My own view is that any creator-God who fails to hold on to the whole of the created order is incompetent and (therefore) cannot be 'God' who must, by his very nature as 'God', be able to do anything. The 'free will' argument does not invalidate this view
Well, the Christian view is that (a) the first two humans ever chose to rebel against God, (b) Jesus said the road to salvation is narrow, and (c) the whole earth has historically been generally wicked, down to the point where sometimes there were only a handful of followers of God. So apparently God's creation is not all that inclined to like him very much. It doesn't mean he is incompetent if he exists, simply that he made some weird choices when designing us.
God saving only the adherents of the WT Society out of all the human beings on earth hardly says much for God. Plus the fact the WT fails to offer any credible argument to answer the common theodical objections raised for why an all-loving, benevolent being allows so much unnecessary and unproductive suffering in the animal kingdom and in human infancy where 'choice' does not exist.
Yes, that is the big flaw in their argument about universal sovereignty. It's difficult to see, in fact, why any of us have to suffer from disease and death because of something our first parents did wrong, even if we do have to play a role in demonstrating God's rightful sovereignty to supernatural onlookers.
Another problem I have with the WT is that this is supposed to be an evil world, the system of which doomed to destruction and yet they have children! The JW I met recently has three. To me this makes no sense if they really believe what the Society is telling them. I realise that at one time the Society discouraged having children, but that is clearly no longer the case.
Yes, I didn't understand this when I was a believing Witness. "Why would I want to bring a child into this wicked world?", I thought.
Surely if they really believed these were 'the end times', they would all be preaching full time?
Well, for most of the existence of the religion, they haven't believed that the end was definitely coming within a few years, with exceptions leading up to 1914, maybe 1925, and 1975. There has generally been more of a measured attitude of, "Well, the first-century Christians thought the end was coming in their time, so let's not assume we know it will be here in a year or anything; let's plan ahead for a life in this system in case it goes on longer than we thought." This is in fact a statement that has been made from the platform over the years. The religion hasn't always been about the kind of end-is-near hysteria that started in the '60s concerning 1975, and even at that time a number of JWs were skeptical about 1975 being the end.
I think that the Witnesses are actually following the first-century Christians' example on this front because even though Jesus did indicate that people ought to drop whatever they were doing to follow him, the early congregations were clearly already settling in for a longer haul, continuing to work and make a living, etc. So from that standpoint, hardly anyone has ever actually listened to Jesus wholeheartedly, and the JWs are no more hypocritical than the first Christians.
Apologies - earlier msg. [...] Should read
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