Do Jehovah's Witnesses even know their own teachings...

by Tuesday 27 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  nameless_one

  No. The majority don't. And they don't care. For them, faith in the doctrine is more important and desirable than understanding the doctrine itself.

  
  
  This has certainly been my experience as well. For context, I have never been a JW myself but rather am a person who has been trying to get a loved one out. One of the very first things I discovered in the midst of all my research, is that he doesn't fully know or understand what the heck he believes but "believes" it anyway! This is indeed extremely frustrating and almost impossible to debate or reason against. I have found over and over again that before we can discuss how or why a particular point is questionable, I first have to explain to him WHAT IT IS THAT HE "BELIEVES" and *then* attempt to explain why it is questionable -- how screwed up is that?? Plus it doesn't do a whit of good anyway, I mean a person who basically admits "I don't really understand what the teaching is but whatever it is I believe it" well yeah. I gave up on logical debate long ago. The YouTube responses you describe sound painfully familiar to me; at least with my own JW, I would say that he genuinely believes the parroted response is a valid response and thinks no further beyond that, end of discussion. It is maddening :-(
• 

  TheOldHippie

  But do not JWs then enter / fall into the same world of general bewilderment, in which so many other Christians are? If you ask a Lutheran to give you the details of soul or trinity or saved by grace, or if you ask a Pentecostalist about the end of the world and heaven/earth/rapture - how many, no matter what church they belong to, are capable of giving you anything more than the mere basics?

  Which in turn leads me to my ever-returning question, "How much is demanded of each and every one of when it comes to understanding the details or "words printed in small letters" of our faith? Yes, how d-i-f-f-i-c-u-l-t is it to be saved?"

  If the reply is that all one needs to do is to believe in Jesus and in the salvation from sins - then it should not be necessary to have a firm grasp of the small details, should it? And if not, then why is it necessary for a JW to be able to give a detailed resume of the 607 or blood or whatever beliefs?
• 

  Lieu

  No need for 607 or 1914, 1919, 18whaever .... its all lies. Unless, one is dumb enough to believe that Jesus is ruling "invisibly" which runs absolutely contradictory to his own words about his return in the Bible ... and it became okay to practice "divination" (astrology). [JC doesn't take his place until AFTER the big A, according to the Bible.]

  "19 goobly gook" is an absolute LIE which is why no one can reasonably explain it. Its the cry, "See, Christ is here!", that everyone was warned about.

  If Christ were ruling "invisibly" he's doing a really shitty job. I recall his reign was supposed to usher in peace and happiness. Where's it at?

  All that numerical astrology mumbo jumbo was simply to say that Jesus picked the WT leaders in 1919. That's their sole claim to fame.

  They needed to make up all the other stuff to match their principle claim to fame.
• 

  Tuesday

  But do not JWs then enter / fall into the same world of general bewilderment, in which so many other Christians are? If you ask a Lutheran to give you the details of soul or trinity or saved by grace, or if you ask a Pentecostalist about the end of the world and heaven/earth/rapture - how many, no matter what church they belong to, are capable of giving you anything more than the mere basics?

  I don't think that's the case though because the beliefs are usually basic. For instance if I ask someone to explain the trinity they can. Now if I start brining a hundred different scriptures into play, then it might get confusing. They can certainly explain the belief, or even the immortal soul. Again, it's not until you start bringing contradicting scriptures into play that they have trouble explaining it.

  For this example 1914, basically the JW will say that Jesus returned in 1914. Then you ask why and they can't even go through the elaborate means to how it's calculated. They think that 1914 proves 607 which proves 1914, no actual supporting data.
• 

  WTWizard

  The witlesses cannot know their own teachings if every time they learn them, the Filthful and Disgraceful Slavebugger alters them. And undue attention to trivial details that don't even have anything to do with anyone confuses the majority of the witlesses.

  After all, who needs all those stupid deals, agreements, and classes that come from the Filthful and Disgraceful Slavebugger, most of them redundant, and subject to changes in technical details to confuse people? I don't.
• 

  donuthole

  I would concur with most of these comments -

  The old timers may know the ins-and-outs of the doctrines and prophetic interpretations but newer JW's dont' have near as good of a grasp --

  You can look at the progress of the home bible study books from the "Truth" book down the "Bible Teach" book. As you go down the line less doctrine is focused on. In the "Knowledge" book little time is spent on subjects like Hellfire and Trinity than in the "Paradise" book. In the "Bible Teach" book much of this further taken out of the main chapters and relegated to an appendix, topics like "Michael the Archangel" and "1914". The teacher is told that there is no need to go over the appendices unless the student has specific questions.

  You can also look at the "depth" of internal JW books on prophecy too. The newer books on the minor prophets sheds a deep discussion of types and antitypes to merely focus on things such as Internet pornography and meeting attendence. Any book study conductor can attest to eyes glazing over during the study of the "Isaiah" book and to a lesser extent the "Daniel" book, as compared to some of the perceived "easier" study books.
• 

  Tuesday

  cool comment donuthole,

  That kind of struck the key with me, basically people no longer become Jehovah's Witnesses because they think they teach the truth about all the bible interpretations and they are the only ones who teach what they do. People are Jehovah's Witnesses because they teach about a paradise Earth, if another religion taught that you could live forever on a paradise Earth there's a good chance if it had rational explanations to do some of the things that Jehovah's Witnesses don't the majority of Jehovah's Witnesses would follow.
• 

  Jankyn

  Donuthole said:

  You can look at the progress of the home bible study books from the "Truth" book down the "Bible Teach" book. As you go down the line less doctrine is focused on. In the "Knowledge" book little time is spent on subjects like Hellfire and Trinity than in the "Paradise" book. In the "Bible Teach" book much of this further taken out of the main chapters and relegated to an appendix, topics like "Michael the Archangel" and "1914". The teacher is told that there is no need to go over the appendices unless the student has specific questions.

  That's it in a nutshell. As a child raised on the Paradise book, I knew more doctrine than an adult in da Troof today. Part of the "dumbing-down" no doubt has to do with (as some have mentioned above) the general decline in literacy levels over the last 40 years; but it's also (as has been pointed out) a really big plus for the Society to have adherents who are unwilling/unable to engage in "deep" study. I know that any who do seem to inevitably reach a point of disgust with the Society's manipulations of Scripture (e.g., our own Blondie and Leolaia, who really know their way around both Bible and doctrine).

  Basically, if they still used seriously doctrinal material--even the Paradise book, let alone something like Bablyon the Great--they'd have a whole lot more apostates on their hands!