by jambon1 24 Replies latest jw friends
I've heard many experiences about how Jehovah answers the prayers of JW's - convention items about pioneers gas bills, car repairs, job opportunities.
Now, if this is true, you are actually stating that god has directly intervened in your life. Taken action on your behalf.
At the same time, he ignores the desperate prayers of abused children the world over for their abuse to stop.
How can you imply this and expect people to take you seriously?
Intercessory prayer has always been one of the things that wound me up and was instrumental in me not going any more.
JW's will readily tell you that people without faith are egotistical and selfish but how much more egocentric and self centred is it to claim that the creator of the universe is intervening in your daily life.
Similar to prayers at meal times - "thank you for providing this food especially considering you've left millions in dire poverty".
Crazy logic.
Every time a believer thanks god for their food they convict him of murdering millions of innocents elsewhere.
Either god is immanent and therefore abusive, or he is not immanent in which case he is neglectful. Theism fails because it is internally contradictory.
The god of christian theism - the god and father of Jesus - does not exist. This much is proven beyond all reasonable doubt.
Yes, the very notion of Jehovah providing, or protecting, or guiding some situations, calls into question where he was, and why he chose to ignore others!!
Was he asleep at those times?
A witness will say "time and unforeseen occurances befall" ... blah blah....but then why would he allow a busload of witness on their way to a conventions to be killed, but then "direct someone to give a bag of groceries" to another??
Applying just a little bit of logical thought makes the whole issue crumble....
Stuckinarut....Stephen was pretty dumb not to dump that damn blue t-shirt....
Prayer was one thing that always tripped me up. Inevitably whenever I prayed for help doing "Jehovah's will" and forced myself into bad decisions to fit the JW mold nothing ever worked out, but hey that was just Satan persecuting me, right? So I'd double down and push harder to be a pioneer or ministerial servant or to study or whatever and it always blew up on me.
On the other hand, when leaving the Borg (and I didn't know that's what I was doing) I would pray and things worked out so much better. I thought that Jehovah was answering my prayers and I was being blessed because things were working out. But I couldn't grasp why 1. Jehovah was blessing me for not attending meetings or going in service and 2. he was doing things for me while kids starved in other lands, while kids were abused, etc. It made no sense.
I now realize that none of it had to do with any supreme being. It's as simple as life going better as I grew as a healthy person away from the cult and made better decisions as opposed to forcing bad culty decisions that blew up because on their face they were bad decisions.
Prayer is a farse, and the OP's example is yet more proof.
Jambon1:
How can you imply this and expect people to take you seriously?
Unfortunately, anyone who calls himself a Christian has this narcissistic view of God. He is there to fulfill any of your wishes: get a job, give strength to endure, send punishment to people you dislike, cure cancer, bring back your loved ones safely, let you see a new day, etc etc. And all this takes place while God ignores the painful deaths of 9 million children under five y.o every year.
It's not a JW thing, it's a human thing. We are superstitious, selfish and narcissistic. And that's fine with me as long as there are great minds who keep us aware of those tendencies. Thank you Spinoza, Francis Bacon, Copernicus and all those who followed for saving us from ourselves
Even when I was deeply in the Organization I rarely if ever prayed to God to help me through anything or believed that he was responsible for making anything in my life easier. Because I could never see why God in all his wisdom and power would help me with trivialities while people in other nations starved and died. The only exception to this was an issue I had that led to me being reproved and placed on "restrictions" for several years, and of course God never did help me overcome it.
