JW: Getting inside the JW view of resurrection

After several weeks of not meeting, due to the Mormon guys being stuck at a meeting in Halifax, and one of the JW missionaries getting the Norwalk virus, I finally met with both again this past Tuesday.

In this entry, I will focus on one particular aspect of the JW mindset that I've been grappling with. And by grappling, I mean something like "trying to understand from the inside". This is my default mode of trying to understand anything, trying to see if from the inside – in anthropological terms, to come to the most emic account possible of a worldview. For me, the etic account it forced, but I inherently seek the emic one. The benefits of my default approach are many: it promotes empathy and allows closer relationships with others. The risks are that I may lose too much of my own identity, and that I lose the benefit I would otherwise have as an objective observer.

The JW's believe that, in the afterlife, everyone will be resurrected to an earthly paradise. All of the things that make Earth bad, such as disease, natural disasters, crime, and so on, will be destroyed, and the New Earth will be a cleansed version of the current one.

I think the JW doctrine I have most often heard (and heard misrepresented) is that the New Earth is to be ruled by 144,000 "anointed" followers of Christ, who will be with Christ in Heaven. I have yet to investigate just how the "anointed" are chosen, how they are known on Earth right now, etc. However, I can say that it is clear to me that they do not believe that only 144,000 humans will be saved. Also, their doctrine makes a bit more sense if you interpret, as the JW's do, Biblical references to the Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven as references to a government God wishes to institute over the Earth. It is questionable exegesis, and requires a more figurative interpretation of passages such as Luke 11:14-20. But then "Kingdom of God" is a figurative term to start with.

The Greek is not helpful either. βασιλεια, the Greek word for Kingdom used in the phrase "Kingdom of God" and elsewhere, was most commonly used in the same sense as the English word Kingdom, to mean a dominion. However, sources contemporary to the writing of the New Testament also used the term to mean a reign, or a governmental office.

I personally believe it makes more sense to take the terms "Kingdom of God" or "Kingdom of Heaven" to mean God's dominion, rather than a governing body He will appoint, but as B— once pointed out the JW's have taken their equation of "kingdom" and "government" and incorporated into a self-consistent system of belief and hermeneutics, which is more than I've accomplished for myself so far.

Returning to the main topic, the argument for a restoration of the current Earth, as presented to me by the JWs, is as follows:

1. God created Earth, animals, plants, etc (Genesis 1:1-25).
2. When God created Earth, it was good (Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25,31).
3. God created humans and told them to live on the Earth, and said that was good (Genesis 1:26-31).
4. The above, combined with a handful of additional verses, demonstrate that God meant for the humans to live in Paradise on Earth (e.g. Psalm 37:29).
5. God always achieves His purposes (e.g. Isaiah 46:9-11, Isaiah 55:11).
6. Therefore, in this case, God must in the end achieve His purpose of having all the humans live in a Paradise on Earth.

(The above essentially summarizes the first section of Chapter 3 in the JW book What Does the Bible Really Teach?)

This bothers me because I have been hoping for a unity with God in heaven that I cannot even imagine right now, and certainly not one contained within the normal workings of our physical universe.

There could be many counterarguments to the above JW claims (the abuse of scripture, or so it appears to me, is disturbing), and you can find them easily enough at sites like this. But my goal here has been to try to see their worldview from within, and to understand why they find their concept of Heaven not only tolerable, but preferable.

From the way they talk about it (I've got them being far more sincere than when I first talked with them), JWs really do feel their idea of Heaven is better. And I'm starting to understand some of the reasons why they like it.

First, and most substantially, JWs believe that (just about) everyone gets to live forever. We all die (they don't believe in an immortal soul, so all of us dies), God remembers us, and from His memory God re-creates us on the Paradise Earth, with the same mental state as when we died. That means that if your Mother wasn't a believer, and has passed away, you have comfort. She will be resurrected, and into a perfectly governed world where she can learn to be a perfect person.

When I heard this from one of the JW's, I first connected with why they love their afterlife so much. To me, this sounds nice, and I want to believe that something like it is true – that this life isn't the only test, and that there's a more "fair" one later. Not for my sake, because I can tell that I'm free to choose almost everything I do, and for me the test seems as fair as I could ask for. But people I love who have died, I don't want them to be condemned to some kind of torment based on their actions in a fallen world. The JWs think that it's ridiculous to call a God who condemns people to eternal torment loving. I think that it only makes sense if those people knowingly choose not to be with God. But how are we, who haven't died yet, to know about such things?

The second appeal of the JW's heaven is that it's very concrete. It can be grasped and imagined. We know what Earth is like, and it's not so hard to imagine Earth minus the bad stuff, plus a good government. It's graspable.

I get that to some extent, since I know that people are often comfortable with concepts they can grasp. I've never been much like that myself, so I can't internalize this reason very well, but I do think it makes sense and is powerful. That said, when my heart is pierced upon seeing a beautiful tree, smile or sunbeam, the experience is far more meaningful knowing that it transcends the physical reality, and I find it impossible not to long to know as fully as possible that transcendent beauty. I mean, I think the beauty comes from God, and if experiencing it directly all the time isn't what the afterlife is about, well, the afterlife sounds better than death, but still unbearably disappointing.


I think after all my thoughts on this, my conclusion is that I ought to choose the unimaginably good afterlife over the imaginably good one, lacking substantial evidence to do otherwise, and in this case, I will.  (Yes, I did just casually discount Occam's Razor. Deal with it :) ) So unless something convincing comes along, I personally will anticipate a heaven better than I can imagine. If I set myself up for disappointment, so be it.