From the replies given (and the trueone wrote some great points in an extensive analysis) it is obvious that people get enticed by the JWs for a number of reasons: their apparent kindness their false but winning smiles, the fear of a soon to be end, the clever way in which they weave their deceptions, preying on the naive and the unaware. The end is near everyone else is Babylon only if you come with us can you find protection from God's anger we have as our leaders the only God approven and appointed humans on earth to act in that capacity and they get Divine guidance in due time. It's a monstrously false picture but many suckers don't know it.
Why did we failed to see the rather obvious signs?
by greendawn 21 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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tetrapod.sapien
greendawn,
intelligence and critical thinking ability are two things individual of each other. you can be born highly intelliegent and never have learned critical thinking. critical thinking is something we must teach ourselves. and only at that point does intelliegence fuel it's potential.
tetra
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thetrueone
A little story I'd like to relay - back some 30 yrs. ago at the K H that I was attending after the meeting I noticed that a fellow and his wife had just returned back from Bethel.
Well we started to chat about his experiences there and during the end of the conversation he said something weird like, "aw it's just a publishing house don't take it to seriously"
I remember thinking to myself what a very strange thing to say. I was about 16 or 17 at the time and I had been a jw since birth, so this was the weirdness thing I ever heard.
Shortly after that event the fellow and his wife disappeared and I was never to see them again. They were both highly respectably witnesses in the KH he was an elder and she was
a pioneer. So it just goes to show that the perception of what you first believe can certainly change once you go directly to the source.........
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greendawn
Tetra, you are right critical thinking has to be stimulated, exercised, and developped by being with the right people or studying the right things. It is something that requires much effort and most people loathe exerting intense effort. Thetrueone the story you mention corroborates the many other stories we saw here from people that served at Bethel. They realised the GB members were just cold businessmen going about their work rather than serious, warmhearted, religious leaders. Indeed the spirit of a publishing company is what one detects in all KHs of the JWs.
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thetrueone
Cheers........... Greendawn with you 100%, I guess when your trying to sell something you don't want anyone around being critical of your product........
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greendawn
Precisely, and the $FDS$ is selling religion is he not? That's why it is a cardinals sin among the dubs to criticise their ideology and they are totally unforgiving in this respect even when they eventually come round to "believing" ideas that dissenters had brought up. Running ahead of the org is unforgivable.
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thetrueone
Programed salesmen in my opinion ! I remember back in the early 80's when I was trying to help promote my brothers R&R band, we had some demo cassettes tapes made up
on a couple of songs, it only cost us about 70$ to have 100 tapes duplicated and it would have been alot cheaper per cassette if we were to do more At the very same time, on the back of a awake magazine the WTS. were selling a box set of cassettes of kingdom songs which they were selling for 50$ or 60$. So I thought to myself since they are producing these things in the
many thousonds why are asking so much for this set ? Price at that volume would be only be @ .30 cents a cassette, so .30 cents X 20 is only $6.00 !
Then I was enlighted on what the WTS. was about $$$$$$$$$ and lots of them.
Big buisiness in the United States !
Three things men are always looking for, money, power and a litlle sex on the side .
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clarity
Now you know why........!
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steve2
If my maternal and paternal granparents weren't dead and gone, that would be one f*c!ing excellent question to ask them. As someone who was born in, it surrounded me from Day 1, and was virtually all I knew. It took me some years to realize that, just as Santa and the Tooth Fairy were fairy tales, so too was Watchtower dogma.
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Apognophos
Santa is technically a little more real than Jehovah, if you think about it. At least someone gives presents to you as "Santa". They're physically real whether you believe in the presents, or Santa, or not. Whereas praying to Jehovah does diddly-squat except in your own mind, and any good thing that happens and gets attributed to him is actually just random happenstance with no intent behind it.
This is a good thread; I had attempted to ask the same question in a thread of my own several months ago, which didn't go as well, but we came up with many of the same answers. There's clearly no one reason why people are drawn to the religion, but it's a reflection of our own personality (a need to feel special, something I felt myself; a place to belong; fearfulness about the world; etc.), as well as perhaps some naivety at the time of contact with the JWs. Of course it's a bit different for us born-ins, but it's largely the same deal.