Taking Jesus Seriously
While Jesus reacts very sensitively to wrong titles and salutations and immediately contradicts them and lets go of a rebuke, here he allows Thomas to call him Lord and God. The conscious omission of a correction is an active acceptance of this statement about the person of Jesus. Jesus allows this address and thereby confirms it.
What is interesting in this context is that he uses the unbeliever, Thomas, to create a sequence in the course of events, which passes on exactly that and shows to the completely unbelievers what Jesus' true nature is.
But the Watchtower Society breaks up this active lineup of the value of Jesus before men by claiming that Thomas only wanted to give Jesus a kind of compliment. That would not have been meant. And in general, there are so many gods ... in antiquity people spoke of themselves as God from time to time. Especially when you were drunk and met a good buddy.
If Jesus were only an angelic spirit creature, as the Watchtower of Babel claims, he would have had to contradict at once and ambiguously according to his nature and along his stringently documented behaviour in the Bible!
But he didn't!
Jesus' life in total aims at a single small core. Belief in me and you are saved. This means that he longs to be taken seriously by you. He is not a reference book of mild good deeds, he is not an idol, not a freak, not a revolutionary, not a cowboy and not a figurehead. And all the more he is not an angelic spirit creature.
Jesus is the almighty God who visited us and walked the path that no one else would go for even the nicest host. On behalf of the Father, Jesus put everything on one card and handed over to the world the determination to be saved through faith that God himself had decided.
Whoever wants to have something to do with Jesus should take him more seriously than anyone else in life. Anyone who wants to get along with Jesus must throw his trust in him and accept him with full clarity and sober interpretation. Otherwise he runs the risk of only abusing Jesus. As ideology, as moral weapon, as Catholic and watchtower-own means of power, as historical event and finally as angelic spirit creature to which the Jehovah's Witnesses degrade him.
Whoever wants to claim Jesus' promise of salvation through faith for himself must, like Thomas – yes, like the unbelieving Thomas – acknowledge Jesus in his authority and let it prevail. But he who only delivers Jesus for the purpose of interpreting absurdity commits the rupture that represents sin itself. He breaks with him and wants to see him only as what suits him and his view.
Nothing else than this last negative variant takes place in the Watchtower philosophy. The Watchtower Society is a collection of people who have never made a personal commitment to Jesus. They have never met him personally, but only philosophize about him. They use him as a vehicle to underpin their worldly, earthly view of things, forgetting to try out what's on this Jesus.
Instead of trying things out for themselves, as every good scientist does, they talk of drawn-up assumptions about him and avoid any emotion that might bring them closer to him, Jesus. They invent excuses to relativize Jesus' actions and to make them less important and less meaningful. They make mental detours in order not to meet him, only not to have to accept the truth that he himself is.
Because they have their own truth. The Watchtower truth. Well marketed and always new advertised with colourful booklets.
The Bible passage quoted above is an exceptional situation! Here Jesus consciously lets the information flow into the tradition through the mouth of unbelieving Thomas and underlines it with an almost casual reaction. As if he "Naja" had said to this statement of Thomas, as if he wanted to install a hint for the most stupid and the most All-Union believers. – He seamlessly moves on to the teaching that faith counts without insight.
This faith without involving the human brain, without considering our conditioning, without calculating our different intelligence, is the core of the justice that God gives us in Jesus. He has decided that no one can come to him if he passes by Jesus. Direct and direct faith in Jesus.
This decision of God is laid down in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians and finally made known to the world. (1 Corinthians 1:17-31) The one who ignores this rejects God himself and punishes him with lies. He sins against God with his eyes open and knocks his work out of his hands.
The insult is perfect. And in this sense, Jehovah's Witnesses, in good faith in the Watchtower Society teaching, strike God himself in the face.
Why only do people put their trust in their own understanding? Why do they not accept the invitation that the Father created and decided for us in Jesus?
