Jim
I meant to reply to this sooner, but life happens...
You point out:
In some private discussions with ex-JWs over the years, I have boiled down some of the disagreements to a different view of what worship is or is not. This view often unwittingly affects ex-JWs, and underpins their arguments, even though they do not realize it.
To a JW, worship of Jehovah is done by going out door-to-door, attending meetings, commenting, singing, and prayer. These are acts only done to and for Jehovah.
Yes, you are very correct about this. It's all about the "doing" and the "studying". However, I do remember a strange thing from my youth. When I was young (we're looking at the 1950s, perhaps early 60s here), the public talk on Sunday was set up to NOT be a "worship service". There was no opening prayer or song, and no closing prayer or song. The talk was followed by an intermission (about 15 minutes). Perhaps it had to do with the "public" designation. Since I was a child and didn't know better, it didn't seem "weird" to me. Then all of a sudden things changed, we started having a song and prayer before the talk, and only a song and prayer (not intermission) between the talk and Watchtower study. I remember my father commenting that he had heard people in service say that the Witnesses "don't even pray or sing at their meetings" and that he thought that was why the Society changed it. Also, for most of my childhood, it was considered a VERY BIG DEAL to NOT hold the Sunday meeting in the morning. Supposedly this was so as not to imitate Christendom; field service was done on Sunday mornings and the meeting was in the afternoon or evening. But thinking about it now, I bet it was a holdover from the time when the Witnesses would stand in front of churches with the placards that read "Religion is a Snare and a Racket". My friends and I were happy when the meetings began to be held in the morning, because then it became easier to get out of going in FS in the afternoon.
I know that as a Witness I was taught that I should not bow my head when someone not a Witness prayed in front of me or say "Amen" to their prayer. To do so would be sharing in their "false worship".
As for Protestants, I have little experience in that category so will take your word for it:
To a Protestant, going door-to-door is nice, even being at Church is nice, but not worship. Singing and prayer are acts of worship, particular what is said to God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit).
Your comment about the Catholic faith is interesting:
To a Catholic, prayer of itself is not worship, because one can talk to the Saints who have passed on to Heaven, which include St. Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ. However, celebrating Mass, with the ritual and singing and the type of prayers to God are worship.
Indeed, the worship that makes up the Catholic liturgy involves the whole person -- the service is very interactive between the priest, the congregation, and, for believers anyway, God. At least that's the impression it made upon me on the two occasions I have been privileged to be present for it.
So, when a JW leaves the Watchtower Society, they often carry with them this concept that any prayer must constitute worship.
I expect that this is true for many. For myself, coming to the conclusion that the Witnesses DO NOT HAVE THE TRUTH meant that I felt I no longer knew how to pray, or who to pray to. So, for several years, I did not pray at all.
Thus, ex-JWs will insist that Catholics worship Blessed Mary because they talk to her in prayer ... or that Catholics are bad because they talk to other Saints or dead relatives. yet, for Catholics, communion with the Saints is actually part of the confession of faith that dates back to the first century ... (one can find this in various forms of the Apostle's Creed).
The JW view of the resurrection of the saints would, I expect, make the concept of communion with the Saints over the centuries hard for them to accept (more so even than their view of prayer). If a person has been taught to believe that no one but Jesus Christ was resurrected to heavenly glory before the early 20th century, then there were no saints in heaven to pray to until then. And since the doctrine of communion with the Saints does, as you say, date back to the first century, then BY THEIR IDEAS it has to be part of that Great Apostacy that they claim to be the basis for all Christendom but particularly Catholicism.
I expect most XJWs would find the idea of praying to Mary or to the saints to be difficult. As for me, as I was nearly unconscious and falling asleep one night, I found my almost unconscious self reciting the second part of the Hail Mary -- "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." It rose unbidden from my heart, apparently -- I was raised a witness and had to actually look the prayer up on the internet to identify it. I took it as a sign that God is trying to tell me something.
I am not suggesting that Catholics are right or wrong in this ... but that the basic paradigm is often a cause of disagreement because ex-JWs fails to completely drop Watchtower paradigms as well as they thought they did ... and Catholics, like most Protestants, do not care to really understand JWs.
My friends at work who are Catholic find the Witness "theology" to be very bizzare and confusing. And really, it is such a "house built upon itself" that it is not easily or quickly explained.
What I am finding is that I have to approach virtually EVERYTHING from a completely fresh perspective, because so much of what I believed to be "fact" and "scripture" has turned out to be supposition and misapplication. Once I realized that the "Great Apostacy" of the 1st Century was a fiction (the Greek Scriptures had not even been put in canonical form at that point -- was I to conclude that Apostates decided the contents of God's Word?), then so much else started to make sense that I never understood before.
Truly, Witnesses are so intent on claiming to be just like the first Christians. I think if we can get them to examine just exactly HOW THE FIRST CHRISTIANS worshipped, we stand a fighting chance of helping them (and ourselves).
Thanks for making me think :-)
NanaR
