Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses was the religion at the bottom of my list from BeliefNet—the one I was rated least likely to be compatible with.

I went to the official Jehovah's Witnesses site, and found a list titled "What Do They Believe?"

The list is a long one, and, frankly, much of it is so far outside of my current worldview that I couldn't make a comment—things like transfusions being wrong, or how many will get into heaven (144,000 exactly), or whether Christ died on a cross or a stake. These are only meaningful to insiders—not someone like me.

So I'll only give my reactions to a select handful:

1. "Bible is God's Word and is truth"
   
   This leaves enormous room for debate (what, exactly, do they mean by "truth", for example), but I'm really more interested in the fact that their evidence for this statement (as for all the others) comes from the Bible itself (2 Tim. 3:16, 17; 2 Pet. 1:20, 21; John 17:17).
   
   They lose me here, at the outset. The policy manual is always right. How do I know? It says so in the policy manual.
   
   At its worst, this looks like circular reasoning to me.
   
   At its best, it looks like a claim based on tradition without any support.


2. "Bible is more reliable than tradition"
   
   Okay, I guess the first one was circular reasoning after all.


3. "Christ is God's Son and is inferior to Him"
   
   This one really belongs with transfusions, or the stake versus cross controversy— things that only matter to insiders.
   
   But it caught my eye because it made me wonder if they really believe that children are inferior to parents in general? Sort of the inverse of evolution, if they do.


4. "Christ's human life was paid as a ransom for obedient humans"
   
   This is the point at which it becomes crystal clear to me why BeliefNet said I was incompatible with this group:
   


1. The emphasis on obedience comes straight out of the kingship model, which I've discussed before here and here and here and here.


2. The idea that humans are naturally defective—and need "ransoming"—strikes me, personally, as the single nastiest lie ever perpetuated by human beings. I've written about that before too—here and here and here. But I hasten to add that it is not peculiar to the Jehovah's Witnesses.
   
   It seems to be more central to many religions then actual doctrines about God, though I don't know enough about Jehovah's Witnesses to guess whether that's the case here.


3. Finally, even if I accepted those first two points, I could never accept the idea of a God who was willing to overlook everything in exchange for a human sacrifice.
   
   It's just too pagan—though I haven't researched neo-paganism yet, so I don't know if that's really a fair statement.


5. "A clergy class and special titles are improper"
   
   I'll apologize for this in advance to all my clergy friends, but I do want to end on a friendly note.
   
   I don't think I'd go as far as the Jehovah's Witnesses on this one, but I'm just anti-authoritarian enough to empathize.

Next time, I'll take a look at Unitarian Universalism.