I had spent nearly forty years as a full time representative, serving at every level of the organizational structure. The last fifteen years I had spent at the international headquarters, and the final nine of those as a member of the worldwide Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses. It was those final years that were the crucial period for me. Illusions there met up with reality. I have since come to appreciate the rightness of a quotation I recently read, one made by a statesman, now dead, who said: 'The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.' I now began to realize how large a measure of what I had based my entire adult life course on was just that, a myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
"The great enemy of the truth" [from Ray Franz]
by compound complex 5 Replies latest jw friends
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compound complex
bttt
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BurnTheShips
'The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.'
It takes effort to disabuse oneself of a flawed or obsolete metaphor and create a new one in its stead. Empty vessels are easily filled. But a mind full of rubbish is more difficult to correct.
BTS
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snowbird
I have since come to appreciate the rightness of a quotation I recently read, one made by a statesman, now dead ...
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy
Syl
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Mall Cop
When I wrote a letter to Ray asking him one of the most important questions we all have "Is the Bible the inspired word of God?" After demonstrating that most of us have faith in a lot of things during our lives, he did not avoid the question, he concluded that for most people believing that the Bible is the inspired word of God would take a leap of faith. I'm not sure if he included himself in that leap of faith.
I posted his response on the other site before this one under Blueblades. I will try to cut and paste it here. I have not been able to get connected from the other site of Simon's because I moved and can't remember what my avatar was or password was, so I am now posting under Mall Cop / Blueblades.
We will miss Ray as he was instrumental in helping our family of four to get out of the Watchtower Organization.
Blueblades
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Sayswho
He went on to say...
It was not that my view toward the Bible
had changed. If anything, my appreciation of it was enhanced by
what I experienced. It alone gave sense and meaning to what I saw
happening, the attitudes I saw displayed, the reasonings I heard
advanced, the tension and pressure I felt. The change that did come
was from the realization that my way of looking at the Scriptures had
been from such an essentially sectarian viewpoint, a trap that I thought
I had been protected against. Letting the Scriptures speak for
themselves—without being first funneled through some fallible
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274 CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE
human agency as a “channel”—I found they became immensely more
meaningful. I was frankly astonished at how much of their import
I had been missing.