Just a Minute, There's Someone Wrong on the Internet.

I have a confession to make, I get in arguments on the internet.

I used to do it for fun.  Sometimes I'd argue with people just to be annoying, sometimes I'd do what's called "trolling" which is basically just dragging people into arguments by saying something inflammatory.  It's real real easy when you're of a progressive mindset and you live in the south and attend a Bible Belt church.  What you say doesn't even have to be inflammatory or even false, I've found southerners are very easy to bait, just by saying something they disagree with.

I've also had a long standing on-and-off argument going with my Jehovah's Witness cousin Bill (name changed).  And in fact, it is that which is precipitating this post.

I am tired of arguing with people online.

It starts innocently enough, often you leave a comment about something you're interested in on some blog, but soon somebody says something that you not only disagree with but that is simply wrong.  Well, you don't want to let that go unchallenged, so you correct it.  Then the person replies with something that sounds kinda like a veiled insult, pointing out that you are just uneducated on the subject.  Then you come back with a more thinly veiled insult.  And it gets personal and blows up and before you're thinking, "this is not looking good on me, but I can't stop because this other idiot will win."

With cousin Bill, he always contacts me first, weasel's his way in with some pretense about wanting to discuss religion or beliefs, and more often than not, I have taken the bait.

But in the same way that cousin Bill isn't really interested in discussing religion, (his is right and yours is wrong and he's going to prove it) that internet troll isn't there to talk about these things on any sort of level playing field.

I've taken to examining my motives recently.  Why am I in this conversation?  Is it civil?  Is this person on the same level as me as far as where it is going?  Am I representing Christ?  Is this what Jesus would do?  Is this what Jesus did do?

Before you answer that, let's explore this a little more.

What is being right worth?  Is it worth maintaining an reputation?  What is a reputation worth?  What is a reputation?  What does it say about a person who can't let something go in the pursuit of being right and may or may not simply not have the ability to quit?

I wish I knew.

I have been accused many times of things like "you always have to be right."   This has confused me.  Is there some point at which I have to be wrong?  Is pursuing rightness a bad idea?  Is it really the case that I "always have to be right."  By saying that are you saying "you always have to win the argument?"  I do always want to win the argument.  After all, if I'm arguing, there's a pretty good chance I think I'm right.  If I didn't think I was right, I wouldn't argue.  In fact, if you find me not arguing about something you say, chances are I either agree with it or don't feel I have an effective argument against it.

And here I think comes the problem.  If I use this reasoning, that by not disagreeing, I am actually tacitly agreeing, then that pushes me to disagree vehemently if I do in fact disagree.  So by not disagreeing, I am actually agreeing. 

We see this in so many places in public life.  We hear figures claim solidarity with "the silent majority."  They're silent, so they must agree with me, yes?  I recently read a family of stories which were complaining because some big famous church refused to comment on some social issue that was in the news at the time.  A bunch of bloggers and commenters lamented the fact that this church didn't advocate in agreement with their position and it was "not taking a stand" or "the same as agreeing with the other side."

But it's not agreeing with the other side is it?  That kind of argument is specious.  That's the rhetoric of division.  If someone doesn't say something, that by saying something, they're not saying something, they're really truly not saying anything.  That has got to be okay.

When it boils down to it, arguing with people online takes up mental space that could better be used doing something useful.  Real change of heart comes person to person.  We agree with people we respect.  We adopt the beliefs of the groups we fit into generally speaking.  I'm not going to be able to change your mind about something unless we have a closer relationship, and you won't change mine for the same reason.

So I implore you, not because I'm making an argument here and that you should believe me.  If you know in your heart that arguing online is a bad idea, then follow your own impetus and stop.  If you don't, then by all means, do what ever feels right to you.

If you're a Christian, please consider this with deep introspection.  There are a number of Christian apologists I just don't want to listen to anymore.  They have great arguments, great points, and I agree with the logic they use.  But they come off with such an overbearing rightness of attitude that it really turns me off.  One is James White who on his YouTube channel tears somebody up in almost every video.  And the makes videos to tear them up after debates.  With such condescension I hear terms like "once again."  If you have to explain it again, just explain it again.  Do you have to let us all know that you're annoyed to have to do it?  David Robertson was recently on "Unbelievable?" in a debate with Matt Dillahunty and there were many complaints about his demeanor.  He posted a lengthy post that said essentially "I have reviewed all the evidence and decided that I will not be apologizing for anything." 

I can't abide this attitude.  I do not see Jesus unleash such disdain for anyone but religious leaders, not sinners and non-believers.

Stop arguing online and use the emotional energy that burns your mind while you lay awake at night to solve real problems.  And really, with the number of people who read this blog, I'm honestly only talking to myself.

Sol Visits a Kingdom Hall, and Finds the Door Locked

It's a lovely warm evening this evening.  A gentle breeze from the south wafts into my car window.  I sit here with it about an inch and a half down as I wait quietly for some sign of life from the windowless brick building.

With square footage a little larger than my house, the building has real stone under brick arches in the shape of windows.  But like I said, there are no windows, an eccentricity brought about by who knows what, I've heard reasons like vandalism, cost, construction time, and that natural light during spiritual focus encourages lewd behavior.  I'm suspicious of that last one.  Looking in the door, it appears to have perhaps 50 chairs.  There are no truly large Kingdom Halls, no mega-churches in the Jehovah's Witness world.  This one would fit within half of the gymnasium my ecclesia (church) meets in.  But we have 2000 members or so.  In this Kingdom Hall, two congregations meet.

I have already checked the door a couple times.  I know two congregations meet here because their meeting times are posted on the wall next to the door.  But nothing posted about why nobody is here now.  Usually when one passes out flyers advertising a location and a time for an event, one shows up to the event, however, if despite the profuse and wasteful use of such methods, one never seems to expect anyone to show up for one's events, one may neglect to be vigilant if one's plans change.

I have heard of congregation consolidation previously, loss of members and reduction of costs leading to two and even three congregations meeting in the same Hall.  I had not seen it however, so I was excited to have something confirmed.  I am expecting to have quite a few things confirmed this evening, because if we go through the study I have been given in preparation for this evening's meeting (which I have already dutifully browsed) I already have material with which to work.

You see, Jehovah's Witnesses are constantly fed both the questions and the answers to anything they could possibly be inquisitive about and an infinite number of subjects they will never need to be inquisitive about because all the answers are provided.  But it's strange because these are questions I'd expect to see in Sunday School, asked of children who would then dutifully answer from the material already given.  But these people have studied "the Bible" (actually the Watchtower with the Bible as a reference) for years!  Why such simple closed ended questions?

The answer lies in the mind control.  Keep the mind from delving deeper.  Hide the extraneous information.  Instill an automatic program in the congregant's mind which says "here are all the answers, I don't need to go anywhere else."  Pretty quickly one trusts automatically and implicitly.  Any divergent material is automatically screened because the brain becomes unaccustomed to searching for answers and thinking up new questions.  Every question has an answer, and it must be in this material somewhere.  jw.org makes this even easier because you can search and you get the pre-approved answer.  No need to think on your own.  Not only are you expected to have read all the materials and answered all the elementary school level questions before you show up, but you're going to do it again once you get here, out loud and in the group.  Group dynamics are very important.  The simple presence of another person automatically quiets dissent in a controlled environment.

It's about 7:25 now.  I was told to be here at 7:15.  I was excited to come, to experience this new thing, but it has worn off.  A couple cars have driven into the parking lot and out the other side.  They both saw I was here, and they seem to know why no one else is.  They're not telling me though, and in this easily recognizable car that they'd know wasn't one normally seen in the parking lot.

An older Chevy pickup pulls in the parking lot and parks next to one of the two empty cars in the lot.  They're both Honda sedans.  What's that?  That guy's smoking a cigarette.  Either he's not a Witness or he's hiding it.  Nope, he's not dressed like a witness either.  No self-respecting undercover smoker would risk getting caught at the Kingdom Hall.  Smoking, oddly enough, is a disfellowshippable offense.  There's a whole bunch of stuff for which you'll "strong counsel" from an elder, but if you refuse to quit smoking, you're out.  He just threw the butt on the ground in front of the building.  There's no way he's a JW.

I get out and go ask him if the door is still locked.  On the way I offer up a prayer that whatever this man's need is, for God to provide it.  It is still locked.  He's got a hell of a cough.  I've heard worse, but in the morning.  This guy's coughing pretty regularly.  Lung cancer?  Is he here because he doesn't have long and he's looking for something?

His name is Fred.  He lives in South Fayetteville.  He seems nice enough, says he was impressed by the guys who visited him a couple times.  He keeps calling them "services" and this building a "church" though I've already explained to him that they call them "meetings" and "Kingdom Halls" respectively.  He says he's looking for a small church, and hasn't been in years.  He wanted to come on a Tuesday night because he wanted there to be less of a crowd.  I didn't have the heart to tell him that there's probably just as many people to the evening meeting as there is to the Sunday morning meeting.  And I've never heard of a "crowd" at a Kingdom Hall.

I offer to talk with him about God, but he's not interested in talking, he just wants to listen.  He says if they ask him to get up and talk, he won't do it.  He obviously has no idea what JWs are about.  He thinks they are just another church, and the culture says he needs to go to church, and he wants a small one, so this is his church.  It's more like a 7-11 than where he worships.

Before long, I have figured out that there is no meeting tonight because there is an Assembly on Saturday.  How that makes sense, I'll never know, but my ex-JayDub friend says if I was IN I would.  I guess if meeting attendance is required to be in good standing with God, you're happy to get a day off occasionally.  But they are required, at least to have a good standing in the congregation and by extension, with Jehovah.  It's another little mind control trick, using rewards and punishments for expected behavior.  You only get promoted if you put in the time.  If you don't put in the time, you get a talking to by a higher-up.

Well, I told him why I'm here, but curiously he doesn't ask why I might be learning about them if I don't intend to be one.  He really knows nothing about them.  I don't want to use the C word, that would be indelicate.  But he's not curious at all, not even when I say that I have been debating with my cousin for eight years or so.

We talk a while longer as he lights up another cigarette, he tells me he is on disability now but used to be in construction.  He's 67, but looks a bit more weathered than that.  His cough is disconcerting.  That's a nasty cough.  His kids are 10-15 years my senior.  He started younger than my dad did obviously.  No mention of a wife.  Just dogs.  This guy is lonely but doesn't seem much into talking.  He really only wants to listen.  If I had to venture a guess, I'd say TV takes up a lot of his time.  Just wants to listen to something interesting, no engagement, loneliness lulled to sleep by the constant hum of the tube.

The Holy Spirit prompts me to ask to pray for him, but I don't.  I'm wicked and I know it.  I have no redeeming qualities.  I know Jesus is going to be the only way I am Justified.  My feeble works are worthless, and I get plenty of opportunities to remind myself of it.  But I don't feel condemned.  God loves me and for some reason, this divine appointment happened.  This guy showed up to see Jehovah's Witnesses and somehow ended up with me.  However, this man has no interest in knowing pros and cons of the Watchtower Organization.  He's not inquisitive at all.  I find that disappointing.  If I'm investigating something new, I want the upsides AND the downsides.  But I'm a thinking person, an intellectual, educated and learn more every day.

He's getting ready to go, I've told him that no one is here after confirming it with the guy on the phone.  We shake hands, twice and he walks to his truck.

Oh well, I'm not mad.  Cousin Bill has been giving me the runaround for years.  It's frustrating, but I have come to believe he's a true believer.  He has made peace with it.  He's doing enough in his mind and he's justified himself before God.  His mind is not open to new information.  He's well and truly programmed.

Where do I go from here?  Home.  I could have been at home with my family.  My days are numbered on this earth and I have spent far too many of them trying to talk to this Bill and getting little real engagement.  There's no relationship here.  He just wants me to hear what he has to say.  But he won't listen to what I say.  I am not saved by intake of knowledge.  I am not saved by belonging to an organization.  I am not saved works or preaching.  I am saved by Jesus.  As much of a jackass as I am, only Jesus saves.  But Jehovah's Witnesses treat Jesus like Jehovah's red-headed step-son.

Have a good evening.  I wish this evening would have been more fruitful, but all I have gotten are confirmations.  If I decide to go to a Kingdom Hall again, it won't be for Cousin Bill.  It will be for Fred.  Someone needs to warn him about what he's getting into.  And he wasn't getting my hints tonight.

Sol Visits a Kingdom Hall

I have been having a long time on-and-off email discussion with my cousin from California.  He was raised a Jehovah's Witness.

During my "dark night of the soul" last April, Cousin Bill (name changed) showed up again, interestingly enough.  It reminded me of how missionaries talk about how they are out in the jungles of Papua New Guinea (or wherever) and after months or years of work with the natives, the Witnesses show up and start muddying the waters with the new believers.  Think about the similarities between "did God really say you would die if you ate the fruit?" and "does the Bible really teach Jesus is God?"

So there I was, going through a heavy spiritual attack, going through counseling, deliverance ministry, and healing prayer (some of the most spiritually amazing things I have personally witnessed) and here shows up Cousin Bill again.

So I began to engage with him as I was also reaffirming my own faith.  I'll admit, I had become a bit passive in my faith practice.  I had gotten too interested in politics, work, and life and when a spiritual attack revealed itself, I had my guard down.  But this attack, with the help of friends both near and far, sharpened my faith, challenged me to reinvestigate the evidence, and discover God anew.  This then led to my acceptance of a mission to move almost a thousand miles and join a new church plant project and that is what I have been working toward and preparing for for the last seven months.

But through all of it, Bill was still there.  Pretty quickly, I got the feeling (we'll call it the Holy Spirit) that nothing I was saying was having any impact and that I shouldn't be doing it.  Sure enough, the longer it went, the more testy it got.  I tried to have an open mind, tried to approach the material with fresh eyes as I had not seen it in a few years.  But the same tired misinterpretations and mind control techniques pop up over and over again.

So as a last ditch effort, I tried something new.  Rather than focusing on the theology, I focused on experience and the 'mind control cult' angle.  What was revealed to me at this point was just how deep the rabbit hole goes.  I was positively amazed when after he listened to a sermon I sent him, it was as if he didn't even hear half of it, the half which recounted a couple miraculous events that happened at my church.  Just so you understand the context, JWs don't believe miracles happen today, they're cessationists in that regard.  So when I report miracles, either that have happened to me or people I know (I personally know all the pastors at my current church) it just doesn't compute.  Either I'm wrong and deluded or the thought is stopped altogether.  This revealed to me just how deep the mind control goes.

Now I can only explain how it works in my head but I assume it works similarly in most people's without this subconscious thought control training.  When I come across a divergent piece of information, I can reject it outright as not comporting with my mental framework, but that doesn't mean it doesn't stick.  I might think to myself "how can I address this objection to such and such a framework that I hold?"  Or actually more often than you might think, I think "you know, that's a really good point, I wonder if it holds up to scrutiny" and so I will spend some time looking up the topic and/or thinking about it to see if it changes my life or if I end up rejecting it.  These are the traits of a critical mind.

With Bill however, (the odd Witness who considers himself a student of everything and flirts with the rules about what information he can investigate) when he encountered things like miracles, it was like instant amnesia.  I could ask point blank about what he would skip and it's like it never happened.  It just didn't register.

One of these traits is tied to a well known logical fallacy.  The ad hominem fallacy is one in which one may direct an attack at a person rather than the argument, but I think a more apt description here is sort of a reverse argument from authority.  In an argument from authority, the source is considered true just because of who the source is.  Here I say the source is considered always to be false, just because of what the source used to be.  As part of the Milieu Control aspect of mind control, a subject is directed to ignore anything that comes from an ex-member of the group.  With JWs, this bears out in the term "apostate."  JWs will not read anything they know to be apostate material, written by an apostate, a former JW.  They will not listen to them speak.  Apostates are to be shunned.  Ex-members are to be shunned even if they are your own family member.

So when I talk to Bill and I know about all the workings of the organization, everything I say is automatically a lie or a deception by those wicked apostates who are only out there to make Jehovah's Organization look bad.  Bill quite literally cannot address a single one of the arguments because they come from apostates.  He won't (can't) look at a website written by an apostate.  He refuses to admit any information I got from apostates is true, no matter the obviousness of it.  It's from apostates, therefore it is not worth addressing.  It's like a phobia.  In fact, it's very much like a phobia.

As the owner of a critical mind on the other hand, I can tell you it works quite differently.  If anything, I consider material from apostates far more important than stuff from your garden variety atheist.  The atheist doesn't have much experience in what he's talking about.  The apostate has been on the inside, they know how it works, and they probably know how to hit harder because they know the soft spots.  These people must be taken seriously because they can do the most damage.  If it weren't for the mind control, JWs would address these like I do because they really are doing the most damage to their organization and it is precisely because they are being ignored that this damage is happening.  Rather than engage and oppose the opponent, they ignore, which as anybody knows, most often results in defeat.  These days, the numbers show that JWs are having their butts handed to them and I'd say it's mostly because the apostates have been recruited by God to do the job.  The sea change in the culture is helping too.

So if I've learned one thing throughout this experience, it's that it's not about doctrine.  It's not about theology.  It's not about beliefs.  It's not even about the Bible.  It's about mind control.  Every other thing is built around a system of control.  Naturally, to Bill, this is a totally bogus assertion.  Of course there is no mind control.  We have no person we're following.  There's no fear or oppression at our meetings.  Do you really think if it were that easy to spot it would still be working after all these years?  Do you think they're going to tell you what they're doing?  Do you think they're going to teach you to spot similar things in other organizations?  Of course not.  They're going to give you a bogus description of what a cult is and refute it.  That's called a Strawman Fallacy.

So rather than engage with Bill on theological issues, I decided I'd engage on only one, the one he's totally unprepared for.  Now you might ask "why would he go for that?"  Good point.  And if he were a garden variety Witness, you'd be right.  But he's not.  Remember, he's one of those intellectual types and he has an urgent burning need for me to hear his point of view.  I mean it's amazing the drive of this need.  After I broke off our continuing conversations, he started pestering me on Facebook, sniping any post or status he could worm around to addressing one of his doctrines.  So after doing my best to quash it and failing, I finally said that what I'd really like to talk about is how the Watchtower is (or isn't) a mind control cult.

Now here's where the great thing happened, he made me a deal.  He claims he'll talk about it if I go to a meeting so I can see that all this mind control stuff isn't actually going on.  The thing is, I've already seen videos of meetings.  I know what goes on there.  But in a sense, he has a point.  I haven't been to a JW meeting (though I've been to a Mormon church service, a hyper charismatic church service, and thousands of Seventh-Day Adventist church services).  And if you follow me on Twitter (@wiredforstereo) you know I like #newthings.  So I really couldn't turn it down, even if a deal wasn't involved.  I can't say the timing is good, but I think it's important to do this because then I can address the real issue, the mind control.

So what I'm asking here is for suggestions, possible questions to ask, things to look for, thoughts or insights.  I'd like to live blog it like I could at my church but I get the feeling that tapping away on a laptop during the meeting would be fiercely looked down upon so I don't want to do that. It's much easier to get away with that sort of thing when there's a thousand people in the room with you and there's a couple other people in the room taking notes on a computer too, but a Kingdom Hall is not like that at all.  First there are a lot fewer people and they're paying close attention to what's going on.  They've got third grade level pre-set questions to answer.  And any of you who have gone through third grade and also looked at the Watchtower materials know what I'm talking about.  Now why is a group of adults paying such close attention and answering such obvious closed-ended questions?  Need I say it, mind control.

I hope to be able to bring you some more information on this here in the future.  As I've mentioned to Bill, there are so many of these that the material has been well developed and it isn't even from apostates.  Many of them aren't even religious, there are business cults too.  But they all have the same family of controls and methods.

Pray for me if that's the sort of thing you're called to.  I want to do all this with gentleness and respect and I'm not always the best at it.  And finally I think I may have found the chink in the armor.

Trying Out the Holman Christian Standard Bible

When I first began reading the Bible in earnest, I used the NIV (New International Version).  The NIV is a very good translation.  It took a lot of criticism in the beginning, largely I believe, because it was such a break from the then tradition of biblical translation.  However, it’s been a number of decades and a lot of the KJV (King James Version) Only crowd have died off.  Many many more translations have been produced and the NIV has more or less fallen out of the popular spotlight though it is still quite popular.  Anyway, that’s the one I read at the time.  Using that Bible, I read through the New Testament a handful of times and the minor prophets and a few other Old Testament books here and there.

Then I heard about the ESV (English Standard Version).  It gained some sexiness in the mid 20-oughts.  Add to that, the Crossway covers (very sexy) and that was the first Bible I bought.  They had a free Kindle version too, which was nice.  Mark Driscoll also endorsed it along with a number of the Calvinist crowd.  But reading through the Bible, I started noticing some liberties being taken, especially in numerology.  People do complain about versions and the conversion of the word “man” to “people” but that’s not really what I’m after.  What I started noticing was that certain phrases or words were translated in ways other than the original text warranted.  It was things like in Exodus 20:6 where it says “showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me.”  In the foot notes it says “or to the thousandth generation.”  A simple interpretation of a thought, yes, but when you mess with numbers in the Bible, you are missing with contextual meanings.  Can’t do that.  “Thousand” is used a number of times in the

Bible and specific meaning can be drawn from its usage. 

Compare the NIV:  “but showing love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me.”

Compare the HCSB:  “but showing faithful love to a thousand [generations] of those who love Me.”

These make interpretations too, but they keep the terminology and they demonstrate what they’re doing while they’re doing it.  No footnotes.  Well, the NIV left out steadfast/faithful.

Another problem I have with many modern translations of the Bible is the traditional lack of translation of God’s personal name in the text.  Of course anybody reading the text knows that LORD means YHVH, the Hebrew transliteration of God’s name, so God’s name has not been “left out,” just left untranslated for tradition sake.  Virtually all scholars agree that the correct pronunciation of the tetragrammaton (four letter name) of God is Yahweh or Yah’weh.  But few translations of the Bible do.

So I started reading LORD as Yahweh in my own personal reading.  The thing is, the name is used A LOT, over 6000 times in the Old Testament.  But I was still reading the ESV, a version I knew had problems I didn’t like.

I had been told about the Holman Christian Standard Bible a while back by a Jehovah’s Witness or two.  They use the name Jehovah (a bastardized and Anglicized version of God’s name) profusely and stick it in everywhere in the OT and everywhere they feel it necessary to excise Jesus’ divinity in the New Testament.  Naturally, I distrusted anything coming from a JW.  They are after all perhaps the most well-known dangerous mind control cult.  But I came upon the HCSB on my own one day when researching the name Yahweh. 

The HCSB uses Yahweh when the name of God is stated in the Hebrew.  For instance, if the author says something like “our God, whose name is the LORD” it doesn’t really make much sense in English.  It’s like “they call me the Doctor!”  “Doctor who?”  “Exactly.”  Well, fun, but not useful.  It would seem to me a better translation would be “our God, whose name is Yahweh.”  Now you know what we’re talking about.

The HCSB still uses LORD pretty regularly.  They only use Yahweh a few more than one in ten times.  But remember, the name is in there over 6000 times.  That’s like eight times per page.

So after reading virtually all the Bible in NIV, and again in ESV, now I’m reading the HCSB.  Of course I still have access to every version available on various Bible apps, and my personal copies of the ESB, NIV, NASB, and even the Greek NT.  I can’t wait to get back to the New Testament to see how the HCSB translates those.

Update: Was the New World Translation mentioned as the most accurate translation of the Bible on Jeopardy?

I wrote about this several years ago and I have continued to get plenty of hits on the subject.  So having this subject kept fresh in mind, I have had plenty of chances to go back and re-look for evidence of its happening.

The myth is (via chain email) that on Jeopardy, Alex Trebek once presented an answer to the effect of "The most accurate translation of the Bible" to which the question was "The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures by The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society."

Did this ever happen?

The short answer is no.

I have never found any evidence of it.  Not on YouTube, not on Google Video, and not now that the entire archive of Jeopardy questions and answers is available online.  http://www.j-archive.com/

You are free to check for yourself.  But I have found more evidence for Michael Jackson still being alive.  Michael Jackson was a Jehovah's Witness as well, but that's neither here nor there.

The important thing here, aside from the evidence or lack thereof, is that you need to learn to think critically.

Let's review the situation here:

1.  The claim is from an email forward.  Anyone familiar with these, or Snopes.com or other debunking websites knows that email forwards are almost invariably universally unequivocally always false.  In my estimation, I'd say that upwards of 90-95% of all emails are completely bogus or at the very least offer a real picture with a false explanation.  NEVER place any trust in ANY email forward, it's like going to the casino and betting that you'll win every time.  It doesn't work that way.

2.  The claim is that the topic appeared on Jeopardy, a pop culture and history quiz show where people win actual money, is widely viewed, and features geniuses.  'The most accurate translation of the Bible' is a 100% subjective item, especially between the camps of Jehovah's Witnesses and the rest of Christendom.  Such a thing I dare say would never appear on Jeopardy.

3.  Consider the state of religion today.  If such a thing had happened, it would have been leaped upon by every religious media program there is.  It would be on the Bible Answer Man, it would be heard from the podcasts of innumerable pulpits, and it would be on every apologetics website there is.  However, the truth is, it isn't in any of these places.  There is a simple and overwhelming lack of evidence.  It's as if someone said "in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska sometime between the years of 1984 and 2005, a man played checkers with a cornbread bust of Abraham Lincoln."  There's just no evidence.

I have heard several anecdotal reports of the question.  However, as we know, anecdotal evidence is one of the most unreliable pieces of evidence there is.  All humans have a propensity to remember things not as they were, but as some sort of glorified or horrified version of events.  The truth is, we make things up and we forget things and in our own minds without corroborating evidence, it always all still fits together seamlessly.  That's how our minds work.  But its only when you go back and watch that old film of the vacation at the lake do you realize that the boat was actually blue and not red.

The best explanation I have found for this happening is that there was some sort of church youth event which taught about different religions and at the end there was a Jeopardy style quiz for the youth to answer questions about what they had learned.  There was a question about which Bible JW's read and the answer was of course the New World Translation.  From there, it morphed into what we know as this phenomenon today where people still insist despite the evidence and logic that they saw that particular episode of Jeopardy even though they can't point to a time and even though the archive of Jeopardy questions contains it not.

It's sad that even today people will hold on to belief in something that doesn't matter in the slightest and that there is absolutely no evidence for.

Let it go.

It didn't happen, and it wouldn't matter if it did.

Why it was a Cross.

My very intelligent cousin (who as you may have seen here before is a Jehovah's Witness) gave me a reply on a question I had asked about when JW's believe that the apostate church began to use the T (tau) shaped cross as the one Jesus was crucified on. So this is pretty much why the T shaped cross is the correct one.

Well, since you asked……………….

Actually, I was reading about the historical concept of crucifixion after listening to a pastor talk about how it disgusts him to see non Christians wearing crosses considering how much of a tortuous death it represented. And then I came across an item called the Alexamenos Graffito. It was discovered in Rome and dates as far back as 85 CE. Most scholars believe it shows the mocking description of a Christian. It appears to show a man on a cross with the head of a donkey and contains the caption "Alexamenos worships [his] God." Naturally, I wondered at the dating of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ apostasy and when they believe Christians changed the shape of the stake into the cross.

I understand your initial answer, but you misunderstood my question. What I was asking was when you believe people began to believe that Jesus was crucified on a cross and not a stake, not when they began using crosses as symbols and in worship. So I appreciate all your research, however, it does not answer the question. However, you did say that it was around the middle of the third century, so that answers my question.

I know why you brought up the other cultures and their cross similarities, it is because you were taught that the origin of the cross was pagan. However, you are committing what people in debate call the genetic fallacy. Basically it means you are comparing someone and something they do to someone who did the same thing who is bad and saying that the someone shouldn’t do that because the someone who did it before was bad. For instance, just because Hitler was a vegetarian doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vegetarians. Other examples abound. JW’s policies on birthdays and holidays follow the same fallacy. Our not doing something needs to be based in whether or not it is actually sin, not whether or not a sinner has done it. What I am saying is this, just because some other pagan culture has used a cross does not mean we cannot. Pagans use Bibles for all sorts of strange rituals, it doesn’t mean we can’t use the Bible legitimately.

Another thing that does not at all surprise me from Jehovah’s Witnesses, but does surprise me coming from you was your choice of what page to send me. On the very page from which you quote and forwarded to me, the historical record shows that early Christians thought of the cross of Christ as a T (tau,) (last paragraph.) I encounter this time after time after time. This is called selective quoting or sometimes deceptive quoting. It is when a person quotes a book to support a position when the book substantially disagrees with the position. I have found that the tract “Should You Believe in the Trinity” is full of these. In fact, I believe more than one author quoted there has released a statement saying that the quote was taken out of context and in fact means the opposite of what it was purported to say.

Here’s my position, based on historicity.

By Jesus time, the words stauros and xylon could mean stake, cross, or a number of other wooden items, so we cannot deduce an exact meaning from a single one of the definitions of the word. So we must look at the historical evidence. From the time of Jesus, none of the Christian fathers or other writers espoused the idea that Jesus was crucified on anything but a cross, either a T or t. That idea has only been explored in the last 150 years or so.

Church fathers support the idea of a cross beam well before the JW’s claim the switch happened. Second century writers Justin Martyr and Irenaeus claim the cross. Also in the same century were Clement of Alexandria and whoever wrote the Epistle of Barnabas written before 135. And before the end of that century Tertullian wrote that Christians were known for marking themselves with the sign of the cross. Others before the end of the second century include Origen, Lucian, Celsus, whoever wrote the Odes of Solomon, the writer of the Acts of Peter, and Hyppolytus of Rome. Marcus Minucius Felix responded to the charge that Christians worshiped crosses and made the distinction between the cross of Christ which was not worshiped and the crosses of pagans. All this before Jehovah’s Witnesses say the change took place. I was actually surprised how much evidence there is. And the only counter argument is based on one of many definitions of two words.

Furthermore, from a perspective of the purpose of the cross, a single upright stake makes no sense. The purpose of the cross was to draw out death, to be as tortuous as possible. Roman citizens were not to be crucified. A vertical pole causes death by asphyxiation in minutes when Jesus death took hours, and the Romans were even surprised when he died so quickly.

The last thing I must challenge you to look upon with a critical eye is your opinion on the cross itself. I know Jehovah’s Witnesses are taught to look upon the cross with disgust as an instrument of torture, however, this is not exactly biblical. Galatians 6:14 says “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Paul said that he should boast in nothing except the cross. He actually said to boast in the cross, not to be disgusted by it as one might be with an electric chair or hangman’s noose. For Christians, the cross is not a symbol of death, but of life and victory. The cross is empty, because Jesus is no longer there. His death would be useless if not for his bodily resurrection which as he said would be his triumph over death.

In conclusion, “The cross was not … worshiped by the early Christians.” (Beliefs and Customs That Displease God. Quoted from the official Jehovah’s Witnesses website.) I agree with this because it agrees with history, however, the assertion that Jesus was not crucified on a T or t shaped cross simply does not follow the evidence.

Thanks for your time and I hope I have been polite.

WiredForStereo

Done with Jehovah's Witnesses

Today I've decided that I'll not longer write about Jehovah's Witnesses unless specifically asked to. I don't feel I need to any more because of what it does to me.

I have spent too many years in spiritually dry apologetics. I have known for a long time what this stuff does to me, but after reading The Shack, I've decided to give it up. I know what is correct and incorrect, I've studied alot, but at this point, it is a simple waste of time for me spiritually speaking.

So, unless you want to ask me questions, I will answer those, but unless there is something especially grevious, I'm done.

I will keep stealing Watchtowers and Awake!s from bus stops though.
WiredForStereo

Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Poor

If you have ever read any literature published by Jehovah’s Witnesses, you pick up real quick that they love themselves. You know what I mean. They spend endless amounts of time in their writings expounding the virtues and accomplishments of the organization. Never will you find a critical thought or question in the write-in sections. It is all praise and wonder for Jehovah’s visible organization.

Interestingly enough, they also expounded their generosity to the poor in last years May 1, 2006 Watchtower article entitled “Who Will Help the Poor.” It really is a wonderful article that talks about how Jehovah’s Witnesses have helped the poor around the world, unless you know the truth, or are discerning enough to read through the flowery B. S. in the text. If you pay close attention, you’ll notice that none of the poor helped are non-witnesses. What? Surely not you say.

It’s true, and it is borne out on the back cover of the September 1, 2003 edition of the Watchtower in a short called “Real Help for the Poor.” Conspicuously absent is any “real help” at all. The only “help” is a Jehovah’s Witness on your doorstep telling you how it will be in the recreated earth. That’s right, no food, no financial assistance, only worthless words about a future paradise. Now I certainly do believe in future paradise, but we are called to care for the poor and weak here and now.

The New World Translation translates Psalm 72:13 to say that God “feels sorry” for the weak and needy whereas the ESV says, “He has pity.” See the difference? Having pity leads to action, whereas feeling sorry leads to nothing. What good is someone who just feels sorry and yet does nothing? True Jesus Freaks actually do stuff, not just to proselytize people to try to get them to join their religion, but we help people regardless of their religious background because Christ fed thousands, many of whom were not believers at all, and some likely were only there to criticize him.

Nowhere in the Bible that I know of does God say that only the needy or poor believers should be cared for, but all people. Jehovah’s Witnesses love to talk about all the homes they rebuilt after hurricane Katrina, but they neglect to tell you that they didn’t rebuild anybody’s house that was not a “brother.”

A recent study found that Jehovah's Witnesses were the poorest of major religious groups. Their never ending disdain toward education is a primary cause of this. Secondary education is even lower on their list. They discourage education in favor of pioneering, leading to lives unfulfilled, performing menial labor and endless door to door evangelism. They want to tell us they help the poor when they are the poor.

Jehovah’s Witnesses love to tell you about how true religion shows true love. But, are they the only religious organization with love? They seem to think so. The problem that I have with this is the following. What love do they show any one who is not one of them? Showing up at your door to tell you their “good news” doesn’t count because unless you become one of them, they really don’t care. Jesus told us to love our enemy, how much more should we love the harmless and unfortunate?

Poverty is not a family value.
WiredForStereo

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Some people will never change.

After all that has happened, does anyone trust Bill Clinton to tell the truth?

I am not knocking Democrats here. I've got no particular bones to pick. I am a Moderate Independent, a registered independent. I've got no party affiliations. One thing I do hate though, is misquoting. Because it is a form of lying that I consider particularly distasteful. What it does is to not just lie, but to say that someone said they didn't. It is not only lying yourself, but bringing in an innocent outsider to make your point.

The Bible calls this "bearing false witness against your neighbor." I believe it is one of the more important of the biblical mandates, having been listed with the eponymous "Ten Commandments." As you may have read in previous posts in this blog, misquoting is something I really am disgusted with. I encounter it quite often with Jehovah's Witnesses. The reason there is that Witnesses are not allowed to read anything not published by the Watchtower organization, so the writers and higher ups are free to quote anyone and everything and make it agree with them. Most of the time, I don't even see why they bother to actually selectively quote or misquote, when they can just as easily write their own material between the quotation marks and call it good.

Again, let me say that I am in no way endorsing any candidate for president in this post. Nor am I endorsing any party.

Bill Clinton in commenting on Barack Obama's war stance got all high and mighty saying that Obama had changed his opinion back in 2004. You should be able to find this from any news source. He was making this speech and getting all heated and uptight saying how the media was sanitizing what was going on. So he says that Obama wasn't sure and quoted the New York Times article. He used this to point out how Obama was wishy washy and all. But the truth is, if you look at the rest of the quote, you will notice that Obama actually said that he wasn't sure, he didn't think the case was made [for the war]. If you ask a jury member why he didn't convict, and he says "I'm not sure, I don't think the case was made for him being guilty, so I voted not guilty," is that wishy washy?

What I am wondering is why did Bill even bother? How obvious is it that he has never even read that article, or, if he did, deliberately misquoted it. C'mon Bill. I want to like you, you did great things for balancing the budget, you shrunk the military, you didn't start any wars, you are a smart guy and a hard worker, but you are a freakin' liar.

So my question is still, do we trust Bill, or has he worn that out? If I were his wife, at what point do I stop trusting him? "Sorry honey, I did fondle that chick, and I'm really sorry, I'll never do it again.......any more..........today." Or is she a wife of priveledge who has long given up asking her husband that he be faithful to her.

I'm not voting for anyone right now.
WiredForStereo

Truth is Over There!!!

I was pondering Jehovah’s Witnesses again the other day, and just going over their modes of thinking to try to understand just how they work. And something came to me. I remember growing up as a Seventh Day Adventist, and I really didn’t know what the world was all about. The vast majority of the Seventh-Day Adventists I know (and am related to) are what I’d call religious but not spiritual. The truth is, the Spirit is what draws a person, religion draws people who want to be right. That is what religion really is after all, it is a system wherein you learn the truth handed down in the form of rules. Thus, if you follow the rules, you are right, end of story.

Spirituality and true Jesus Freakiness is about a relationship. Jesus fulfilled the law and all the rules, so they are no longer in a list for us to follow, but they are written on our hearts. We don’t need to do something or not do something because the Bible says so, we do or don’t because it is the way we have become. We live as Christ lives in us. This was the kind of thing I didn’t understand as an SDA. When I wanted to reach out to a neighbor girl (I was like 8, as was she) all I could do was to invite her to church. I did this because I didn’t know Jesus, the best I could do was to point her to someone who did, I thought.

I find this same philosophy or mentality with JW’s. All they have is what they have been told, what they read. There is nothing written on their hearts. They are not Jehovah’s Witnesses, they haven’t witnessed anything, they just heard about it, that makes them Jehovah’s Gossips. How does that play out? They leave Watchtowers and Awake!s around at bus stops and park benches and hospital lobbies where I find them and take them home to add to my collection. What they are saying is "Look at this, surely this will convince you because I'm shooting blanks spiritually speaking." Some SDA's can tend to do the same thing with Ellen White.

Perusing the internet, I found a website called something like Six Screens of the Watchtower. This guy had been disfellowshipped and actually taped the meeting by sticking a recorder in a cut out in one of the books he had brought to the meeting. After he had pled his case and offered his arguments, he was temporarily dismissed for a closed door meeting. And then………….virtual silence. What was going on? All to be heard was rustling of pages. No speaking, and as far as I could tell, no critical or individual thinking. They were looking up verses and passages in their books, there was not a thought among them. That is what separates a religious person from a spiritual person. Spirituality in the correct context draws all power from the Holy Spirit. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in the Holy Spirit per se, therefore, they can’t really come up with much creative content.

What impresses me is when someone can witness without a Bible in his or her hand, because you know it is in his or her heart, and they do not need to get the words right because the Spirit is working directly through them. This is what the essence of a true believer is. We don’t all need to be missionaries to other countries, but we do all need to be missionaries here where we do live. We can’t all be preachers or pastors, but we can all disciple others.

And for any Jehovah’s Witnesses, before you complain about being insulted, why not actually read what is written and ask yourself if it is true.

If it is not, then complain.

WiredForStereo

What's the most accurate bible translation, who is Dr. Jason BeDuhn, and why Alex Trebek?

Good day,

Well, the old blog gets more hits than this one still, and it is simply because of Alex Trebek and Jason BeDuhn.

Let me explain.

A half of a year back I had posted on the Jeopardy question involving which bible translation was the best, why the supposed best translation is not the best, and what Jason BeDuhn said in his book "Truth in Translation." So, I've decided to rehash this subject for those of you out there still trying to find answers to these questions. The reason being is this, I believe that if the truth is found in more places, more people will find it.

Did Alex Trebek really ask “What is the most accurate bible translation?” on Jeopardy?

No, he did not. I can find no evidence anywhere that this ever happened, and anyone who stops to think about it for a few minutes would conclude that long before seeking any evidence. There is no YouTube evidence, there is little anecdotal aside from Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I cannot be sure about this, but I have found hints of some sort of message from the people at Jeopardy that this question never was asked. The assertion is simply ridiculous. Why would a secular game show tackle such a hotly debated religious issue? Simply mind boggling how anyone could come up with such a ludicrous idea.

Did Dr. Jason BeDuhn really write that the New World Translation was the best translation?

There is some truth to this one. However, as is usual in Jehovah’s Witnesses publications, selective quoting and misquoting are employed here (I have read the magazine this was published in) to make the NWT receive a more glowing review than it actually received. You see, it turns out that BeDuhn actually liked two versions of the Bible, one being the Jehovah’s Witness version, much debated, and the other being a Catholic version, which is also somewhat debated. So did he do this to sell books? Perhaps, but I will not make that accusation at this time. If you know Jehovah’s Witnesses, they don’t like Catholics a lot, so they conveniently leave that detail out of the magazine. What they also leave out is that BeDuhn has some pretty harsh criticism toward their use of the name “Jehovah” in the New Testament, something they are particularly proud of.

This is from Wikipedia:

“Dr. BeDuhn (Truth in Translation pg. 170) wrote of the mainstream practice of making the Old Testament conform to the New in its use of "Lord" and of the NWT practice of making the New Testament conform to the Old in it use of "Jehovah": "Both practices violate accuracy in favor of denominationally preferred expressions for God."”

The big question to me is why anyone would listen to Jason BeDuhn anyway. His Masters degree requires only an intermediate level of competence in Greek. His PhD from the University of Indiana is in Comparative Religious Studies, not in any Biblical languages. He is not recognized in the scholarly community as an expert in Biblical Greek. His other book is an analysis of religions as goal-oriented systems of practice rationalized within particular models of reality. I stress here GOAL ORIENTATED systems. Is your faith a “goal orientated system”? This guy has no business commenting on religious issues whatsoever, much less bible translations.

Finally, is the New World Translation the best translation? Or, for those search engines out there: What is the best bible translation?

Absofreakinglutely not. The guys who wrote the book are the following: Frederick William Franz, George Gangas, Karl Klein, Nathan Knorr, Albert Schroeder, and Milton Henschel. Each and every one of these guys was a Jehovah’s Witness, and all high up Witnesses as well. How is it possible that a group of human beings, who all substantially agree on a particular position not publish a book agreeing with that position and not be biased as the Witnesses claim they were not. I would expect a group of hippies to be in favor of legalizing marijuana and a group of oil tycoons to be in favor of refinery subsidies, wouldn’t you? Therefore, I expect a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses to be for their own translation no matter what kind of bias there was or wasn’t, because they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

From Wikipedia.

“It has been argued that the NWT translators were insufficiently qualified to translate the Bible, with only Franz having formal education in Biblical languages. It has also been argued that the size of the translation committee was very small compared to the number of translators involved in producing most other English translations. These criticisms are disputed by Witnesses, who state that the translation should be examined on its own merits, not on the speculated credentials of its translators.”

Let me ask you this. If I hired Ed and his buddies, all teenage McDonalds employees to build me a house, should I be happy with the end result because it is the right color, or should I take a closer look to make sure they actually did all the framing, electrical, and plumbing to code? Chances are, people who have little experience or education in what they are doing will do a poor job, regardless of what the end result *looks like*. So it is no surprise that when one examines the NWT on its own merits, we find that the hot water valve is on the right side of the sink and when you flip the light switch in the living room, the dish washer comes on.

The NIV I hear, was written by a group of several dozens of people, all whose credentials we know. It contained men and women, from a variety of backgrounds, and I’ve even heard there were one or two atheists and homosexuals among them. It was revised over a period of years by many people of similarly varying backgrounds. It would seem to me that people who disagree would, in the end, come to a more unbiased conclusion than people who agree. Don’t you agree?

Thinking people would agree ;-)

WiredForStereo

Important Question

Is it stealing? Is it a sin?

Lately, I have been swiping Jehovah's Witnesses printed materials from benches and bus stops and whatnot. Now, if I was actually interested in the material, this would be ok, but I'm not, well a little, but not for any eternal reasons.

The only reason I'm swiping all these Watchtowers and Awake!s is that I don't want anyone to read them, not just to hog them to myself, but i really dont want ANYONE to read them.'

Is it wrong to do this? I've asked several people, and have not gotten a straight answer. Here's my logic. It's not stealing because no one owns them, and they were left in the open for the specific purpose of being picked up by someone, however, not for the reasons I pick them up.

Anyway, I've decided that it is part of my covert plan to make sure there are fewer JW's in the future. Not that I want to kill them or anything, I just believe that their particular brand of religion is the same brand that Jesus decried when he said that the pharasees weighed the people down and didn't lift a finger to help them, and in the end, they were twice the sons of hell that the pharasees were. That's my perspective on the thing.

Have a great day, and throw some errant literature away today, it might save someone's soul.
WiredForStereo

Anointed Class Jehovah's Witnesses, God's Foot in the Door?

Jehovah's Witnesses belonging to the "Anointed Class" are the ones who have "heavenly hope," the 144,000 mentioned in Revelation. This class is supposed to be dying out. Their number was to be completed in 1935, however, there just seem to be several more who keep popping up every year. I believe this is God's covert operation to infiltrate Jehovah's Witnesses and draw some of them out by impressing upon them that they have the "heavenly hope" which what all real Christians have.

I was brushing up on my JWish lately, looking at a website called sixscreensofthewatchtower.com and was listening to a hidden microphone taping of a judicial hearing. The first thing I noticed was the absolute lack of independent thinking ability of the elders, I mean absolutely no imagination at all. The second thing was that the so called Anointed of the JW's tend to be looked down upon by other Witnesses, often disfellowshipped and made to feel not welcome. In fact, the guy who taped the meeting, Rick Fearon, was, with his wife, one of the anointed. They became such by an impression of the Holy Spirit that they had the heavenly hope. That hope led them to leave the Watchtower Society, and be disfellowshipped for some of their actions.

Now, I'll say right here that I don't agree with many of Mr. Fearon's tactics, threatening lawsuits, taping secret meetings and such, but I admire him for standing up for truth and exposing falsehood. I do totally understand his underhanded tactics however, you don't spend 50 years in prison without getting a few tattoos if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I have come to believe that the concept of the anointed class is God's infiltration into the organization, because we all know, it's not Yahweh God's Organization, it's Jehovah god's organization, and the problem with our Anglicized bastardization of God's name is what it really means in the original language. Hold on to your chairs now, in Hebrew, "Je-hovah" means "I am the destroyer."

Go Figure.
WiredForStereo

Another Post Regarding Jehovah's Witnesses and Stuff

I was talking to a guy this evening about translations of the Bible, and he had mentioned that he got some info from a University of Arkansas professor named Daniel Levine who happens to be Jewish (that's *not Christian* to any Witnesses reading this, so essentially free from that specific bias) and who has a B. A. degree in Greek and Latin and had commented on John 1:1. Now I've never thought of it this way before, having to argue the meanings of words and grammar and all, but when he looks at this verse (and not from a Christian perspective) he sees simple context, that being, that the author is talking about God, the God, and only God.

Anyway, there's a real live university professor who has a relatively unbiased opinion and a degree in Greek, which kinda negates Jason BeDuhn who doesn't have one and who was educated by a Christian founded University. I have a copy of the email and can quote Dr. Levine if anyone really needs to see it.

However, in my recent studies, I've come to the conclusion that arguing with Witnesses based on Scripture and reason are useless. They have their own version of both. Their "new light" stuff is particularly interesting. They claim that as time goes on, the light gets brighter and brighter leading toward the truth. Now in concept this is a fabulous idea. In practice however, it tends to fail as the Witnesses use it.

Lemme tell you about a great parallel that I read. Say your mother died when you were a child and your father tried to ease you into the truth because you were very young, and he didn't want to traumatize you. So over the years, he gradually told you more and more details about what happened. This makes sense in the "progressive light" model. The Watchtower's progressive light works a little more like this: same story, your mother dies when you are young, and your father wants to protect you from being traumatized, only story goes like this. You are three years old, your father tells you that your mother has gone away and won't come back. At 10 years old, he tells you that she died in a car accident. At 12 years old he tells you she didn't die after all and lives in Jersey. At 15 years old he tells you she died of cancer. At 17 years old, he tells you she died of alcoholism, and at 18 finally he tells you it was a murder suicide and that she killed your younger brother before taking her own life.

Which is the more logical definition of "progressive light?" The Watchtower's version of progressive light is not adding facts onto facts to build a newer more full version of the truth, it is to present ever more mutually exclusive "facts" and calling them "new light." If you take a minute to think for yourself about it, the first two presidents of the Watchtower Society would be disfellowshipped before they could take a step in the Kingdom Hall front door, and the third would be disfellowshipped before he could sit down. It's not that they have added truth upon truth, it is that with every new discovered "truth," they must progressively reject some older "truth." The problem with this is that the older "truth" is now falsehood, and that means that for a time, "Jehovah's Visible Organization" taught falsehood and false teachings and likely disfellowshipped people for not believing them. I cannot imagine Almighty Jehovah God himself allowing false teachings to so pervade his "only divine channel" to the point that false teachings were preached for over half of the organizations existence. Look inside the cover (or wherever it is) of the Awake! magazines for the "mission statement." It used to mention the generation alive at 1914. It doesn't anymore, why is that?

Real truth always builds on truth, and never contradicts previously established truth. For instance, Watchtower publications used to claim that as time went on, further evidence for the "torture stake" theory would be discovered. For obvious reasons, they no longer claim this. It has proved not to be true. Charles Taze Russell (founder and first president of the Watchtower) used to teach that the Great Pyramid was "God's stone witness," however later teachings "correctly" identify the pyramid as "Satan's stone witness." So whose is it?

Mistakes and corrections are different. I used to believe some things that I no longer do, but also, I no longer attend a church that teaches those things, and if still did, I would not be disfellowshipped from said church for said beliefs. And I don't think I was "lost" during those times either, but as I grew in the grace (undeserved kindness) and love (love) of Jesus Christ, he exposed me to things I had not considered before. It wasn't that the pyramid was God's witness and now it isn't anymore, it was that I could shed certain beliefs that were not necessary for salvation, an acceptance of grace and release of the law. A paring down of essentials, not continual rejection of the old and adoption of the new. The difference is that salvation is by grace, not by works or even sometimes certain beliefs. To be saved, it doesn't matter what I believe about blood, or Christmas, or Armageddon, or birthdays, or whether or not it was a cross or a stake.

With Christianity came a paradigm shift. It was based not on paganism, but Judaism, as Jesus was a Jew. Is it simple coincidence that Christmas falls at the same time as Hanukkah or winter solstice? Which came first? Solstice is a natural occurrence that has existed from the dawn of time, so how is it pagan just because pagans decide to hold celebrations on that day, God created it. Hanukkah however was a Jewish holiday commemorating the re-dedication of the temple after its desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. It is even mentioned in the Bible in John when Jesus is in the Temple walking Solomon's Portico in winter. So as far as Christmas, who is copying who? Since Jesus was a Jew, and as such celebrated Hanukkah, I would vote that Satan copies God's people, not the other way around.

Peace be with you,
WiredForStereo

Most Accurate Bible Translation Question on Jeopardy with Alex Trebek and Jehovah's Witnesses Apparent Continual Spreading of this Myth, +Jason BeDuhn

WOW, I have gotten so many, I repeat MANY searches directed to this blog on this question. I did a quick search myself and discovered that my blog is the second in line on GOOGLE on this subject.

You can check the archives for this blog for the email forward I received from my cousin. He is a Jehovah's Witness, and apparently received this email from someone else, likely a JW also. Seeing all of you here leads me to believe you either got the same email or one similar.

Now, I'd love to go into just how many issues I have with the New World Translation of the Bible, however, there are just so many questionable verses, it would be exhausting to explore them all. This is a quick and simple post, so please don't leave a bunch of comments about how I've not done my research.

Many well educated scholars have called the NWT a poor translation, a woeful mistranslation, and a few other choice words I'll not mention here. Some others, very minor controversial scholars have praised it kinda. For instance, an Arizonan professor, Dr. Jason BeDuhn recently wrote a book in which he praised the NWT as the best translation. This is what you might have heard about in those annoying email forwards. This would be a compelling case, however Dr. BeDuhn also had some sharp criticism toward the NWT for it's insertion of Jehovah into the text where it otherwise does not exist. You would not know this however because Jehovah's Witnesses don't point that out for obvious reasons. I could provide a list, but facts are, BeDuhn is in the minority opinion, extreme minority.

Anyway, on to the issue of the Jeopardy Question.

I cannot find any evidence that the question about whether the most accurate version of the Bible is on Jeopardy ever occurred. Honestly, I don't expect to. I seriously doubt a secular game show would ever touch the question. Surely, if such a question ever existed, (I recieved the email months ago) it would have appeared on YouTube by now, which it hasn't, and you can do your own search, but I didn't find it.

So, is the NWT the most accurate "translation" of the Bible? In a word, no.

Why? Very simple. It is not true to the words in the original text. You see, I'd have much less discomfort with Witnesses and their bible if they simply translated the text true to the words and then took their own meaning from it. This however, is not what they do, they translate a meaning into the text when that is not the role of translation. Here's an example: John 8:58. Jesus says "Before Abraham was, I am." Look at the "I am" part. That's the key. You see, that is a direct allusion to Exodus 3:14 where Moses asks God what his name is and he says "I am." The NWT changes both of these, John to "I have been" and Exodus to "I shall prove to be." The problem is that the very same I am that Jesus uses in this case is the very same I am that he uses when he says I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, and I am the good Shepherd among others, even in the same chapter. You see, the pharisees and such knew that Jesus was claiming to be God when he said that, that's why they tried to kill him. And that single verse represents everything that I dislike about the NWT. It's not simple prejudice or some misguided religious fanaticism, the NWT is simply not true to the words of the text, forget what the text means, it's not true to the words of the text. There are 237 examples specifically. The divine name never appears in any manuscript of the New Testament, but it appears in the NWT 237 times. It's not in the originals, therefore it should not be there. It's as simple as that.

So what is a good version of the Bible to read? Just about any one that suits you except the NWT. I myself prefer the English Standard Version, because it tries to follow the subtle nuances of the original text even following some grammatical errors. There are a few places where I disagree with the translation because of the use of specific words or phrases which I think are significant, but even in those places, it still has the notes at the bottom that says what the word for word translation or alternate translations are. Otherwise, if you'd like to get a good idea of the original text, or just a good read, get a parallel edition that has two to four versions side by side. But honestly, any version that does not confuse the reader with ancient language (KJV) or obscure the truth (NWT) is a good version. It used to be that people complained about the KJV because you couldn't understand it, but that is no longer an excuse.

So that's all I got to say about that, for now. Keep studying, keep checking. Email forwards are almost invariably dishonest. No Jeopardy question by Alex Trebek, Jason BeDuhn is in the minority opinion, and the New World Translation is NOT the most accurate "translation" of the Bible. Much more to be said, but this is just a quick post that explores a single verse, and points out the obviousness of the Jeopardy! question. Please do read other posts on the subject, there are several.

WiredForStereo

Why I Believe in the Trinity

I was challenged recently by a Jehovah's Witness to explain the Trinity because I had consistently asserted that Jehovah's Witnesses have a horrible time understanding it. Here is the lion's share of my response edited so as to not be directed at any one person or group.

Sometimes when I say I don’t believe in the Trinity I don’t mean that I don’t believe in the Trinity. The words I use are something like “I personally believe that God is so much further beyond a simple one word definition than we can even understand, but Trinity is as close as many people can get”. For instance, I hold to the majority of what the creeds (Nicene, Athanasian, Apostle’s, etc.) say but I would say that I hold to none of them, because I believe not in models of doctrines, but in methods of study. “Models” cause us to play loose with Biblical interpretation, but proper methods of biblical and historical interpretation reveal the truth.

Now, I will mention of the word catholic a few times but don’t be put off by it. Catholic means universal, where as Roman Catholic is what he pope is.

The first use of the word “Trinity” came from a guy named Tertullian who lived from 155-230, long before the Nicene Council codified the creed in 325. However, the concept existed before him. He would not have needed a word for a concept that didn’t exist. In fact the concept had existed since before the temple fell in 70 AD when most of the apostles were still alive. The Didache (70 AD) mentions the Trinitarian formula for baptism. Ignatius of Antioch (35-107) who was a student of the Apostle John, and was appointed to the see of Antioch by Peter himself, speaks of the Father, Son and Spirit as equal and separate entities in several of his epistles. Justin Martyr (100-165) places the Father in first place, the Son in second place and the Spirit in third place. Theophilus of Antioch who died before 185 used the concept of the trinity before the word was created, in fact the in contemporary translated works, most authors translate the word he uses into the word trinity because it fits so closely to the doctrine of the trinity. Irenaeus who was a disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of John continues down the same road, and espoused the same three part formula. He also said “Whatever is begotten of God is God.” Then came Tertullian who coined the word Trinity. Origin (185-254) said that the Father, Son, and Spirit were all eternal, and spoke of the Trinity. Hippolytus of Rome who died in 235 said “…also the Word is God, being the being of God.” Novatian who died in 258 wrote that Jesus was God and also the Son of God, and spoke of Jesus as being God and man. Pope Dionysus who died in 268 wrote against people who spoke of there being three gods rather than one. He also said it was blasphemy to say that the Son was created. Gregory the Wonderworker (213-270) in his Declaration of Faith espoused exactly what people today do, that there is one God, a Trinity, who is forever existent. And the kicker is that all this was before the Nicene Creed, when many people say the “Trinity” came to be.

Here is how I understand the concept of the Trinity. Understand that I am not arguing from a majority Christian viewpoint, but from what I believe is defensible using the Bible only.

Before we get to it though, I must make a few points. Firstly, how I define God matters not. God can no more be defined by me than you can. God is self defining as a being self aware and with freedom of choice. We can only define someone as much as we can recognize them when we see them, or we can recognize their work or writings when we see those. Secondly, I don’t believe in “Jehovah, Jesus and the Holy Spirit” as the Jehovah’s Witnesses do. The Bible says Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one (feel free to insert Jehovah, I do sometimes to hear how Witnesses might say it). Jehovah (or probably better Yahweh) is God, and there is only one God, and no other gods. It is of the essence of Jehovah (Yahweh) that the Father, the Son and the Spirit Exist. The Father does not equal Jehovah as Witnesses see it.

Best put I think is this: The rope of the Trinity contains three strands. First, there is only one God, second, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God and third, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not the same but distinct. Don’t bump me for plagiarism here, I admit it, many of these concepts are borrowed from other writers but I have tried to explain it in a way that is original as possible. I am sure those writers borrowed some of their ideas from other writers because the whole thing goes back a long way.

Let’s explore these three strands Biblically. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which is a corruption of the other two, are all fiercely monotheistic. Isaiah 43:10 says, “Before me, no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am Jehovah (Yahweh or the LORD,) and besides me there is no savior.” I think we can all agree that the Bible claims only one God. Second, there are loads of places where the three are declared to be completely and fully God. Paul says “there is but one God, the Father” (1 Cor. 8:6). The Father, speaking of the Son says, “your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Hebrews 1:9). And in Acts 5, when Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit, Peter declares “You have not lied to men but to God.” Thirdly, we see a number of clear portrayals of relationships between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father and the Son love one another, and speak to one another (John 17:1-26) and together send the Holy Spirit (John 15:26). Modalism, Oneness or Sebellianism says that the three are one who merely fulfills three purposes at different times, but this makes no sense because of these obvious relationships. And the three separate beings of the godhead in Mormonism is clearly polytheism.

So what was the incarnate Jesus? I believe that people are body-spirit unities. When we die, our body is separated from our spirit, but our spirit is not a thing or does not have place and time like our body does. Just as God is Spirit, as the Bible says his followers worship him in spirit and in truth, he is omnipresent, or is present everywhere, or perhaps nowhere because he is spirit. So humans are an image of God, not because they look like him because he doesn’t have a “look” (indeed, we are close enough to monkeys or other animals) but because we are in spirit, like him, in his image because without a body, he has no physical image. Jesus, in the only way he could take our place as an atonement sacrifice, was to be exactly like us, consisting of a body and a spirit, only his spirit or essence was that of the almighty Yahweh (Jehovah.) That’s why Christians claim that Jesus was the God/man, fully God, yet fully man, being like man having a body and a spirit. Thus when Jesus was resurrected he told his disciples that a spirit did not have flesh and blood as they clearly saw that he had, and when he was taken into heaven, he remained as a body spirit unity, he could not have shed his earthly body after telling his disciples that he had one because that would make him a deceiver. Like saying “see, I told you I had a body” just to get rid of it when nobody was looking.

Some questions I’ve heard:

1. Are the three separate individuals with separate feelings etc.?

Yes and no. From eternity past, God was a perfect unity and communion of love and fellowship. If Jesus was at some point created, then for an eternity past beyond that Jehovah was alone. When the Word came to earth, he spent a huge amount of time by himself communing with the Father through the Spirit. There are a number of accounts of him getting up early in the morning or going up a mountain to pray. So on earth, he lacked that constant communion. He was therefore at times not in perfect communion and in reality as a human was not able to be infinite in any way, as we are not. He therefore was able not to know the day or the hour of his coming, something you would expect that God would know. But now that he has returned to sit at the right hand of the Father (figuratively since a spirit has no hands) he once again is in constant communion however he retains his human body and will return in the same way that his followers saw him go at the resurrection at the end.

2. Equal in power?

Not so much when Jesus was on earth. But united in power now, there is no difference in power, infinite is infinite, you can’t have a third of an infinity. There is no reason for God’s power to be divided. Certainly if God is perfectly just then all decisions he would make would be equal, congruent, and synergistic. Rain all falls in the same direction eventually right?

3. Equal in authority?

See #2. See also Matthew 28:18 which Jesus spoke after his resurrection. Some translations use Power synonymous with Authority.

4. Always existed, none created?

Yes, as I said before, if at any point in history, whether it be a gazillion years ago or last week, the Word was created, then for an eternity past beyond that, Jehovah was alone. A God that desires to be in communion with his creation just does not seem like he spent an eternity completely alone to me.

5. Physically separate bodies?

Spirit is not physical. Category mistake. Check the Jehovah’s Witness tract “Should You Believe in the Trinity?” Look for a statue of three bearded men with only four legs between them. Not like that. According to Jesus, spirits do not have flesh and blood, no bodies. If you do not have this tract, get one, everyone should have one. It is available online.

6. Fleshly or spirit?

I guess you could say some of both. The Father and Holy Spirit were never flesh. However Jesus retains his human body.

7. Spirit is person or what?

As much as the others are. Though in the case of the Spirit, as with the others, there is a difference in work. Jesus said that when he went he would send the Comforter. I don’t believe a person can be comforted by something that cannot empathize, and impersonal force. And if Jesus had meant that he’d send the Father to comfort, that would create a few problems because the Father sends the Son and the Spirit, not the other way around. Plus, he could have just said that. Many people seem to ignore the Father and the Spirit, however, you must realize that many do not. There are a great number of churches and denominations who put a much greater emphasis on the works of the Holy Spirit. I personally was taught to begin my prayers with “Our Father in Heaven.”

The Roman Catholic religion was not the only one that existed from the time when Constantine was alive. In fact there have always been either sects separate or people who wanted to be separate from the Roman church. The council of Nicaea was an ecumenical council convened to try to come to an agreement on some divergent beliefs. The biggest one in particular was the question of whether Jesus was of the same substance as the Father, or of similar substance. Arius (from which is derived the term Arianism, the belief that Jesus was created) took the opposing view. The end vote was something like 318 to 2. This doesn’t seem like tattered remnants of Christianity to me, but more like a gathering of Bishops (not like today’s Bishops, but what you might call church elders) who really just wanted to rein in the wild ideas of some.

Far from it being formed by Constantine, the council was convened by Constantine upon the recommendation of a bishop named Hosius of Cordoba. And far from being based upon Pagan beliefs and customs, it affirmed the Christian faith that already existed. Arianism was the minority dissenting opinion, it was said to have been causing much strife in the newly legalized Christendom. Additionally, even the condemnations handed down by the Council to the Arians were later all but rescinded by Constantine himself, allowing nearly all of those exiled to return. After Constantine’s death in 337 his son, Constantius II encouraged the Arians to attempt to reverse the Nicene Creed. To that end, he used his power to exile bishops who would not accept the Arian point of view, especially Athanasius from whom the Athanasian Creed takes its name. He even exiled Pope Liberius and installed Antipope Felix II. The whole thing got way messier than it had been before Nicaea. Jerome even remarked that the world “awoke with a groan to find itself Arian.”

When Constantius died in 361, he was replaced with Julian who followed the Roman gods. He allowed exiled bishops to return and cause even more confusion and dissent. Julian was then replaced by Valens who supported the Arian point of view, and renewed the persecution of the Nicenes, exiling bishops and using force. It wasn’t until 378 and Emperor Theodosius I that a Nicene Emperor returned to the throne. It was during his reign that the second Nicene Creed was completed that added the section on the Holy Spirit to the original. Theodosius somehow convinced the dissenting bishops to agree to the Creed despite a great portion of the population still adhering to Arianism. This was the end of the dispute in the Roman Empire at the time.

The debate still raged among the Germanic tribes however. The Germanic ruling class were Arians while the populace were Nicene. Arianism didn’t die out in popular belief in the Germanic tribes until the 8^th century.

So, as you can see, according to history there were no tattered remnants of Christianity, no pagan beliefs melded with Christian beliefs, and Christianity as the state religion didn’t come around until much later in 391 under the edict of Theodosius I. It wasn’t Constantine at all, in fact under Julian, the state religion was returned to the old Neo-Platonic Hellenism in the early 360’s. At the council of Nicaea, Christianity was as strong as ever, and was getting stronger, recovering from persecution. The Nicene Creed didn’t introduce anything. It was an attempt by the church leaders at large to unify the people under common belief and expunge something that was causing serious problems among the people. It was an attempt, and unsuccessful attempt at that. Remember, the word Trinity had been coined back around 200 by Tertullian.

Jehovah’s Witnesses say that the Trinity is a mystery to those who invented it, but who invented it? The Roman Catholic Church as we know it today didn’t exist at the time of the creation of the concept of the Trinity. Tertullian didn’t think it was a mystery, nor did the rest of the persecuted Christians from the time of Christ until Constantine and beyond. You see, a persecuted church doesn’t have time to quibble about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In a persecuted church, you are either a true believer or you are not, there is none of the apathy like in American Christianity today when the church is persecuted.

This is why I believe in the Trinity. History shows it, the Bible shows it, and the Spirit tells of it. I’m not one of those Christians with the Sunday hand-me-down faith. I don’t have the faith of my fathers, I have sought and found my own. Faith in the Living God, in the Gospel once and for all delivered to the Saints, and in Jesus Christ, the Savior and Lord of all.

Peace and Love

WiredForStereo