by 2112 6 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I mean really, besides changing some stupid rules now and then what is there for a JW to learn? How many Biblical truths or new understandings have come out in the last 3,5,or 10, years? They keep on "studying" and yet they learn nothing new. How many ways can it be said, and still remain the least bit interesting, that JW's are good and non JW's are bad.
Just posing the question
Exactly! And this is the classic M.O. of all cult-like organizations. Repetition, repetition, repetition, of the same dogma, the same terms, the same rules and threats. It is simply a form of neuro-linguistic programming that the JWs have managed to perfect over time.
Humans can be trained as easily as rats to perform rituals and tasks with the proper reinforcement. The JW receives his/her reinforcement in the form of psychological anesthesia that the "organization" provides them by insulating them from reality and keeping them in a constant state of anticipation regarding their "salvation".
Sadly, as those of us in the behavioural neuroscience field know all too well, it is much easier to 'de-program' a rat, then a human being following repetitive training and indoctrination.
Alot of fundamentlist Christian religions do that, if you listen to them on the radio they say the same thing over and over, I think it kind of puts their listners in a hypnotic buzz, I was listening to a Christian station on the radio today and the song they were singing kept repeating the same lyric over and over it must have been at least twenty times, my head started to hurt listening to it and it reminded me of my JW Tower study days.
Fred Franz while alive kept up an appearence of new knowledge and visionary interpretations of the Bible coming at regular intervals but after he died his successors have proved that they don't have such an imaginative gift and things went flat round of a few necessary changes like the 1914 generation.
The inspiration has gone out of the org and let's hope this is an early sign of their downfall.
At one of my sheperding calls I told the elders the meetings were just meetings on meetings.
I allways find it amazing that a group can submit themselves to continual "bible study" but go over the same 4 points over and over. Of course the reason why is obvious...
If they dig to deep, they won't like what they find.
The sad thing that thre is a lot of knowlege there that can be learned, about the Bible and its charecters and even in the WT teachings. The trouble is that few are encouraged to keep on learning.
The elders themselves these days keep to the Milk of the Word and do not like being upstaged by anyone (least of all a sister ) who can remember a WT article that dealt in depth with, say the finer ponts of applying a Christian conscience or perhaps the explanation of the "spiritual temple"
