Chapter 1: What is the truth about God?

This post is part of a series of posts summarising chapters of the Jehovah Witnesses' booklet, "What does the Bible really Teach?", and seeking to evaluate those chapters against Scripture somewhat briefly. Those posts were introduced at the Introduction, and a contents page will be added to that entry once this run of posts has finished.

Chapter 1: What is the truth about God?

Children ask lots of questions; it’s not just children who do. We all have lots of questions about life, and the Bible has the answers, but many dismiss it as too hard to understand. Questions like: What’s life all about? Keep on looking, and you can find the answers.

Is God uncaring and hard-hearted? Lots of people think he is because of all the suffering; sadly, lots of religious teachers reinforce this by saying suffering is God’s will. God allows troubles, but that is different from saying he caused them and is responsible. God is holy, and is without any badness.

How does God feel about injustices we face? God hates to see suffering. We know this because we are in his image and we hate it in others. God is love; if we could, we would end the world’s suffering, so we can be sure that God will.

God wants you to know who he is: God has many titles (lord, king, god etc.) but only one name: Jehovah, which he has made known. His name is full of meaning: He alone can do anything he wants, he alone has always existed, he alone is the Creator.

Can you be close to Jehovah? If he’s so unique and powerful, can you know him? Yes (James 4:8). You can do so by learning about him in the Bible. Some people will try to stop you studying the Bible, but don’t let them keep you from the best friendship there is. When you find things you don’t understand, ask someone?

Evaluation

So far, so good.

It is a very small issue, but we would want to take issue over the pronunciation of the divine name. Hebrew was originally written without vowels. So we have the four consonants: YHWH. The question is: What vowels should go there. For most Hebrew words, we can be sure. The Masoretes, a group of Hebrew scribes, added small marks above and below the consonantal text to denote how each word should be pronounced. They were afraid that the pronunciations would be forgotten. With the word YHWH, however, they believed that God's name should never be pronounced. Whenever they came across the word YHWH, they said "Adonay" (Lord), instead. To remind them to do this, they "pointed" (added the vowels) for Adonay to the word YHWH. (The "a" sound at the start of Adonay is really a half-vowel, as in the "a" that begins the word "amuse". When you put that half-vowel after a consonant like Y, it always taklse on an "e" sound. I won't go into any more detail now!). The result: YeHoWaH, to remind you that you say Adonay. But, misunderstanding this, the Witnesses think that the pronunciation is Jehovah. In fact, the most likely pronunciation is Yahweh. But that is a small issue.

A bigger issue is to note what is not said. God wants us to know him; he wants us to be close to him, to make himself known. The biggest way he has done this is in sending his Son to take flesh and dwell among us. Now, this chapter doesn't need to say everything that could be said, but it is a fairly big omission for a chapter about knowing the truth about God.