Jehovah's Witnesses: Using Jesus Against the Watchtower

As I was walking with my friend Mike today, somewhere in the Philips neighborhood near Franklin, we approached a car parked at the curb. An older (greying) woman in the passenger’s seat rolled down her window, got our attention, and waved a magazine at us. “Can I give this to you? This is for your health!” I recognized it from fifteen feet away - it was a copy of Awake!, a witnessing tract used by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A longtime cult in the US and now growing in popularity around the world, at first glance the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their theology look strikingly similar to Protestant Christianity. Where the paths split is when the JWs refuse to recognize the divinity of Jesus. So, if you look at it that with that in mind, the two theologies are actually completely different.

The only thing most Christians know about the JWs is that they are a cult with dangerous doctrine (which is true, more on that later). But the JWs are also a very proselytizing religion, going door to door and whatnot, and so Christians find themselves encountering far more JWs than they are usually comfortable with. But they know that they shouldn’t engage them (danger!), so they might mumble a hasty frightened response like “Um, no, yeah, I’m a Christian, so, uh, please go away.” This is sadly one of the most damaging things that one can do, because JWs are taught that Christians are afraid of them because they (the JWs) have the truth. Identifying oneself as a Christian and showing intimidation only reinforces that teaching.

Graciously, God has blessed me with a great relationship with a man who has spent years working with JWs, working to get them out of their organization, the Watchtower. He’s taught me tons of useful tips for use in talking with JWs, and here, on a cold Thursday in Minneapolis, I got a chance to use them.

I’m not much one for arguing theology with strangers, but I am very much into fighting false hope. The opposite of hope isn’t despair (because despair drives you to seek hope), but false hope, because once you find any kind of hope, you tend to rest in it until it is no longer hopeful. In offering God without Jesus, this woman was offering false hope that will leave people in hell. This was suddenly about spiritual warfare, heaven and hell. What followed was basically a spiritual version of a ‘breach and clear’ sequence straight out of a Clancy novel, because I wanted to present the real hope that Jesus has to offer.

I walked up to the car and took the magazine, holding it in my thick winter glove. I looked at the cover and then at the woman. (Set!) Meanwhile she had handed Mike a copy of Watchtower magazine. (Clear!)

“Is this about Jesus?” I asked. (Bam! I blow down the door.)

“This is for your health!” she replied.

“Oh. Because it looks like it’s about Jesus!” ( I gratuitously kick over the coat rack.)

I clumsily turned a few pages until my gloved hands held open a page-long article. The word “Shepherd” was in the headline.

“Is this about Jesus?” I asked, motioning to the headline. (Now I’m in middle of the room, red targeting lasers criss-crossing the smoke.)

She smiled and nodded. “Yes, yes it is.”

“Great! Because I love Jesus.” (I slide belly-first over a table.)

That made her look concerned and cautious.

“You know, a lot of people wouldn’t say that.”

“Well, I do, because Jesus is awesome.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “It is pretty amazing what he did for us on the cross.”

“I know! How he lived a perfect life and died on the cross for our sins, so that we might be reconciled to God.” (Muzzle-flash galore.)

She was nodding, knowingly.

“Man, I’m so thankful for how he changed my life. I pray to him all the time now!” (Bombshell!)

At this point my excitement in talking had taken over my mental preparation and clearheadedness, and instead of following up and asking her about Jesus, other tips that I had received started surfacing in my head.

Take the literature and keep the interaction short.

This actually applies much more to door-to-door interactions than to on-the-street ones, because JWs who are witnessing have a certain quota to meet. If you want to start a relationship with them, the best thing to do is to take the literature (they like that), and schedule a follow-up meeting with that same JW (they sometimes just send elders for follow-ups). The scheduled follow-up allows them to move on to the next house (they like that, too).

So I thanked her for the tract and Mike and I continued on our walk. I was happy with how things went, but I regret to say that I left out one of the most important points of Rapid-Fire Jesus Promotion: Acknowledge that you are sure in your experiences with Him and that you haven’t been lied to.

JWs are taught that people who believe that Jesus is God have been deceived, and when you face them with excitement over what Christ has done and surety that your convictions are genuine, that might find its way through a hole in their defenses. I forgot to do this, and the result is that she might have just left the conversation thinking that I was a babbling crazy person. Nice and enthusiastic, but misguided.

Hopefully God will use the “praying to Jesus” comment that I got in to work in her heart. Since JWs don’t believe that Jesus is divine, they don’t pray to him; praying to Jesus for them is heretical, like telling a Christian to pray to Moses. We’re not going to do it. Jesus’ death and ministry, his divine atonement for sin, is THE axis around which Christianity revolves. It is the central work to which all the of Old Testament points towards, and to which the entire New Testament points back. Without a divine Jesus, Christianity is worthless and going to church becomes a really dumb hobby.

This, the majestic work of a fully-divine-yet-fully human Jesus, is the weapon which we wield against the dangerous doctrine of the JWs. But we have to know how to use it well in order to be effective. There is little use in entrusting a soldier with a powerful rifle if he doesn’t know how to use it correctly. There are people in church who have encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible and Jesus, but either don’t believe that is true or are not able to talk about it well. The mission of the Christian should be this - to yearn to know and love and savor and treasure and worship Jesus in order to proclaim Him effectively to neighbors and nations. My interaction this morning was less then ideal, but I hope that God will use it nonetheless. In the meantime, it’s back to my Bible to worship and savor Jesus, and back to looking for ways in which I can share Him with the world.

Christian Memes and Double Rainbows

Last week a friend sent me a text asking something to the extent of, “Can there ever be ‘Christian’ memes?” The question struck me as odd so I didn’t reply, but it has provided me with much to think about since then. Christian memes? Can such a thing be generated? What would that look like?

If you read a lot of my posts you may gather that I am a big fan of viral marketing and sleeper hit advertising campaigns. More than anything I guess I enjoy the revelation of people’s interests and thought patterns manifest in their reactions to successful attempts to part them with their money. Product (Red). Mountain Dew partnering with extreme sports. Red Bull Flugtag. Dominoes Pizza soliciting fan pictures of pizza to use in their promotional literature. Free shoes from Chrome Industries. Ideas that, once acted upon, generate intense interest and participation from people around the world.

Memes, at least in the colloquial, are kind of like this, but restricted to inside the realm of the Internet. When we here “meme” we think of things like the Numa Numa dance, archaic raps, poorly translated Japanese video games, songs that question the underlying mechanics of magnets, and philosophical velociraptors (philosoraptors). These memes spread like wildfire and, like any good ad campaign, generate a tremendous amount of user-generated content as denizens of the Interwebs try to jump on board and garner impressive amounts of view-counts, whether it be on a video, picture, or webpage, of their own material. Memes bring out the id superstar in us who wants to rule our sphere of influence. We like to show how creative we can be.

So what would a “Christian” memes look like? Photoshopped pictures of King David being a badass? Auto-tuned dcTalk songs? “Hip” Christian slogan ideas Bible verses in lolspeak? I can only think of retarded ideas. Christian memes based on these ideas would turn out like the rest of the so-called “Christian culture”, most of which is just regular culture watered-down and sterilized. So much of “Christian” culture seems to be about generating religious-themed merchandise that people can “feel good” about buying and, once they do, revel in proclaiming their “lifestyle” to the world. It’s a picture of Jesus screen-printed onto the twisted t-shirt of ethical consumerism. A little more to the point, what would be the goal of generating said “Christian” meme? To spread the Gospel? To publicize a church? To convey the importance of incorporating a rational way of addressing pain and suffering into your worldview? These things are much to important to be trivialized by a mere meme.

And therein lies my main objection to Christianizing the meme. Internet memes are only done for moar lulz; never for anything really important. They are here today gone tomorrow - the very digital embodiment of that which does not matter. Something that should truly slide. If anything, why don’t we Christians focus our energies in pointing out God in what society already finds meme-worthy, such as how cool (and, also, sweet) it is that God wants to display two rainbows at once. Sure the song has a bleeped curse word in it, but should that keep us from appreciating how bright and vivid that rainbow is? Show your friends and be like, “Hey, my God does that.” It’s certainly better than any t-shirt idea I have.

_DZ

A Stolen Bicycle and The Supremacy of God

*Sigh
So someone stole my fixed-gear black track bike, my $400 Bianchi Pista, off my porch last night. I had the bike for a little over a year, and for most of that time it was my only bike. I rode it everywhere. I got comments from everyone who saw it, and I was pretty proud of it. My porch is enclosed and there’s no way to see it from the street, so I can only assume that the person who took it knew that the bike was there. Maybe it was even someone I know. This sense of premeditated violation is I guess what bugs me the most. It wasn’t some impulsive action brought on by seeing a nice bike on the street - that’s still not very nice but is a little easier to deal with. This was planned out. I’ve never had anything remotely valuable stolen form me (the last thing I can remember was my Razor scooter in tenth grade), so this is kind of a first for me. I hope my bike is OK, and that the new owner is treating it well.


I should have every right to be mad about it, right? After all, it was a relatively expensive purchase and I loved the bike. And someone DID violate my personal space, as they had to open a door to get on my porch. Someone took something that wasn’t theirs, and I should be mad about it. I lost a monetary investment and a mode of transportation. I also lost my opportunity to ride on the velodrome in Blaine in the conceivable future.


On the other hand, though, I had a nice bike that I didn’t deserve that I bought with money from a job that I didn’t deserve. It was a nicer bike than I needed to have. Taking it to race on the track is a luxury in which few people in the world can afford to indulge. Riding brakeless around the city was a youthful passion rather disregarding of the perilous position into which I was placing myself. Spending $400 on a bike probably wasn’t the best use of the resources that God has given me. God gave, I enjoyed, and God took away. I guess I don’t see how any righteous indignation on my part is in order.

More importantly, perhaps, the bike was a source of pride for me. I was proud that I could afford it. I was proud with how well I could ride it. I was proud with how clean I kept it. Like I said, it elicited many compliments from those around me, which made me feel good. With every, “Hey, nice bike!” I heard I secretly added, “Wow, you are pretty cool to have such a good taste in bikes!”


And see, that is completely untrue. I didn’t even know what a fixed-gear bike was when I bought my Pista. I just knew that if I spent $400, I could get a good bike. It wasn’t a conscious decision to end up with the bike I did. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from soaking up praise.

But perhaps God wanted me to have the bike? What if God was blessing me with it? Maybe He was, but I certainly wasn’t humble about it. As author and pastor John Piper puts it, our purpose in life is to magnify the glory and supremacy of Jesus Christ to the world - to be lights that show how infinitely worthy Christ is. If Christ blesses me, it is to show that He is an infinitely glorious God worthy of all my praise and so much more. Is owning nice things like a Bianchi bike bad? No. But when was the last time God was glorified because I rode a Bianchi? I’m ashamed to say, probably never.



So like I said before, God gave, I enjoyed, and God took away. I have nothing to be angry over. God did it for a reason, and I believe that that reason is in my best interest, even if I don’t understand it right now. That’s part of what makes God so great, though - that He is able to work for my good in ways that don’t make sense or are even painful for me.

But perhaps part of God’s plan is me getting my bike back, in which case, if you know anything about it, please let me know. I would really like it back.

_DZ

Thoughts on Christianity, Nationalism, War, and Loving Your Neighbor

I’m in the middle of reading two books - Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and The Myth Of A Christian Religion by Greg Boyd. Both books are well-written and thought-provoking, and differ on a point on which I want to fully flesh out my ideas. Boyd is adamantly against nationalism and, particularly, the militant religious nationalism behind such movements as the manifest destiny and other displacing movements waged behind the mantra of “God gave us this nation” or “We are a holy, chosen people group.” Boyd feels that in this sense religion is a tool used to bolster man’s pride; an illegitimate way of validating one’s (most of the time) not-so-holy desires. I think that Boyd is correct here. In this way I think, also, that Boyd is very supportive of the separation of church and state, because the church should not use the state as a crutch to perpetuate its causes.

Boyd is also clear that he believes that allegiance should be pledged to God and God alone, not to some man-made nation or nation-state governed by men. It seems here that Boyd would not be supportive of Christian men and women in the military. Protecting our freedoms is all well and good, but protecting them at the cost of killing our enemies when Christ calls us to love our enemies seems to him to be disobeying God. Here Lewis disagrees. To quote from his book in chapter 17 on forgiveness (p.106-107)

“Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment - even to death. If you had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy. I always have thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the war, and I still think so now that we are at peace. It is no good quoting 'Thou shaft not kill.' There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major- what they called a centurion. The idea of the knight - the Christian in arms for the defense of a good cause is one of the great Christian ideas. War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. (Bolding is mine, italics are his.)

I have no issue with Christian judges, though I think life in prison a better alternative to a death penalty. But should they feel the need for a death sentence, I think, and this might be a stretch, that they are simply obeying the law and, in a way, “giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s .” You might disagree with me on this. I understand. As far as Christians being in the military, I think that there is a place for army chaplains and every other Christian should refrain (in America, at least) as a conscientious objector. All killing may not be murder, but I believe that all killing is probably not in your enemies’ best interest and in saying so I disagree with Lewis quite strongly.

But going back now to the separation of church and state, I believe that allegiance to a nation especially if it is a Christian nation, is misguided. Christ didn’t come to earth to make a super awesome political nation state - he came to love people and save them by dying for them. Making a Christian nation just creates an “us and them” mentality that can only get in the way of loving our neighbor. Therefore I am not supportive of Christians in the military, nor am I supportive (at all) of flagpoles on church properties. I don’t see how a church aligning itself with a symbol that, at best, will only foster warm fuzzy feelings of patriotism and, at worst, will turn away people who have had bad experiences with Americans can further the spreading of Christ’s love. Because, really, spreading Christ’s love and proclaiming God’s glory and worth is what Christianity is all about.


_DZ

My Experience with Non-Religiousness, aka Atheism

I read this article today about new research that claims that 15% of the American population is non-religious, and how the current public perception of the non-religious/atheist does not reflect that number. I guess a lot of people think that atheists are blood drinking baby killers of something along those lines, when that is not always the case. Oops, I guess I just proved their point.

But really, it’s appalling to think of all the people who think that atheists are somehow subhuman or something like that. The atheists that I’ve met (which, granted, are not many) have all been very nice and pleasant people. We just have radically different views on religion. They may think that my views are irrational and I may think that their beliefs are extremely, if not painfully, susceptible to subjectivity, but that’s where you talk through differences and debate points. Sometimes, however, I have the upper hand.

Now I don’t claim to be an expert on atheist beliefs (if there can even be such a person), but I haven’t always been a Christian either. I was ambivalent about religion until I was about 16 or so, and after that I had a two year or so stint of living with no consideration for religion whatsoever. I lived however I felt best. This was really liberating at first, but as time went on I became more and more depressed with each bad decision I made. Soon I was about to turn 18, and I had a whole host of options available to me about what to do with my future. Should I go to college? Where? Should I work? Where? Should I stay In Japan? What did I want to do with my life? Should I go overseas? All of these questions came crashing down on me, and I broke down. I couldn’t handle the reality of potentially making a bad choice and being unhappy for the rest of my life. I had enough trouble choosing my high school classes. How could I be expected to run my own life? I needed answers. I needed a purpose.




And this I feel is where atheism doesn’t, or indeed, can’t, help. It has no compass. It is humanistic. ‘Do whatever you feel is best,’ it says. ‘Try not to be a jackass, but as long as you do what is best for you, that should be good for others as well,” is what I feel is the overarching message. It has no roots, no baseline standards. And that makes it scary for people who don’t understand it. Atheists that I know turned to atheism out of a disdain for religion - not because they thought it was a good idea. They didn’t sit down in their local library, pull out the Big Book of Atheism and say, “Hey, this sounds like a good way to live!”

When you have a non-religion that teaches that you should live your life the best way you know how, you get a different flavor of atheism for each follower. And this, I think, is what scares people most.

Coming back to my own story for a minute, I turned to Christianity when I felt like I truly had no more options left. I was unwilling to make choices about my future out of fear of failure, and nothing inside me could point me in a better direction. If I hadn’t accepted Christ, I have no doubt that I would’ve been dead in six months. I would have found the easiest way out of my situation, regardless who who it hurt, because that is what I felt would’ve been best for me.

Instead I chose the seemingly paradoxical option of turning my life over to God so that I could live more freely. I submitted to God’s will for my life so that I could pursue it wholeheartedly, with faith that God would show me what it is. After all, He did make me, so I think he knows how best to use me in the world.

I wonder how many atheists know what their purpose in the world is?





_DZ