Overheard:
"Is your cup half full or half empty?"
"Well, depends on whether you just poured something out or poured something in."
The cup half empty is usually regarded as a test of people's pessimism or optimism. But, I would assert it is a clue to an important principle.
Quality of life is a real and revealing indicator of the effectiveness of one's beliefs.
There are people of faith who cannot allow themselves happiness, for example. They view christianity as a crown of thorns to be borne in misery and self-chastisement. Proving their own endurance is their purpose like monks who dwell in damp and drafty cells and who submit to scourging with a whip. Faith is a crucible.
What is at work here?
What we know immediately changes into HOW we deal with what we know. Otherwsie, what we know is totally useless as a dusty book on a shelf.
Duty does not bring joy.
When it comes to religious beliefs: we have a program running.
When it comes to family, spouse, children, work, health: there are programs running.
What we believe is best often differs a great deal from how we actually behave.
"I shouldn't eat this dessert...."
"I really don't need to be spending money on this right now...."
"I ought to go get a check-up but..."
BELIEF is totally worthless unless there is an integrity connected to the behavior which follows.
The evil of the Jehovah's Witness lifestyle is the awful disparity between all that talk about TRUTH and the bland, burdensome lives they lead!
The promise given newly inducted baptised dedicated publishers is that their lives will take on a purpose that leads to everlasting life of fulfillment with Jehovah's organization supplying support and strength.
The dismal reality is that all their lives will consist of is an endless list of WHAT they must do next. They will be straitjacketed with duty, repression, forced activity, monitoring and precious little downtime for relaxation and recharging.
The JW lifestyle will drain away their finances, their leisure, their education and their social identity. It will subject their children to deprivations as they give up one thing after another which would have made them fully functioning members of their neighborhood, school and community. Instead they are square pegs left out of round holes. The family of humanity is denied to them! Why? They cannot live a good life with others because of "beliefs" and "truth".
What is wrong with this picture???
HOW they live will deteriorate into a public spectacle of holier-than-thou perfectionisms brought on by an obsessive focus on WHAT MUST BE DONE to please Jehovah.
The sorrow and the pity of RELIGIOUS BELIEFS comes when the believer makes a fetish out of arguing over them--instead of--practising
goodness, kindness, self-control and benevolence!
Left turn here? No, right turn! That is what leads to splits, shifts, divisions, sects and denominations.
In colonial times, you could be hanged if you didn't attend church services on Sunday! Can't argue with that one can you? Nope. It was time to move to another location and start your own congregation where staying home on Sunday didn't carry with it the death penalty!
The list of controversies has always been an endless exuse for divisions.
By the year of the Council of Nicea, 325 A.D. the heads of congregations all over the Roman Empire met together and compared scars, wounds, and arguments for the purpose of agreeing on something unifying. Eusebius makes it quite clear in his history of that meeting how much dissent, disagreement, violent controversy and utter disparity was already rife in "christianity."
There is not now and there NEVER HAS BEEN one thing which is "TRUE" Christianity. Christianity is a kaleidoscope of opinions and practices.
SO WHY MAKE A FETISH out of arguments?
HOW YOU TREAT PEOPLE demonstrates who you are more than all the beliefs and truth that ever existed!
Try this test: when you think of Jesus Christ do you think of the way he treated people or all the mysterious things he taught?
If you love him is it for his intellectual grasp of hidden truth--or is it because he healed the blind and made the crippled walk?
That should tell you a great deal about yourself and your grasp of HOW instead of WHAT.