Easter this year
Belated Easter post, written on Easter Monday but not posted - perhaps because I was too emotionally drained.
Easter was lovely. On Good Friday I got up early and went to the combined St Aldates/St Ebbes church service by myself, walking through the early morning chill and marvelling at the significance of the day and how quiet everything was. Not to mention the wonder of being alone, walking the stone lanes of my beloved city, below the tolling of the ancient bells.
I felt the significance of Easter weekend more this year than I have for a while. I think it’s because the bulk of my reading this year has been on comparative religion. I have read a good deal of the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ bible and Watchtower magazines, the Apocrypha, New Age literature, and listened to so many hours of podcasts explaining everything from the Ba’hai faith to Gnosticism, Christian Science to Masonry, Buddhism and anti-theism, that I filled up the hard drive. I also attended Atheist Week, which deserves (and will get) a whole post in itself.
I’ve done this for reasons I might explain later, but the effect has been this: abject, at times almost tearful, gratitude for the Bible. Gratitude for scriptures that are internally consistent and archaeologically provable, and a doctrine of such complete and utter simplicity. “For whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
I don’t have to live in perpetual fear that I haven’t done enough specified good works to get to the new earth, let alone heaven (JWs); or worry whether my husband will let me into heaven by calling my special secret temple name when he stands poised to become god of his own world (Mormonism); or doubt whether there’s a heaven at all (Judaism); or be afraid of a god of anger and punishment (Islam). I don’t have to pray to myself (religious atheism) or make sure my chakras are all aligned and crystals correctly placed before attempting to contact an ascended master. Praise God for his mercy in providing a way out of our sin and for making it so beautifully simple. I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice, perhaps because I never understood the alternatives.
At the moment I’m seeing the effects of a cult close-up. Every Saturday morning, a Jehovah’s Witness woman visits Betty. She does a bible study with her and explains what the passage means. There’s nothing wrong with that, except the JW bible, or New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, has been significantly changed to reflect the Watchtower Society’s beliefs, particularly that Jesus was not God, died on a “torture stake” not a cross, was resurrected to spirit life, not physical life, was in fact the archangel Michael, that the soul is not eternal, and that the Holy Spirit is God’s “active force” and not a person, as the Bible clearly says. (Among many many other things, but those are the main ones.) I know all this because I’ve spent hours with the Watchtower mag, the NWT, the Bible and the original Greek, checking what they all say. I’ve borrowed Betty’s JW study guide and am currently going through it.
Why am I so upset about this? It’s because every Saturday, Betty is being told, with a “bible” as backup, that Jesus did die, but technically only for Adam’s sin not for hers, that he was just one of God’s spirit sons and she won’t be saved by confessing her sin to Jesus and believing in him, she has to do Watchtower-specified good works and then maybe God won’t annihilate her at Armageddon, let alone love her. She’s 87, and those good works would probably kill her. So she’s being handed an invented religion destitute of hope and cancerous with fear, in place of the sacred beauty of God’s world-shaking love and sacrifice for her.
I’ve told her what I can about JW doctrine and textual changes to the NWT, but am stopping all that now. All that matters is that she truly knows Jesus. That's all that ever matters.
Easter was lovely. On Good Friday I got up early and went to the combined St Aldates/St Ebbes church service by myself, walking through the early morning chill and marvelling at the significance of the day and how quiet everything was. Not to mention the wonder of being alone, walking the stone lanes of my beloved city, below the tolling of the ancient bells.
I felt the significance of Easter weekend more this year than I have for a while. I think it’s because the bulk of my reading this year has been on comparative religion. I have read a good deal of the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ bible and Watchtower magazines, the Apocrypha, New Age literature, and listened to so many hours of podcasts explaining everything from the Ba’hai faith to Gnosticism, Christian Science to Masonry, Buddhism and anti-theism, that I filled up the hard drive. I also attended Atheist Week, which deserves (and will get) a whole post in itself.
I’ve done this for reasons I might explain later, but the effect has been this: abject, at times almost tearful, gratitude for the Bible. Gratitude for scriptures that are internally consistent and archaeologically provable, and a doctrine of such complete and utter simplicity. “For whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
I don’t have to live in perpetual fear that I haven’t done enough specified good works to get to the new earth, let alone heaven (JWs); or worry whether my husband will let me into heaven by calling my special secret temple name when he stands poised to become god of his own world (Mormonism); or doubt whether there’s a heaven at all (Judaism); or be afraid of a god of anger and punishment (Islam). I don’t have to pray to myself (religious atheism) or make sure my chakras are all aligned and crystals correctly placed before attempting to contact an ascended master. Praise God for his mercy in providing a way out of our sin and for making it so beautifully simple. I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice, perhaps because I never understood the alternatives.
At the moment I’m seeing the effects of a cult close-up. Every Saturday morning, a Jehovah’s Witness woman visits Betty. She does a bible study with her and explains what the passage means. There’s nothing wrong with that, except the JW bible, or New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, has been significantly changed to reflect the Watchtower Society’s beliefs, particularly that Jesus was not God, died on a “torture stake” not a cross, was resurrected to spirit life, not physical life, was in fact the archangel Michael, that the soul is not eternal, and that the Holy Spirit is God’s “active force” and not a person, as the Bible clearly says. (Among many many other things, but those are the main ones.) I know all this because I’ve spent hours with the Watchtower mag, the NWT, the Bible and the original Greek, checking what they all say. I’ve borrowed Betty’s JW study guide and am currently going through it.
Why am I so upset about this? It’s because every Saturday, Betty is being told, with a “bible” as backup, that Jesus did die, but technically only for Adam’s sin not for hers, that he was just one of God’s spirit sons and she won’t be saved by confessing her sin to Jesus and believing in him, she has to do Watchtower-specified good works and then maybe God won’t annihilate her at Armageddon, let alone love her. She’s 87, and those good works would probably kill her. So she’s being handed an invented religion destitute of hope and cancerous with fear, in place of the sacred beauty of God’s world-shaking love and sacrifice for her.
I’ve told her what I can about JW doctrine and textual changes to the NWT, but am stopping all that now. All that matters is that she truly knows Jesus. That's all that ever matters.