i posted this over at paradise cafe but i thought i would share it with you folks as well:
we had the special two day assembly this past weekend.
most of presentation was fairly tame.
So, they said that Satan "pioneered" chat rooms, huh? I guess that, in saying that, they are making the claim that Old Horny himself was the one who actually invented chatrooms and social websites. Now I know why there is a subtle - yet unmistakeable - hellish reek of sulfur and brimstone in the air every time I log on to Facebook or MySpace.
Or maybe they meant that Satan was pioneering in chat rooms. You know...getting his necessary hours in, especially before the end of the month.
author c.s.
lewis once wrote that one of three situations exist: .
1) jesus was the son of god .
Gaiagirl: Not to be nit-picky, but I find option number three poorly phrased and ambiguous. For option number three, you write: "Jesus was not the son of God, but believed he was, thus making himself insane." Does this mean that Jesus rendered himself - caused himself to go - insane by believing himself to be God's son even though this was not the fact? Does this mean that Jesus' delusion of believing himself to be God's son drove him to insanity?
Or do you mean that his delusion about being God's son would enable other people to classify Jesus as insane? That is to say, would Jesus' delusion about being God's son enable, or justify, other people's including him among the ranks of the insane?
And what if he had deluded himself into thinking that he was God's son? Would that necessarily constitute a basis for considering him insane? Could he not have been under the delusion of being God's son, and yet still be perfectly sane, for all that, in every other aspect of life? In other words, could others condmen him for being insane simply because he believed himself to be God's son? After all, are we not all "God's children?
Did Jesus ever specifically make the announcement that he was the son of God? Or did others make this claim about him after his death? To what extent can the Bible character named Jesus [actually, Joshua] be considered as an actual, historical personage? To what extent is he real? To what extent is he a fictional composite? To what extent is he a fictional conflation of characters in the oral tradition of that time period? To what extent does he reresent a sort of "ideal" type [or stereotype]? Assuming that there was such a personage, could he not be considered simply as an apocalyptic Jew who fell far short of the messianic expectations of his contemporaries? A very strong case could be made that Jesus did not possess the requisite qualities and characteristics of a "messiah." He led no army. There was absolutely no way that he could have delivered his fellow Jews from the yoke of the Romans' tyranny.
I think that it comes down to how you want to interpret Christian mythology. I realize that the words Christian and mythology are rarely juxtaposed so closely, but in the end, all we are left with are stories and narratives. As Narkissos ointed out, the three options that you present are not necessarily mutually exclusive if you interpret broadly enough the mythological narratives associated with the "Joshua" or "Jesus" character. And there are many narratives associated with Jesus. Moslems and Jews reject the idea that Jesus was the messianic savior. The Gnostics preached docetism - the idea that Jesus' body and his suffering on the cross were merely appearances.
should true christians therefore drink something with connections with paganism?
edited to say: "much the same function as the wine and wafers in Christian religion."
should true christians therefore drink something with connections with paganism?
Badboy is spot on about chocolate. The word is derived from the Nahuatl - xocolati, meaning "bitter water." Chocolate was the central feature in Aztec and Mayan relgious rituals. It served much the function in Meso-American religions as the wine and wafers in Christian tradition. Of course, the Witnesses would argue that there is no longer any perceived connection between chocolate and pagan rituals. You could call it the "pinata exception"
i'm not trying to pick a fight i was just sitting at my desk pondering on some threads on jwd and i would very much like this question answered.. why is it that athiest often (not always) direct their argument for athiesism towards christians?
why not direct your argument towards buddists or muslims or even new-agers?
i mean they also believe in a higher power so why is it that only christains seem to get knocked?
Mrs. Smith - Many people in the Western world misunderstand Buddhism especially its general lack of any deities/divine figures at all. People in Western socities don't realize that, for many believers, Buddhism is essentially an atheistic religion. For many people living in Western cultures, the phrase - "atheistic religion" - is an utter oxymoron, a paradox in terms. People in Western societies are accustomed to religions all being theistic, so the notion of an atheistic religion is incomprehensible and absurd to them. However, the Western viewpoint is necessarily limited and limiting. In fact, Buddhism is indeed an atheistic religion in that it lacks the Western concept of a deity/divine figure. Buddhism is in fact atheistic - the Greek prefix, a, means without.
alrighty then .
i'm as burnt out as you probably are reading more threads about the faulty witness view of the " generation ".
but please hear me out from a common sense viewpoint here.
Whoever wrote down the words - "This generation shall by no means pass away..."- as recorded in the gospels, was speaking to people living back then at that time. People living back then at that time were expecting their "saviour" to return imminently; they were expecting the immediate appearance of the messiah.
The people who recorded the Bible were writing for their contemporaries; they were not even thinking about people who would be born thousands, or hundreds, or even scores of years later. The Bible was not written for people living in our day and age; it was directed NOT at us. Unfortunately, people in every age subsequent to the Bible have imagined the Bible as being addressed to them. People of every age have fallen victim to this fallacy, this delusion. The idea that the Bible contains any "prophecy" relevant to us is asinine and ludicrous. There is simply no way that people living in our twentieth century can hope to find any prophetic glimpse into the future by reading the scriptures. It's time to surrender the risible, 2000-year-year-old delusion that the Bible contains any "prophecy" at all.
terry's recent thread about god's love made me start wondering the above question.
normally a ransom is done as a swap, the payment is made on exchange.
2000 years ago jesus made payment by dieing.
A poem by Emily Dickinson entitled "Death" -
"Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves,
and Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather be passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tipet only tulle.
We paused before house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
i wonder if anyone else who grew up as a jw can relate with me on this subject.. i grew up hearing stories of 'faithful brothers & sisters' being tortured to a point where they were almost dead.
all they had to do to be set free was renounce jehovah and their religon.
the stories i heard of torture were graphic in nature and to this day i can not handle hearing about torture or watch it being portrayed in movies.
In my post above, I did not intend to be "off key" or spiteful to Miss Peaches, or to anyone else. I'm sorry if my posting appeared that way.
There's one point that I forgot to mention and that is that the Witnesses tales of torture are really nothing but a variation on the old Christian martyrs stories. Without a doubt, there were indeed some Christians who suffered martyrdom for their faith; they died by the hand of people hostile to the Christian religion. However, as they exist in the popular imagination, these stories of Christian martyrs are exaggerated. For example, the Christian religion was never "illegal" uder the Roman Empire, as is imagined today. Before they built their churches, Christian met in private homes. The popular image ot them meeting in catacombs is largely a myth.
But the idea of martyrdom has always been - and still is - attractive to some people, especially members of the three "Abrahamic" religions: Judaism, Christianty, and Islam. Examples of martyrdom, and the attractions of martyrdom, are found in the histories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. During the period of the Roman occupation of Palestine, there was a heavy focus on martyrdom in Jewish thought. Given that Christianity and Islam developed out of - and were responses to - Judaism, it's little wonder that they manifest a certain focus on martyrdom. In the minds of some Christian and Moslems, this focus becomes an obsession.
Jehovah's "Christian Witnesses," as they so fondly call themselves, are simply carrying on the tradition and imagining themselves to be at least potential Christian martyrs. By dscribing the tribulations of the "brothers" in Malawi, Wiitnesses are able to vicariously live the life of martyrs. Vicarious satisfaction is also a typically human trait. Parents especially experience satisfaction vacariously through the lives of their children. With a minimum of personal investment, Witnesses attain vacarious satisfaction in recounting tales of suffering and victimization. Is this a unhealthy attiude? Yes, it is, but it's a perspective with an old "pedigree."
i wonder if anyone else who grew up as a jw can relate with me on this subject.. i grew up hearing stories of 'faithful brothers & sisters' being tortured to a point where they were almost dead.
all they had to do to be set free was renounce jehovah and their religon.
the stories i heard of torture were graphic in nature and to this day i can not handle hearing about torture or watch it being portrayed in movies.
Miss Peaches - I was saddened to read about the psychological woesthat you suffered due to being told tales of torture by the Witnesses. Unfortunately, this sort of intimidation is by no means limited to the Witnesses; and by no means is it new.
Wasn't it at Benetar who sang "Hell is for children"? Isn't there a story in the Bible about some children mocking the prophet Elija [or was it Elisha?]. Anyway, the account goes on to relate how the prophet in question summoned some she-bears from the forest that devoured the naughty kids. In ancient Rome, when parents wanted to scare their kids into submission, they would say "Hannibal ad portas" - "Hannibal's at the gates." Hannibal served as a sort of bogeyman of that day and age. Speaking of bogeymen, I'm sure your aware that tradional nursery rhymes and fables are just as gruesome - if not more so - than anything that the Witnesses ever concocted. I'm thinking specifically of the tales by the Grimm brothers. Grimm is an apt name indeed; these stories are indeed "grim" and morbid and macabre. They are violent and gruesome beyond imagination.
Did you ever carefully read the "Alice In Wonderland" ["Alice's Journey Through the Looking-Glass"] story. Another title could be "Alice in Horrorland" or "Alice in Hell." There is a proliific American author, Joyce Carol Oates. Her genre is the grotesque; and she's a favorite of mine. Oates explains how reading this "generally very disturbing book" affected her as a child.
As I said, scaring children with gruesome stories is an ancient and almost universal tactic. To "theorize" a little, I think that such stories are possibly a way for adults to "socialize" their children. I think that parents/adults desire - at a deely sub-conscious level - to prepare children for the horrors of the world. Adults use fictitious horrors to strengthen children against the very real horrors of the world. As I mentioned, much of this process goes on at a sub-conscious level. It involves a process of socialization through fear. To a certain extent, "Halloween" serves a similar purpose. It allows children to confront the fears of existence, such as evil and death, in a "safe" and "fun" manner.
I really think that - as horrific as they are - the torture tales of the Witnesses are no worse than Grimm's fairy tales or Alice in Wonder-land. As for whether they are "true" or not, I would say that most of the stories are "embellishments" [some would say "lies'] and urban legends. But, then again, it's a moot point. The world is in fact a horrible place. In it, there do exist horrors and atrocities such as torture; rape; famine; sadism; evil of every nature. Kids have to be "steeled" [as in the hard metal] against the evils of the world.
i guess i'm now an ex-girlfriend/ex-unofficial fiancee of a disfellowshipped-but-still-believing jw.
i am still reeling from what i discovered last week.
the same friend told me.
From what you say, this guy sounds like REAL BAD NEWS. From your description, he presents a textbook case of a manipulative, abusive sociopath. It seems that he is not looking for a partner,he's looking for a puppet and a slave. I know that it might sound difficult, but the best thing - the only thing - that you should do is to forget about him. It will take time, perhaps sveral months, but it is possible. I know it's a cliche, but time heals most wounds. You seem to be a sincere and well-educated lady. No doubt you have so much to offer a man who will truly love you for who you are. Believe me, your life with this guy will be absolute misery and suffering.
