone said to her "what if it is all a dream?" Her response was, "Well then it is a nice dream to have". It wasn't what I expected like some scriptural backing or anything, its just a nice dream. To me that showed that even she had doubts that it was real. I can dream that the Easter Bunny is real to but it doesn't make it any more true. Maybe some people can only exists believing in fairy tales.
Your OP intrigues me because the framing suggests it's a stretch to believe in a forever-earthly-paradise. It's not. In fact, in the JWs growth heyday,this was the very carrot that drew so very many to the feast.
I suggest it is far less difficult coming to believe in a more perfect picture of what you already have (life on earth) than to embrace the airy-fairy way-out stories of life in another realm unlike anything on earth taught by so many other churches.
I've got nothing against angels and celestial choirs - and Ezekiel's visions have a certain captivating quality - but for many humans, a better earth is more imaginable from a religious perspective than an eternity above the clouds.
But as others have noted, Adventists and Christadelphians were the first to pine for this more perfect paradaisical earthly tomorrow.
Then when I grew up and 1975 failed predictions, I realized that it was just a fantasy.
I lived through the 1975 fiasco of failed predictions. I was soooo glad it didn't come at that point in time because I was involved in things I thought would prevent my salvation. You the kind of things young, single guys do.
Sad thing is it took me another 40 years to wake up. FORTY F***ING YEARS GONE! WASTED.
Doc
I went to several funerals of Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, etc. I listened to the families hopes. What was heaven to them but a recreation of life on earth where families lived together in houses, had loved pets, gambled at the casino, watched and played sports but without war and illness.
People put chips in the hands of the deceased, a baseball for the one who loved basefall, pictures of family members. I did not see that their beliefs were much different, just earth in heaven.
I realised that although I started this thread, I didnt actually put my own thoughts down!
As I examine myself, I can see that I never really believed in the concept of "eternal life on a paradise earth". Even as a young child raised "in the truth".
But I thought there must have been something WRONG WITH ME..... That I was somehow the only one that "just didnt quite get it".
Abso-bloody-lutely! I believed with bells on.
That's why it hurt so much when I had to admit to myself that they were wrong and I was hoodwinked.
Absolutely. I converted along with my parents at thirteen. I love nature and the thought of a paradise earth was attractive to me. I can't pinpoint a date when I stopped believing, it was a thirty year process. The last ten years I was inactive but still attended meetings. If you had asked me then I would have said I believed it, but I didn't think I would live through the big A, because by any interpretation of Watchtower teachings I wasn't good enough.
A personal crisis caused me to rethink things and it just hit me that none of it was true. It was . A very good day, it was like a weight was lifted off of me.
I didn't buy into it all the way. The paradise pictures always seemed way too sappy for me. Everyone smiling too much, playing with pandas and tigers.... I guess it was my skeptical nature but I never, ever visualized paradise like this
(....)
So I did not knock on doors or anything I did for the paradise, but because I wanted to be a good daughter and not disappoint my parents.
THIS!!! Oh how you took words out of my mouth!!! I was going to write these words when I read your post.
I may have believed that doctrine if these typical pictures where not attached to it. THE FANCY PICTURES completely flushed out any trace of belief I might have developped for it.
I am so sure that I could have believed the bible verses and the watchtower publications'words alone; a weird psycho-cognitive process made the pictures to automatically cancel any gram of faith I'd be tempted to put into the teaching.
I enjoyed looking at the pictures though.
They'd make my heart smile. My head and my heart screamed "too good to be true" even before I learnt that expression.
