Err...a Jehovah’s Witness! And thus, I spent an enjoyable 15 minutes this afternoon chatting with a pair of amiable proselytizers for the JW cult. A Mr. Martin, and his silent sidekick, Terrence, approached me while I was fixing the glass on my recently installed lamppost. How ironic is that?
I never mind such encounters, and in fact, no doubt due to their training, JW’s are really among the most engaging raconteurs of religious dogma. After meeting their initial questions with comments that clearly took them off guard, including the fact that I was a member of an established church; Mr. Martin, in his precise West African accent, asked me what an Episcopalian was, asserting that he understood us to be American Catholics. So I gave him a very brief history of ECUSA emphasizing the fact that our faith was based on three principles: Tradition, Documents (like the Book of Common Prayer & the Bible), and Reason.
His first line of questioning then went to the notion that God was forming a Kingdom. He asked me if I knew the Lord’s Prayer. I said, "of course."
"Do you believe it?"
"Believe it?" I replied. "It’s not about belief; it’s about Tradition and Community. We recite the prayer at every service, because we understand that we are part of a worldwide communion of believers and that in doing so we express our commitment to being members of one body in faith."
"So you believe in a kingdom," he continued, and I cut him off post haste by explaining that such concepts reflected past understandings that were both misogynistic and based on the idea that God was simply a bigger, badder version of our earthly fathers: the refuse of a Patriarchal social paradigm. He smiled.
Okay, time for some flattery then.....
Next, he thanked me for my lesson, and then whipped open his Bible and quoted 2 Timothy 3:16 “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching....” Ergo, did I believe that the Bible was God’s infallible word?
[Never mind that the JW’s arbitrarily alter the indefinite article throughout the Bible where it says that “Jesus is THE Son of God” to “Jesus is A Son of God.” to support their own doctrinal peccadilloes -- and without the slightest indication from the original ancient languages.]
I said absolutely not, inspired is not infallible; and, of course I pointed out the fact that his overcoat made of wool with a cotton/polyester blend for the lining was, by his own argument an abomination to God. This he glossed past with a chuckle and a smile and then said, “Look, if God can make something so wonderful as yourself, can He not have His exact thoughts recorded in the Bible?”
I pointed out that the question he was asking was simply capricious, that it’s answer was a) impossible to know, and b) if answered in the affirmative presented us with a God that was both all powerful and yet nefarious beyond our most sadistic imaginings. He was asking me to believe in a God with the grace to create life, the over arching need to write a book, and then with all of this exact-power to stand by silently while one genocide after another was perpetrated upon the weakest and most defenseless members of his/her creation with nothing more than feelings of sadness and the promise to clean up his/her “mess” in the end.
Nervous laugh, and comment, “You are well informed. And did you know that we have a prophecy? God is planning to unite the world under His Kingdom very soon.*”
When you’re not making sense, it’s time to move on.
“I see,” I said, “Well, good luck with that. And a blessing upon both of you.” And with that I shook hands and bid them farewell. And for both us, the goal was the same: To save the other from themselves. Neither side scored a point. But I did enjoy the opportunity to sharpen my tools.
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* For the record, the Jehovah Witness cult was founded upon the premise that the return of Jesus Christ as prophesied in the Book of Revelations was imminent back in the 1920’s when the sect was first founded. They’ve periodically re-announced this event; it’s their shtick. Now it’s set for sometime in 2008. Don’t hold your breathe.
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