Jehovah's Witness teachings tend to be progressive because they receive updates in doctrine from the Watchtower Society from time to time. These updates have been viewed as “new light,” or “adjustments,” and the membership is told that they should accept these adjustments and view them as evidence of increasing spiritual light (The Watchtower, December 15, 2008, p.10 para.14). The Watchtower Society's admonition of adjusting to the increasing spiritual light is based on two passages in the Bible; the first one being at Proverbs 4:18, which states that the path of righteousness is like the ever-increasing light at dawn that brightens until it becomes full daylight. The second passage is at Mark 8:22-26, which describes an event in which Jesus Christ gradually restored the sight of a blind man. Essentially, it is the Watchtower Society's teaching that God reveals His Divine truths gradually, similar to the brightening light of dawn (The Watchtower, February 15, 2008, p.29). Many agree that God does reveal His truth to those who seek it (Luke 11:9-10), and that upon individual circumstance this could take some time for some people. However, it is important to remember that Jesus Christ warned his disciples to beware of false teachers (Matthew 7:21- 23, 24:11). Therefore, it is very important for one to determine whether the Watchtower Society's “new light” is healthy “light” or unhealthy “light”. Remember, not all light is the same. For example: Sunlight has been proven to give you vitamin D, a nutrient necessary for optimum bone health, heart health, and immunity function. In contrast, fluorescent light poses a toxic risk because fluorescent light bulbs contain poisonous mercury, which can contaminate areas where a bulb is broken. Just as it is important to know the difference between healthy sunlight and potentially toxic light, it is equally important to know if Jehovah's Witnesses have healthy Son-Light or potentially toxic light. The only way to know is to put it to the test. In fact, the Jehovah's Witnesses openly encourage people to examine any teachings they receive (The Watchtower, May 1 2009, p.4, para.3). Therefore, let's carefully examine the Jehovah's Witness teaching regarding “new light” THE EXAMINATION Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jehovah is a God of truth (Psalms 31:5) and cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18); He cannot deceive, and people can have absolute faith in everything spoken from God (The Watchtower, May 1 2009, p.18, fifth paragraph). And, as we've seen earlier in this article, the membership is taught that the Watchtower Society is the only channel that Jehovah uses to communicate with mankind. As a result, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that everything published through the Watchtower Society is true, accurate, and reliable. This means that “new light” is viewed as trustworthy and will become more clear over time as their imperfect knowledge of God's purposes became more clear. Jehovah's Witnesses are advised to accept, and live by, the changes in doctrine that are handed down to them from “the faithful and discreet slave.” If a member is having a tough time understanding or accepting the “new light,” he or she is advised to "wait on Jehovah" to clarify matters (The Watchtower, August 15 2008, p.6 para.15). Members are taught that they should have the utmost confidence in the Scriptural insight and information that comes from the faithful and discreet slave (The Watchtower, February 15, 2009 p.25 para.4). Now, If Jehovah God and/or His Son, Jesus, are the ones providing the information for the Watchtower Society, then the information will be reliable. This is clear through Biblical precedent: In spite of Jehovah's communication with imperfect believers in Bible times, He ensured that the information He gave was clear form the very start even though the people may not have understood the details. For example:
In all three of these cases the believers clearly knew the information they had been given in spite of their lack of understanding the details, there were no mistakes that needed correction. Likewise, then, if Jehovah's Witness doctrine is truly from God then it should follow this same pattern: The basic information will be fully understood at the start, and then the details are revealed later without changing the original information. Judge for yourself whether the Watchtower Society's teachings follow this precedent:
Many Jehovah's Witnesses whose eyes become open to this wavering doctrine become confused because they don't understand how this could happen if the Watchtower Society is Jehovah's channel of communication. Instead of following the Scriptural precedent of having the details gradually revealed from basic, original, information, they see the basic, original information itself waver back and forth, making it impossible to get coherent details. "No" becomes "Yes," just to revert back to "No" again later. This causes members to question the claim of being God's chosen channel of communication. As a result, the Watchtower Society provided an explanation in an attempt to explain the doctrinal ping-ponging:
Many find it interesting how they likened their back-and-forth changes in doctrinal information to nautical tacking as a way of explaining that they don't revert to previous points of view. The weakness with this parallel is that the act of tacking always takes the boat forward and away from its original starting point. In contrast, the previously mentioned doctrinal changes moved neither forward nor away – they continually returned to the original starting points, the “previous points of view”, in spite of the Watchtower Society's denials of such a thing. And, interestingly enough, a few years later this teaching about zig-zag “tacking” got its own new light, essentially changing the instruction on this as well (underline ours):
It's hard to ignore such a turn around in teaching. So naturally, this spawns the question: Did the Watchtower Society begin to start walking its information in a straight line, or not? Judge for yourself:
Many members are confused by this particular teaching, sparking many questions in their minds: If blood transfusions are viewed as organ transplants, and organ transplants are okay, then why are blood transfusions forbidden? If blood fractions are allowable on the basis of maternal sharing, then why aren't the immune-boosting whole white blood cells also allowable on the basis of maternal sharing? And why can all of the blood fractions be allowed separately, while at the same time disallowing whole transfusions – this is akin to forbidding a person to eat a salad but letting him eat all of the salad's components separately! Is this the only teaching that is so confusing? Again, read the following and judge for yourself:
Huh? Where is one to draw the line? In point #4 listed above, the actual Watchtower Society quote carefully words its requirements to include the avoidance of violating Bible principles. It states:
Fair enough, but who decides what “continues to involve false religious beliefs or activities that violate Bible principles”? For example, the Watchtower Society does not expressly forbid the use of piñatas, which is mentioned in the article given in point #2 listed above. Now, if you were able to get a hold of this article to read, you would see that it states:
So basically, piñatas were originally associated with honouring false gods, but were re-packaged as a means to convert the [Mexican] Indians to Christianity. Nowadays, the piñata has lost all religious significance and is viewed as simply a party game. And apparently this is okay with the Watchtower Society because they don't forbid the use of piñatas as a party game; it is what they would call “a conscience matter” (a matter in which each individual makes up his or her mind on the issue). Oh, but wait a minute....isn't this exactly what happened concerning the Christmas tree – a pagan worship item which was re-packaged by Christian evangelists; an item which the Watchtower Society strongly prohibits due to its roots with false pagan gods?! (The Watchtower, Dec. 15, 2007, p.9; Jehovah's Witnesses and Education, 2002, p.16; Reasoning From the Scriptures, 1989, pp. 178-179). A Jehovah's Witness may argue that the Christmas tree continues to have religious significance since Christmas is regarded as a religious holiday, but the fact is, even atheists and agnostics and non-Christians celebrate Christmas, showing that Christmas and Christmas trees have lost their religious significance (Awake! November 22, 1993, p.10). In fact, the Watchtower Society itself has published the statement that “according to a recent poll taken in the United States, only 33 percent of those polled felt that the birth of Christ is the most important aspect of Christmas” (The Watchtower, December 15, 1998, p.3). They have even pointed out that Christmas is a huge deal in Japan – a country whose population is only 1% Christian (The Watchtower, December 15, 1986, p.4). Clearly, Christmas and Christmas trees can be viewed as having no religious significance in such areas. If, as the Watchtower Society says, A main concern is, not what the practice meant hundreds of years ago, but how it is viewed today in your area., and “a custom has no current false religious significance and involves no violation of Bible principles”, and is therefore up to individuals to decide, why are these items an exception? What Bible principles are they violating if they no longer have any false religious significance? As you can clearly see, confusion arises because the rules are inconsistent. On the one hand they are saying the obsolete ancient pagan religious traditions are to be shunned, while at the same time they are saying that it's not wrong to use obsolete ancient pagan religious traditions. In fairness, though, the Watchtower Society's “new light” isn't always as confusing as the above examples. Most often it can simply be a switch from one point of view to another without circling back on itself. This has happened on many occasions – especially when it comes to interpretation of Scripture, interpretation of prophecy, and cultural / legal understanding of matters. Case in point: Years ago the Watchtower Society taught that Christ's words “this generation will by no means pass away until all these things occur” as stated at Matthew 24:34 meant that The End of this wicked world would come before the generation of people alive in 1914 died out (The Watchtower, May 1 1985, p.4). This information was to be regarded as accurate knowledge and timely truth from Jehovah, as usual. HOWEVER... in 1995 the Watchtower Society published a changed meaning of “this generation” with “new light,” stating that “this generation” apparently referred to the people living on the Earth who see the signs of Christ's presence but neglect to change their ways; they also stated that this was a “more precise viewpoint” than the previous teaching (The Watchtower, November 1 1995, pp.19-20, para.12, 15). Although the Watchtower Society claimed to have a “more precise viewpoint” on this information, this really isn't a matter of being more precise because precision would mean focusing closer to the original viewpoint; instead, this newer teaching was a matter of veering off to a completely different viewpoint. But this wasn't the end of the matter; in the April 15, 2010 issue of the Watchtower magazine, the Watchtower Society published yet another new meaning of “this generation," declaring that it actually refers to an overlap of generations; those who were anointed and on hand when Christ's sign became evident in 1914 overlapping with the lives of other anointed ones who would live to see the beginning of the great tribulation (The Watchtower, April 15 2010, article "Holy Spirit's Role in the Outworking of Jehovah's Purpose," para.13-14). So here we have the changes in a nutshell:
And the really interesting thing is that the first meaning was to be viewed as accurate truth when it came out, then the second meaning was to be viewed as accurate truth when it came out, and then this newly updated meaning is to be viewed as completely accurate truth now. Since none of the updates follow the thought-line of its previous teaching, it cannot be said that the updates are a “brighter” or “more precise” understanding; in reality these are all different viewpoints on the same Scripture, not a progression of details borne from an original understanding. These inconsistencies cause many thinking Jehovah's Witnesses to have a crisis of faith. Although they are taught to completely trust the Watchtower Society's teaching (The Watchtower, February 15 2009, p.27 para 11), it's difficult for many of them them to trust a leadership which has a record of ever-changing doctrine. They especially find it difficult to swallow the Watchtower Society's official explanations of these changes:
And, in an effort to support this explanation, the Watchtower Society “reminds” the members that such erroneous understandings have “served as a test of loyalty for those associated with the "faithful and discreet slave” (The Watchtower, December 1 1981, p.31 para.19). Since when does the God of truth (Psalms 31:5) test people's loyalty with erroneous information? In Scripture, a person's faith was never proven through obedience to inaccurate teachings; instead a person's faith was always proven through one's actions. Cases in point:
In contrast, anytime God's people followed false or inaccurate teachings, they were considered to be unfaithful against God. Cases in point:
Nowhere in Scripture is obedience to false / inaccurate teachings a mark of Christian loyalty. We are reminded of the Scripture at 2 Timothy 6:20-21, which says:
It is also notable that, according to Scriptural precedent, when the members followed the "Organization" in the ancient times, they were led into apostasy; the kings were leading as head of the organization, and the people followed their leader as instructed. |