Is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses really an inferior form of Christianity?

by nicolaou 96 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  slimboyfat

  The point Mr. Campos made was that Jews have the right to define themselves and tell others, "no, I will not be defined by you" if they so choose.

  
  

  Yeah that is the point. People get to define themselves. Not all people who were imprisoned as Jews considered themselves Jews in a religious sense or any sense. So to call them a faith group is simply inaccuarate. The Nazis classed people according to their own racial system and that was wrong. People as individuals should have the right to be or not to be considered part of an ethno-religious "tribe" if they wish. Some may wish to be considered Jewish and some not. That's up to them. It's not up to you, the Nazis or anyone to lump them together as a religious or ethno-religious or racial group.

  Michael Berenbaum is Jewish and a scholar of the holocaust. I agree with what he said about the issue.

  Jews were victimized not because of what they did, nor because of what they were. They were targeted for destruction because of what their grandparents were ...

  Alone of all the groups targeted by the Nazis, the Jehovah's Witnesses were victimized because of what they refused to do. They would not enlist in the army, undertake air raid drills, stop meeting or proselytizing. They would not utter the words 'Heil Hitler.' Their dissent was irksome, disciplined and systematic ...

  Jews had no choice. Jehovah's Witnesses did. As such, they are martyrs in the traditional sense of the term - those prepared to suffer and even to die for the choice of their faith.

  Michael Berenbaum, former director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
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  Clambake

  When I was growing up I went to an evangelical non-denominational church. We had our core beliefs but we weren’t really that dogmatic. There could be certain levels of disagreement on theology and that was Ok.

  Going to a Kingdom Hall is just bizarre to me. Building core doctrine on the prophetic books of the books, twisting parables into prophesy and foaming at the mouth at the destruction of worldly people.

  The thing that really scared me the most was the horrible things they would say about other churches and the sheer arrogance of the people. Growing up I thought we were all in it together as Christians. Apparently not.

  The more I learn it seems to be anti-Christianity to me.
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  David_Jay

  Slimboyfat,

  If it was just about doing away with a race, why did synagogues, Jewish artifacts, and even Jewish celebrations come under attack by the Nazis? If it was just about race, then what about Gentile converts to Judaism during the Third Reich? Were they allowed to go about their lives as Jews since they were not "racially" Jewish?

  Aish.com, a Jewish site, in its article "Was the Holocaust A War Against the Jews?" has this to say about this issue:

  The Nazi war against the Jews was both racial and spiritual. Their enmity to all that Judaism represented had its roots in history, in the ancient struggle to prevent the dissemination of Divinity in man's world. This unique aspect of Nazi Germany's war on the Jews was expressed eloquently in the Agudath Israel's underground newspaper in the Warsaw ghetto:

  "Amalek (an Edomite people who attacked the Jews immediately upon their Exodus from Egypt) is concerned not so much with the Jews as with Judaism: the Jewish outlook, the Jewish worldview, the Jewish sense of honesty, the Jewish sense of justice, the Jewish attitude toward the indigent and the deprived… All of these are diametrically opposed to Amalekism… Amalek and Haman are targeting the Jews less as a people than as a Divine people."3

  Hitler himself said:

  “Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortifications of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and personal independence which only a very few can bear.”4

  The author Esther Farbstein observes:

  The Holocaust was an unprecedented occurrence that combined a war on Judaism with a war on the Jews. The elements of the war against the Jewish spirit (e.g., abuse of rabbis, violence on Jewish holidays, desecration of synagogues and sacred objects, destruction of religious books) were not only a means of spiritual oppression. They were an end just as the killing was an end.

  This unique aspect was rooted in anti-Semitic ideology and especially in Nazi beliefs. For the first time in history, biological race was linked with the human spirit, culture, and morality. The "Jewish germ" was not only the blood that had intermingled with that of the other nations, but the principles of morality, the spirit of liberalism, and the civilization that Judaism had introduced to Europe – everything that represented the antithesis of Nazism. Hitler, as the successor to the nineteenth-century anti-Semites, preached against Judaism no less than again the Jew.
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  OrphanCrow

  David_Jay: The Nazi war against the Jews was both racial and spiritual.

  Actually, those two identifiers of the Jews - racial and spiritual - were secondary to Hitler's reasons for his hatred of that group. Primarily, Hitler hated the Jews because in his mind, they were synonymous with the Bolsheviks.

  The Bolsheviks were the ones that Hilter was so adamantly opposed to. The Bolsheviks had taken power in Russia and Hitler was ruthlessly opposed to communism. It was a political hatred that motivated Hitler.

  Over time, the Holocaust has been attributed to religious difference, when, in actuality, it was a political difference that led to the genocide of the Jews. The Bolsheviks, Hitler's most hated opponents, were mainly Jews.
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  slimboyfat

  Yes the Nazis vilified Jews racially and religiously. Who disputed this? You are still scratching around for disagreement. Why?
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  David_Jay

  You were the one who said they weren't a faith group and you, Slimboyfat, were the one who said they were only persecuted by the Nazis as a race.
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  slimboyfat

  Jews were defined by the Nazis as people with at least one Jewish grandparent. Those who were labelled Jews viewed themselves variously as Jews, secular, Christian or whatever. So no they were not a "faith group". They were individuals who defined themselves in various ways.
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  Clambake

  The term Jew is actually kind of unique because it means both a religion and ethic group at the same time. Technically you can have gentile Jews but it is not encouraged with Jewish faith to have outsiders convert. You can be a Catholic and still be considered a Jew. Actually 200,000 Catholic jews died in the holocaust.

  The Holocaust is one of the reasons I still believe in the bible. How could people devote so much time and energy to trying to wipe these people that ¾ of the bible is written about.
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  Finkelstein

  The Holocaust is one of the reasons I still believe in the bible

  Really on what grounds ?
  
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  nicolaou

  The Holocaust is one of the reasons I still believe in the bible. How could people devote so much time and energy to trying to wipe these people that ¾ of the bible is written about.

  Could you clarify your thoughts here Clambake? I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make.