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Written by Nils Jansma
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Saturday, 10 October 2009 11:19 |
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Why does God require "faith?" Why doesn't he just stop all the apparent game playing and talk to all of us directly, as the Bible says he did to Adam? This has been a puzzle to me for as long as I can remember. What is the big deal with faith? From a practical point of view, faith in something is not always good because senseless, ungodly fanaticism can also be the result, as demonstrated by the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001. So faith by itself is not virtuous.
Therefore, it seems that you also need to have faith in the right thing. Finding the right thing requires research and experience. In this essay, we are going to see if there is Biblical evidence that God's requirement for faith is the "right thing." We will be looking to see if the faith-requirement associated with belief has a constructive purpose, or whether it is evidence that God is just having fun with us, as if we were engaged in some sort of cat-and-mouse play.
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Written by Nils
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Thursday, 10 September 2009 19:15 |
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I am writing this series because it is evident that some who leave Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) also lose faith in God for a wide variety of reasons. Among the reasons given are, leaving JWs because they lost faith in God or losing faith because of science and its apparent conflict with religion or because of God's apparent unsympathetic cruelty. Others I have read about have singled out the existence of "evil" as the reason they no longer believe in a loving Creator. I am very sympathetic with all these arguments because they are similar to my own doubts about God that needed rectifying during and after my life-long sojourn with JWs. However, conversely, my study of science has strengthened my faith in both the Creator, and the Bible as his Word of truth. Still, this was not an easy journey to make because it required a significant break from many "traditional beliefs" concerning science, God, and the Bible. http://www.nils4.info/a/q1.htm
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Written by Nils Jansma
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Wednesday, 05 August 2009 13:46 |
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This blog is not as popular as I had anticipated. I would encourage people to comment on what is so unappealing and how such blogs may be improved. Those former Jehovah's Witnesses, with whom I have become familiar and who are now atheists, have said that it was science that opened their eyes to the real truth. I personally have traveled a similar road, but with a different outcome. It has been my experience that the more one learns about the subject of science as it relates to the earth and humans, the more one appreciates how advanced the Bible is regarding the earth's history. Paraphrasing Hugh Ross, it can be said that: If a person doesn't believe in God, wait a week because new evidence may make that person change his or her mind. In recent years, this circumstance has resulted in many of the atheistic arguments against God and the Bible becoming out of date, scientifically speaking.
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Written by Nils Jansma
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Saturday, 04 July 2009 16:11 |
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I think that the answer to this question is probably "yes," because deceptive recruiting would imply some kind of fraudulent activity, especially if money is involved. However, do you think that the answer would still be the same if the deceptive recruiting were done by a religious organization?
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Written by Nils Jansma
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 17:02 |
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Leaving the Witnesses can become a faith-challenging experience. The "Where will we go away to?" mentality often forces one on a fruitless quest to find a substitute organization that will fulfill all the expectations previously provided by the Watchtower Society. When it is discovered that there is no perfect religious denomination, one might become disillusioned and turn to atheism as the default choice. |
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