Had a laugh at your comments Billy - you are absolutely right!
Congregation Bible Study Comments - Week Commencing 30 March 2009
by LUKEWARM 12 Replies latest jw friends
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isaacaustin
Truly the weirdest part of this forum is this need to have alternate watchtower studies weekly. Why?
It's like you are still witnesses and just cannot let go?
It is to show the crap the JWs are being taught (many of us still have family in) and the degree to which the brainwashing goes....as well as where the WT is headed with it.
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Pistoff
It's the same old thing over and over again. This is the same trend among religious groups ever since the Israelites tried to distinguish themselves from the Canaanite tribes around them. It wasn't enough to be one of the tribes, you had to be the correct tribe. After a long period of time it wasn't even enough to be an Israelite or a Jew; you had to distinguish yourself by certain behaviors. Now more than ever, you can't just assume that witnesses are okay to hang out with; apparently you need to look around the Kingdom Hall, and pick and choose carefully.
(What is very striking to me since I quit going to meetings is that the writers of the watchtower continually assert that David and Jonathan, or the apostle Paul, or whoever have you, thought about things the way we think about things; their concerns were our concerns. There is really nothing in the Bible to indicate that their life or attitudes were like ours. They make the assumption that David and Jonathan considered God in the same way that we consider him. Historical criticism of the Bible indicates this to be complete fantasy. Everything I've read about David in the Bible indicates that he was most likely thinking about either getting laid, getting something to eat, who was going to die next or how he can secure the kingship without pissing off his wife; it is hard for me to think about him having a wonderful bromance with Jonathan for no reason. After all, Jonathan was the son of the king; did David have an angle?)
What is very disturbing to me is the innuendo in these paragraphs that we can be the judge of the behaviors of other people; there are no standards given for what constitutes a weak person, or a newer person. Is it someone that simply doesn't share our zeal for something; or is their conscience viewed as weaker than ours?
If you're a fan of bad analogies, the sponge analogy is pure gold. Sponges, of course, are inert; humans are conscious beings. Human beings do not automatically absorb everything around them, even in an intellectual sense. Normal people listen to an idea, or read a book witho; they are not afraid that merely hearing an idea, or being around someone whose behavior they find offensive, will automatically corrupt them. (It certainly may be true of some witnesses; they have been trained to not listen to their inner voice, listen to things critically, or to search and compare from many different sources.
The Watchtower has to be the king of bad analogies.
Sorry for any glitches; voice regnition software.