Is Protest the Answer? - Is There a Better Way?

Many well-known people have felt that protesting systems is a moral imperative.  For instance, the late Vaclav Havel, a former Czech president who spent years in prison for his human rights activities, wrote in 1985: " {The dissident} can offer, if anything, only his own skin-and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for."

Havel's words foreshadowed the desperate acts of Mohamed Bouazizi and others. In one Asian country, dozens have set themselves on fire recently to protest religious and political repression.  Describing the feelings behind such extreme actions, one man told Newsweek, magazine:  "We don't have guns. We don't want to harm other human beings. What else can people do?"

The Bible a solution to injustice, corruption, and oppression. It describes a government that God has set up in heaven that will replace the failed political and economic systems that lead to protest.  A prophecy about the Ruler of this government says: "He will deliver the poor one crying for help, also the afflicted one and whoever has no helper.  From oppression and from violence he will redeem their soul." - PSALM 72:14.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that God's Kingdom is mankind's only true hope for a peaceful world.  (Matthew 6:9, 10)  Thus, Jehovah's Witnesses do not engage in protests. But is the idea that a  government by God could eliminate the reasons for protest unrealistic?  It might see m to be.  Yet, many developed confidence in God's rulership. Why not look into it for yourself?

Next time: The Book of Revelation-What Does It Mean? 

From the jw.org publications