by new boy 54 Replies latest jw friends
God forbid you would talk about the person at his funeral............what do most people get after living 70-80 years..........a 5-10 minutes eulogy....................The transition statment is "Let me tell you about what Fred REALLY believed in".............................45 minutes later.....that way the specker can count his time.
As we know people in the organization are unimportant living or DEAD.
Or in the alternative, they spend 5 minutes on what the person did in the religion, 5 minutes talking about the wages of sin are death and thus, the person is better off dead and then the rest of the time preaching to everyone in the room. Oh yeah, they admit that they use the time to preach to the wordlys that are in the room. But considering that as a JW you are not allowed to socialize w/ anyone that is not a JW (and that includes family members) they are wasting their breath because everyone there is already brainwashed (or in the alternative, ignore everything after the first 5 minutes of the talking head up on the stage) because a good JW has already shunned everyone that is not a JW.
New boy, they just aren't human. If you're over emotional, they will say it's a lack of faith in God and in the resurrection.
I think to attend a Witness funeral is to accord the Witness funeral message and the whole Witness group a respect they did not earn and do not deserve.
The Witness funeral has almost nothing to do with the deceased. They've seen to that. In this area the Witnesses don't commonly have funerals. They have a secular burial and then a special Jehovah's Witness meeting called a "memorial service" where doctrine is preached.
I try to not attend. Sometimes I'm held to a double bind by my wife, like when her mother died in Minnesota, she wanted to attend the Jehovah's Witness meeting called a "memorial service". I drove her over there and attended with her. It was an extremely uncomfortable day for me to hear the garbage preached and it was discouraging for me to attend the lunch after the meeting with my wife where I had the privilege of being snubbed by more than a few of the Witness people there.
Several years back a well known elder who died was sorely missed. He was a rare brother who really was a shephard in a true sense. Sensitive, understanding and sympathetic. Truly he was following the footsteps of Jesus. Not your typical run-of-the-mill elder so prolific these days. Many from distant areas attended his funeral at a KH.
Yes, the beginning of the talk was a nice eulogy (for five minutes). The rest of the time the talk was given from the mandatory outline. I'm sure many that attended felt that there should be more as to remember such a faithful and dear man.
Well, the elder who concluded with a prayer thought so too and gave a nice and touching "eulogy" in his prayer. It was the longest prayer that I ever heard at a KH. His prayer was what we all needed to hear. He expressed much about what we all felt about the deceased brother him and what a fine person he was to all of us. I suppose that elder felt that the talk from the outline wasn't heartfelt. From the entire funeral, that prayer was all that we remembered. The outline was a script. The prayer was a true expression of faith that the deceased brother had and what a fine example he was.
I'm sure that many others, as expressed by the above comments from other posters, feel the same about typical JW funerals. I'm glad that the brother who concluded with the prayer made it a point to make the occasion proper.
All the other JW funerals I attended was of the generic type.
Alligator Wisdom (aka Brother NOT Exerting Vigorously by WTS standards)
As we know people in the organization are unimportant living or DEAD.
So true.
Great topic! There you go making me laugh again Gary. Anyways, when my grandmother died, I didn't feel it was the place of any elder to say anything or even be at the funeral for that matter. My Grandmother came to this country over 50 years ago and lived to be 93 years old. As a patriarch of the family she had 6 children and grand children and great grand children to numerous to count. She told me on different occasions that she thought the religion was bullshit. Granny lived with us since we were kids in our witness family and I feel she was only trying to please certain people so that she would be looked after. In preparing a eulogy for her, my brother was not taken seriously and told his speech should be changed or else don't give it. None of these elders were family and didn't even know her and did not accurately represent her for her 93 years of life or anyone of our relatives . Just as you said , this was there sorry attempt at preaching again. This made me very angry and I've told my family so. What makes me even angrier is the fact that for the last 20 years my life has been nothing but outright direct opposition to witnesses and what they stand for. If I accomplished nothing else it would be this. I told my father that when I die that I wish for a common burial. He absolutely refused and said that I will be buried a witness no matter what! I know of a freind of mine they did this too as well. I hate them for this! They shun you when your alive and then claim you as one of their own when your dead. You just can't win!
You wrote: You just can't win!
Maybe as a corpse at your Witness funeral, you can sit up in your coffin and fart.
Every thing that comes off your keyboard is gold Gary. lol! I was thinking if he dies before me I could always bury him as a catholic.
He absolutely refused and said that I will be buried a witness no matter what!
I don't want to be macabre here but you can plan your own funeral and make the plan part of your last will and testament. Just make sure that the executor is someone you can trust to follow your wishes. I don't care to get into details, but I do have a clause in my final papers that if my wishes regarding my funeral are not followed my estate will go to my hometown Lutheran church.
