“You just slip out the back, Jack. You make a new plan, Stan. You don’t need to be coy, Roy. Just get yourself free.”
Okay, okay, so I counted only 14 in the Letter to the Hebrews. To get the full 50 you’d have to expand to the entire Bible. But it’s a high concentration. And they don’t all lead to immediate leaving. Some of them have to stew for a while. Nor is leaving inevitable. Some can resolve.
Recipients might “drift away,” having not paid “more than the usual attention to the things we have heard.” (Hebrews 2:1)
They might “draw away” (more deliberate) having developed a “wicked heart.” (Hebrews 3:12)
They might just become plain “disobedient.” (4:6)
Or “dull in their hearing,” reverting to “needing milk,” not “solid food.” (5:12)
They could “fall away.” (6:6)
Not good if they “practice sin willfully after having received the accurate knowledge of the truth, [for then] there is no longer any sacrifice for sins left.” (10:26)
They might “shrink back to destruction.” (Hebrews 10:39)
They might “get tired and give up,” worn down by the “hostile speech from sinners against their own interests.” (12:3)
They might not “endure as part of [their] discipline,” forgetting that “God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?”(12:7)
They might “refuse to listen to the one giving divine warning on earth.” (12:25)
They might become “sexually immoral people and adulterers.” (13:4)
They might become taken over by a “love of money.” (13:5)
They might be “led astray by various and strange teachings.” (13:9)
They might become just plain surly. “Be obedient to those who are taking the lead among you and be submissive, for they are keeping watch over you as those who will render an account.” (13:17) “Tell them to take a hike,” they might say.
What with all those reasons to leave, it’s amazing anyone stayed in the faith!
On the ex-Witness sites, there are also tons who have left the faith, but none will admit to these reasons. They are all freedom-fighters and whistleblowers. Who are they trying to kid? Jazz it up with code like PIMQ, PIMO, POMO, but it is the same.
Someday when I am bored I will invent a board game that matches them up. It will have cards for the Hebrews reasons and cards for the ex-Witness reasons and the quicker you can match them up, the higher your score.
Reasons to leave the faith are scattered throughout the scriptures, but they find special concentration in Hebrews due to the circumstances there in Jerusalem. It was the birthplace of Christianity, formed when the disciples began preaching to the crowds that had gathered there for the Passover. (Acts chapter 2) Like the Big Bang, interest in the Way exploded. Thousands were baptized at single events. But in time, “normalcy” settled in. Many of the most zealous moved on to new frontiers. Locally, that hot zeal, so hard to maintain, cooled, but not the opposition to it. That intensified.
It’s a lot like today with the Witnesses. An explosion of interest—say from the World War period through the 70s has tapered, but not so the opposition to it: that gathers strength and intensifies. When push comes to shove, opposition just represents the dominant “spirit of the world,” a spirit now fixated on individual rights and a distaste for discipline. I mean, you can see the battle lines forming, but to frame it as something new? No. It is just a repackaging of something old.
“The game is the same; it’s just up on a different level.’—Bob Dylan
****** The bookstore
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