Can you possibly AGREE with this statement?

by Terry 13 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  WTWizard

  I noticed that trend lately with the witlesses. Back in the 1980s, they were recruiting people because no one had the means to research the doctrines (and the books are not going to tell the truth). So, they got hold of a bunch of intelligent people and started wasting their intelligence.

  Gradually, they lost those intelligent people. The ones that were brought in during the 1980s and not in it for the power all turned apostate. New recruits accepted the littera-trash, went online, and cross-referenced everything in the littera-trash. They were no longer interested after investigating it. Some accepted studies, only to trash the doctrines and ask questions that embarrass the conductor. Some simply quit doing anything. Others bumbled along, wasting the time of the conductors.

  This leaves those idiots and others with issues to recruit. You get people out of prisons and mental institutions into the cancer, and they have no resources to cross-reference the littera-trash. Freedom and happiness are promised, only to be welshed on. Most are going to be in it for the power. A few are going to kill (and, in one case that was documented late last July, eat) babies. Others are going to molest children and then silence the victims. However, the majority are simply going to dictate everything, trying to coerce people into what kind of music they can listen to by being "stumbled" every time someone plays something they don't like or plays it discreetly, or make it impossible to do anything in peace.

  This simply leads to rules that are nowhere in the Bible. I can find the rule against eating babies in the Bible (not murdering). But, where is the rule that says that I cannot watch a PG-13 movie with a few swear words or an adult theme? Or, where in the Bible does it say that looking at the Christmas lights is a sin? Nowhere.
• 

  TTWSYF

  Terri, I respectively disagree. Sorry, but as I do feel that the watchtower is crackpot, I find that most JWs that I have met are sincere people who are looking for the truth. It is only after denial of sriptural evidence that contidicts the Watchtower do I see the crackpot come out in some witnesses. But most are God fearing and rational....except for my brother, the JW.

  dc
• 

  dgp

  I have to agree and disagree with Sabastious, at the same time. I do think the Watchtower would deserve credit for taking a hardcore criminal and converting him into the average witness. No problem with that.

  I disagree in this way. The same credit should be due, then, to the Catholic Church born-agains (yes, these guys do exist, and there are many), and particularly Protestants of all sorts. I don't think I need to mention how many people appear on TV claiming that they were saved from a low life by pastor so-and-so. This is, incidentally, the same claim that many members of the Watchtower would make regarding their previous churches, and many a former JW would make regarding the Watchtower. Perhaps Terry has a point here? The wish to go sober was always there, for example, and all the person needed was a push in the right direction?

  I also disagree with Sabastious in another sense, and I will use an example for that. For quite some time, Goebbels hesitated; he didn't know whether he should join the communists or the nazis. More than one thinker has already pointed out that the commies and the nazis were not mortal enemies, but simply bitter brothers; but Goebbels had a mind sharp enough to understand that either party would suit his authoritarian and domineering nature. He ended up with the nazis.

  It's not difficult to imagine that a person with authoritarian tendencies will find that a totalitarian organization like the Watchtower lends itself very well to his/her own innate inclinations. Perhaps it will not be a conscious thing; but the possibility does exist. Some people have already pointed out that the mind of a criminal and the mind of a police detective are very much alike, but they happen to channel their efforts in different ways.
• 

  Terry

  People tend to sort themselves beginning in grade school.

  It gets worse in High School. Certain "birds" flock together.

  I think it a natural tribalism.

  My family were loners and non-joiners. I've always been a loner but I learned to be gregarious.

  Going to the Kingdom Hall was not my desire or intention. I just sort of went along with my best friend because that's what he

  did and it seemed important to him.

  I became curious eventually.

  I started picking up information I really would not have studied (or cared about) on my own.

  But, the clincher was when my family turned against my friend and started bad mouthing his religion.

  I defended him.

  Why?

  They didn't actually KNOW anything about religion or the Bible. How could they be so sure he was wrong??

  So, that was the prompting to dig deep and start studying in earnest.

  What has this got to do with anything?

  I think each person who ends up in a religious surrounding has their own particular motive. It could be social, it could be piety, it could be desperation or just business networking. The point is---they all have to cloak themselves in the beliefs to a certain extent (subconscious perhaps)

  to "fit it".

  When the rubber meets the road each of us finds out how TRUE our true belief really is.

  I didn't really know until I went to prison. At that point I had self-discovery like you would not believe.

  I discovered I was alot tougher inside than I ever dreamed. I discovered I had a reservoir of faith.

  I really don't think I'd have known that otherwise.

  Religion brings things OUT OF US that is already INSIDE, you see. It doesn't add it like an ingredient.

  Religion is a catalyst---it starts an innate chemical reaction.

  That's my point (if it is even worth making).