The Reproach of Child Sexual Abuse Falls on the Abuser
“The Crimes of this Guilty Land Will Never be Purged Away but With Blood—John Brown and the Civil War

One Fine Day Washing Brains on the Internet

‘Why do so many people hate Jews?’ says Bugs on Twitter—you know, just trying to get discussion going.

Pugnacious Peter appears:

Peter: ‘Why do so many Christians hate Jews? They had Pontius Pilate kill Christ according to the NT. You might also ask why do a lot of Jews hate everybody else? Because their religion teaches they're god's chosen and so on it goes - hate begets hate. That's religion - a control system.’

Someone chimes in on how Jesus commanded we love people. It’s true enough, but it doesn’t really address the point. Peter points that out:

Peter: ‘Jesus might teach u2 love people but ur church don't. Organised religions organise slaughter - always have - always will. Ur an exception my friend & there's lots of people like u but ur not the norm. When congregations r told2 kill most will.’ (words condensed for Twitter)

Twitter is like the background chatter of a coffee shop. Time to speak up here and see where it goes:

Tom: ‘For whatever it’s worth, Jehovah’s Witnesses, an organized Christian religion, will not kill on any account and have proven it their entire modern-day existence.’

This apparently makes an impression:

Peter: I will stand shoulder to shoulder with People who refuse to kill -  with a ... whatever it takes.

Yikes! Vomodog is lurking! That rascal interjects: ‘The Witness no-blood doctrine and how members in life threatening situations are heavily manipulated to obey it causing their deaths says otherwise.’

Tom: Even if it killed every single person who adhered to it, it would still pale in significance next to the massive scale killing under discussion here. But in fact, ‘abstain from blood’ is a Bible prohibition, included in Acts 15:29, it’s principle given in Leviticus 17:11, that science has validated, and that courageous doctors have accommodated. It works to a person’s immediate benefit far more often than not….

Besides, if we’re going to speak of ‘control’ (Peter) or ‘manipulation’ (Vomodog)—both terms in vogue today—do it with something that counts:

62B67D18-8F34-4FF9-9B18-F10CB9A4AEF5The people who decry ‘brainwashing’ (a related term in vogue) are less concerned with brainwashing as they are brainwashing that is not theirs. Isn’t that what life is all about today? People foisting their ‘brainwashing’ on each other, trying to preserve the illusion that it self-originates. What is advertising but an admission that life works this way?

(photo: Pixabay)

It is hard to think ‘anti-cult’ idiocy was not also alive in the 1st century, for Paul defends against it: We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one.” (2 Corinthians 7:2) Why would he say this unless the charge was made then, as today?

JWs are a ‘cult’ if and only if the Bible is a cult manual. If it is, they are. If it is not, they aren’t. They C-word has shifted in meaning over the years. Many groups that were once on one side of it are now on the other.

Short and pithy is the goal. Save what is verbose for the fine print, which people can check our or not as their interest holds.

 

******  The bookstore

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Comments

Brandyn Routt

Good article as usual Tom. I always appreciate your tactful way of exposing hypocrisy.

[Ans: Thank you, Brandyn. I keep adding to it in remarks that will eventually appear in a longer project.]

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