by inkling 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
The rash of posts containing horrid gag worthy "inspirational"
e-mail stories recently has got me wondering Why.
The WT and the KM has over and over again DISCOURAGED the passing
around of such emails, including 17th hand "personal" experiences,
and I'm sure they also would not approve of a witness taking a
story from Christendom and "truthifying" it.
So, why do the good little witness lemmings defy the otherwise
all powerful GB and send the awful things anyway?
[inkling]
They need some happy thoughts...to keep them trying to be postive in someway. Notice I said trying....many are not happy
you see it in their faces you hear it in their comments.
hope4others
I agree with Hope...
It enforces their make believe world and causes others to feel the same.
Don't you remember a time when "You" read some of the stories and they touched your heart? I think we all did at one time or another.
Cas
because at their core, they're just like everyone else?
meh, I don't know...but thanks for the new word "mawkish"! I thought I had a pretty good vocabulary, but I've never stumbled across that word. I like that it finds it's origin in "maggot", lol.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses for all intents and purposes are a "closed society". Although not being geographically isolated, they confine their social contact and social network to JWs exclusively.
Researcher Steven Hassan writes about closed societies and how those within such a social fabric will look to each other for confirmation that their group is indeed a special, elite group among mankind. Experiences provide the emotional juice for this dynamic.
When a email circulates around the net regarding a pioneer’s "miraculous experience" for example, it confirms to JWs that God and his angels are working exclusively with them, and that they are the only ones who have God’s backing.
What JWs are naively unaware of is; that if you spend any time in other churches (which I have) you will hear countless similar experiences among them as well. Many of them sound just as miraculous as the ones you read about in the online JW chatter.
One thing that always caused dissonance within me was how Jehovah and the angels seemed rather capricious and random in who they protected and who they didn’t. I would read about miraculous experiences of brothers being saved from certain death at the hands of soldiers, for example. And then, I would hear about horrible deaths suffered by JWs (many of them women and children) in places like Rwanda for example. I would read about a brother who got rescued from a firing squad, and then I would read about an entire JW family who got literally hacked to death with machetes.
I believe that the average JW must somehow alleviate this dissonance, so they brush it out of their mind, and continually feed on experiences that confirm their confidence in the Watchtower organization - even if such reports are dubious.
The simple fact is that both miraculous and gruesome events befall people of all religions. Their is no special "holy spirit cocoon" that exclusively envelopes any group.
Because they have to have something to hold onto. What happiness is in their lives, really? Everything, with the exception of the WTB&TS is bad in their gray little world.
Why does anybody send this kind of crap around?
Most fundie religious groups rejoice in the fake tear-jerking tale.
Ronnie Reagan was particularly good at the trembling lip delivery of "The Footprints in the Sand."
It gives a fake feeling of life enhancement.
HB
it's not just JWs. I have a friend whose ultra=conservative Republican husband sends me crap like that all the time. Mush sentimental tosh and all sorts of crap about how wonderful Republicans are and how trecherous Democrats are. I just automatically delete them all now.
I usually check out "tear-jerking" stories on "Snopes.com", Most of the time, they are bogus.
I laugh when I get some of them 3 times around. Of course, I delete the next two before opening them.
Hubert
I love Snopes. So great to be able to respond with facts from Snopes when someone sends me one of those hysterical emails.
