A Reply to a Jehovah Witness Letter

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t do this. But since you took the time to write me personally I decided I would take a moment and reply. First, let me state that I’m going to make two assumptions about you – please forgive me if they happen to be wrong. I mean no disrespect in any way.

My first assumption is that you are young. My second is that you came to your faith either through your parents/guardians or some well intentioned mentor. If you settled on Jehovah’s Witnesses after careful consideration of all the world’s faiths then you can probably disregard most of this.

You must understand that faith is generally a product of environment (it’s what your friends or family believes) or geography (it’s what the community around us believes). Put in that context, you have to allow that if you were born to the Pastor of the local Baptist church then you would likely believe their take on Christianity as fervently as you hold your faith now. That’s not much of a stretch though. Consider if you were born in Pakistan: you would be a follower of Muhammad and read out of the Qur’an. You would hold to that faith as tightly as you do now. If you were born in India you’d be praying to the great god Ganesha… Think on that one a bit.

The reality is there are more folks who don’t believe what you do in this world. And most of them believe just as strongly that your faith is WRONG, just as you might think theirs is wrong. The reality probably is that none of us have it right.

Faith is a fragile thing and, sadly, it seldom bears up to hard scrutiny. So we tend to shy away from really taking a hard look at some of our core beliefs in fear that we’d find them baseless. Doesn’t have to be that way though – religion and faith can be a good thing provided we remain objective about them. Generally, a righteous life is a good one as long as the path to our spirituality doesn’t tread on others. Religion can give one a sense of strength, support and community.

With that in mind, realize your faith for what it is: a guideline for leading a good life. Use that brain that God gave you and consider the world and its religions as a whole. Remain objective about the path you are on. If there is a God, I’m sure He’d want you to do good things with the life He gave you.