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.

JW: What does the Bible Really Teach?, Chapter 1, Part 1

I am currently in meetings with ~2 Jehovah's witnesses, Kathy and Kathy (seriously), one middle aged and one slightly older. Sometimes, when one can't come, a non-Kathy missionary takes her place. They are not my favourite people in the world, for reasons I will soon outline, but my disdain has changed to pity as of our latest meeting, and perhaps I will be better at loving them hereafter. Our most recent meeting was yesterday, and was the first of a series going through the JW book What does the Bible Really Teach? (emphasis theirs).

About those reasons. My former roommate and I, around 2002, spoke with two JW missionaries over the course of a handful of meetings. It was a revealing experience at first, but after a short time the meetings degenerated into the missionaries reiterating pat answers as we tried to rephrase our questions in the hope that they had simply been misunderstood. I think eventually we moved and they stopped contacting us. My experience has been biased from the outset by that previous set of meetings.

During my current set of meetings, I have, until yesterday, left every one feeling deeply disturbed. This is in many senses just a personal impression. The missionaries (K&K, as well as the substitutes) have almost universally staunchly not met my eyes when we talk, not addressed the questions I was actually asking, and spoken in very superficial ways about things that to me are very profound. I am not sure why I find this troubling. They seem to me like empty shells, with nothing inside of them, and something about the combination of that and talking about things of God is horrific to me.

I have rationalized my fear (and thus reinforced it) in some ways. Reading their literature, I have discovered that they are "the ones who don't like blood transfusions". The bases for this belief, which I will explore at some later point, are shockingly trivial. That people could ignore their inbuilt moral compass and let people die on the basis of such poor arguments is pretty appalling. I suppose it ought to be even more appalling that they are dealing so lightly with the salvation of those they speak to. There is also their flagrant (by my understanding) abuse of the Biblical text, both in their literature and in discourse. That is always disturbing, in light of the plentiful evil instigated by disregard for the cultural and literary context of religious texts.

So much for my personal impressions of the JW's. Far be it from me to let fear prevent ecumenical discourse.

After a few meetings that jumped around wildly the JW's presented me with a copy of What does the Bible Really Teach?, and suggested that we go through it. They have a corresponding discussion guide, giving questions for each paragraph or two of the book, that they are meant to ask the subject of their witnessing. I agreed to this format, as it seems a good way to have an overview of their beliefs and the reasons for them, and in the spirit of forcing myself to "give them a chance" despite my personal qualms. My goal in these and all discussions is to remain to the best of my ability open but critical. And if I am honest, I must confess a secondary goal in this case, of trying to draw the JW's out of their shells a bit and see if they really are "real people" beneath the exterior they present. In the meeting I will describe here, we covered most of the first chapter, titled "What is the Truth About God?" At this meeting, the younger Kathy was replaced with a Serbian woman whose name escapes me.

The introduction to the talk took me by surprise. The JW's are masters of corny illustrations, and they began by directing me to two pages of them at the start of the book. The pictures show faded images of infirm humans juxtaposed with vibrantly coloured images of the same humans healed of their infirmities. Apparently a question went with these two. "Now Rob," asked Kathy (they like to call me Rob), "do you like what you see in those pictures? Wouldn't it be wonderful if the whole world were like that?"

Now, I knew exactly where that question was directed. In many of our previous talks, the JW's have tried to convince me that an Earth without infirmity is a "good enough" heaven. I answered honestly, but couldn't resist letting them know that I was on to them: "Of course I would like to see those things. But we see most of those things already, when people are healed by the medical profession. You are asking if I would like it if those good things always happened, and nothing bad did. Of course I would; that is the way the world was meant to be."

I saved comments along the lines of "...but those pictures are nothing compared to what I think God has in store for us", as not really relevant to the question and valuable at a later date. We began going through the chapter.

Most of the first chapter presents things I already believe: God loves us, God is just, God wants us to know Him, we can have a close personal relationship with Him. Standard tract. There are also plentiful encouragement to question assumptions and to seek truth, which is neither here nor there. I find the JW's tend to emphasize this more, probably because they disagree with some of the more fundamental aspects of orthodox Christianity (e.g. the Trinity, or Hell), and wish for people to question those. Of course, in tract form the exhortation to question often only extends to the reader's current beliefs and not to the ones meant to replace them. The same is true here. In my disdain for the JW's, I was very tempted to ask the missionaries if they questioned their own beliefs often, but I restrained my tongue.

We covered much of the chapter in the meeting yesterday. I will highlight two topics. First, on the problem of pain, and second, on the name of God.

I was dismayed by the weakness of argumentation in the first chapter about the problem of pain. In my mind, if they bring it up in the first chapter, they had better present some good answer for it. I can summarize the answer given by the book as follows:

1. God doesn't cause the suffering, He allows it.
2. God has good reasons for allowing it, and he doesn't have to explain them to us, but we will tell you about them in Chapter 11.
   

In my books, this does not constitute a good answer, and I said as much to the missionaries. But I will withhold further judgement until I read the answers given in Chapter 11. And of course, for any orthodox denomination, I would not expect tract answers to necessarily be good answers either.

The JW's consider Scriptural support for whatever they say as very important, but the support usually takes the form of a verse or two which supports their case only given their interpretation of the verses. Sometimes I wonder whether they really believe that the verses mean what they say they mean, but then it is easy with an older Bible translation to just take the meaning you are told a verse has, if you cannot clearly understand its specific meaning or context (and they do favour the KJV). By way of illustration, for what is admittedly an especially bad case, in the discussion on the problem of pain, the JW's book gives the following story to illustrate the difference between God allowing evil and causing it:

"For example, think about a wise and loving father with a grown son who is still living at home with his parents. When the son becomes rebellious and decides to leave home, his father does not stop him The son pursues a bad way of life and gets into trouble. Is the father the cause of the son's problems? No." (1)

The scriptural reference given for this is Luke 15:11-13. The biblically astute might recognize this as the first few verses of the Prodigal Son story, which I will reproduce here:

"And [Jesus] said, 'There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me." And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.'" (2)

Try as I might, I see nothing there about whether the father is the cause of the son's problems, much less whether God is the cause of ours. It is just a similar story.

Mind you, as with the weak argumentation in tracts, this sort of abuse of Scripture is plentiful within orthodox Christianity as well. It is always disappointing.

The name of God is a big issue for the Jehovah's Witnesses. It is a cornerstone of their beliefs that God's proper name is Jehovah (their representation of the tetragrammaton), and that he should be referred to as such. The reasoning in the book is as follows:

1. In the Old Testament, the importance of God's name is often emphasized, and given as the tetragrammaton (which I will refer to by YHWH, its roman representation).
2. God's name is distinct from titles such as "Lord", "God", "Father", etc. It indicates a more personal relationship.

I asked why Jesus is never recorded as calling God Jehovah, and pointed out that something like "Abba" would indicate an even closer personal relationship. They said that by virtue of His close relationship with God (I wonder if they would ever capitalize Jesus' 'H'), Jesus by saying "Abba" or any other title knew very specifically who he meant. For us, they say, we should be careful to refer specifically to Jehovah since there are other spiritual beings who we might accidentally direct our prayers or worship to. I was very impressed with this answer, since it was reasonable and directly addressed my question. In fact, I think they may have a point. There is value to being able to specify that we are talking to God. Whether the name "Jehovah" helps with that, or rather to what extent it helps, I am not sure. But I told them they had a point, and they were happy.

I then asked whether the name Jehovah actually appears in the New Testament, reasoning that writing the Hebrew representation of God's name in Greek would be strange, and that it may even have seemed sacrilegious at the time to write YHWH in a bunch of letters and stories. I think I nailed them on that one. Their Bible uses "Jehovah" in place of "Lord" somewhere, but that is not the usual translation (sadly, I forget the verse, but the Greek is kyrios, usually translated "Lord", and certainly not "Jehovah"). According to this, albeit only a wikipedia article, YHWH does not appear in any extant NT manuscript. If it were sacrilegious, that would be a great argument against flagrant use of the name "Jehovah". But that is an uneducated guess, and I really know nothing about it.

I suppose to me YHWH, however is interpreted, is only God's name as represented to the Hebrews. I do not especially reverence this name (e.g. being careful not to say it or such, as I understand is part of some Jewish practice). I am sure in any event that God transcends a single name, and it has been my supposition that under the new covenant He can be known personally to anyone by many names and in a way that really defies assigning Him a single name.

So, the JW's haven't convinced me yet that using Jehovah as God's name matters much. But the discussion on that topic was redeeming for them and liberating for me. I discovered that they can, at least sometimes, hit a point that addresses my argument. And perhaps if I can make them a bit more comfortable around me, and get them to open up a little, they will do that more often. So I have a little less fear about the whole thing. At our next meeting, we will hopefully finish Chapter 1 of the book, but we will be beginning with a discussion of the name of God (there's an appendix on it that we will cover), and I am honestly looking forward to that.

As the JW's were leaving to go about their rounds, I commented that they must meet lots of interesting people. They said that they did, but most people weren't really interested in listening to them. Then, for about the first time since I started talking to them, Kathy actually made eye contact and thanked me for listening to them, since most people just shut the door on them. That made me feel that I was doing something of actual value by talking to them. I have to confess, in my heart of hearts, I think I sort of want to convert them. Not so much to my beliefs, but (presumptuous as it is of me to think such a thing) to people whose minds connect more closely with their hearts.

I realize now, typing about it, that walking around every day having doors shut on you might make it very difficult to be open and sincere with somebody you've only recently met behind one of those doors. The thought turns my disdain at their emptiness over pity over the hurt that I presume has caused their exteriors to detach so far from their selves. I think, if I am to know what they are really all about, then my goal should be to let them know that they are safe and comfortable when talking to me. Maybe then they will be able and willing to speak to me from their hearts, and have some real sincere discussions about God and the important things of life.

(1) Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 2005. What Does the Bible Really Teach?. Brooklyn, New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York Inc., 2006. Print.
(2) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Bibles, 2001. Print.