Gladiator,
I see your viewpoint too.
No, it's never wrong to expect that God loves us.
Is This God's Organization?
by monkeyman 36 Replies latest jw friends
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BluesBrother
Monkeyman......Hello . I had almost an identical background to you...I was faced with a dilemma of how to cope with a religion that I no longer believed, in fact I was sure it was entirely human, and a wife and family who believed it like it was the latest revelation from the Almighty.
Some years back now, I started the slooow fade, planting the idea in their minds and my fellow elders that I had lost my zeal, was undergoing a Spiritual crisis (fat lot the Elders cared, they wanted to dump even more onto me)
But when the time was right I resigned as an elder and retired to the rank and file , then a little later stopped reporting...It has made life harder for my wife who has to deal alone with them, I regret that but I could not continue, could I?
I still attend sometimes to support her and to help out, they treat me courteously but ask no questions
You just cannot carry on carrying on ......
BTW Your post was really well written.
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I quit!
Hi Monkeyman,
I'm wondering why you don't think you have any choice but to stay. Could you explain? I know it can be difficult leaving the Watchtower but it isn't impossible.
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wenaolong
I was an unbaptized publisher in Oklahoma City more than 17 years ago, when I was a young 17 years old. Before I turned 18, I literally walked away from an Elder in the parking lot of the kingdom hall on some service day or other. He took a domineering tone with me that I couldn't take from any man, and it was because my "qualities" were questioned with respect to my worthiness of baptism (since when does anyone decide for me when I am ready to be baptized? That should have been between two beings: myself and the Holy Spirit). I really couldn't have cared less what any of "the organization's" rules were, or what scriptures they might want to quote or misquote. When I think I have a spiritual connection to God, I don't need any man pretending to stand in the middle of that, no matter what his reason. I was a man at that time, and I was making a decision as a man. When another man decided he was more fit to decide that for me, I came to see that man and the group of men who were under his thumb in a new way. I took a stand and walked away, simple as that.
There was a lot more than this involved in my decision to leave, and it boiled down to some questions of faith which could receive no satisfactory answer from a full panel of elders in the congregation. They all sat at a long table with me on the other wide end (trying to surround me I guess, to feel safer). I asked them point blank by what right had God to "test" me about anything whatsoever? Further, even should I be tested, what makes it right to test me on the basis of decisions made by others, decisions which not only had I not made, but which have impacted my ability to make any decisions on my own in a proper and fairly uninfluenced manner? In the same vein (metaphysically), what makes any sense about God extending a specific duration of time in which evil activities may flourish upon a world? What does any of that "prove"?
Now, before anyone here thinks that they can give me better answers than the elders there who sat across from me as though I were being inquisitioned (but rather it was they from my vantage), or thinks that I haven't seen all the answers that the watchtower (c) has offered, please do carefully consider for yourself, as an independently thinking agent, what makes YOU think YOU can know the answers to those questions. If you can't come up with something that makes sense on your own, and if you must spew doctrinal verbiage that like a parrot, don't bother droning about it. I like people who think, not people who repeat others mindlessly (or even mindfully).
So, there you have it, sir. I used my own independently thinking mind, exercised it to the max in every way, every day, on every matter that crossed my path, and I found paydirt and acted on it accordingly. Have I found ALL of the answers to the universe and my place in it? As a matter of fact, YES I have, but it didn't come easy, and rare is the man with my talents of intellect or integrity of character sufficient to pull it off. Rarer is the man who has these traits and exercises them all the way to the goal, which is Englightenment. You have taken a VERY long time to find yourself reaching this point that you have reached, but even for you "it's not too late" (a pithy inversion of the JW line taken for those not yet included in the harvest, heheh. I mean by this not too late to escape the "harvest").
You seem on the verge of thinking, for example, like this: What if we are WRONG. What if there is no "God" at all, or at least not as we know it? What if there are just a bunch of pretentious know-nothings on the top of a control-intensive cultish religion who have the same question circling around in the back of their heads, but either dare not think about it, or else have drowned their minds in presuming the contrary, or else, frighteningly enough, may have even decided that they don't know and don't care: they have a LOT of power over MANY people and their resources!! What if you waited around for some theoretical year, such as a good 120 years after the year 1914, and found that the end hadn't come yet... Would you then have to decide that there is some VERY old person who is walking around "who saw" the events of 1914 and has yet to pass away? Or, would you rather have to wait for some "new light" on that matter, reinterpreting that passage in a way that keeps the JW point of view/way of life "in the Truth"? Is Jehovah big enough to let you ask these and many other intelligent, worthwhile, very meaningful questions to yourself without throwing a hissy fit? I could find questions like this that push the bounderies of JW belief-system-reliance psychology all day and all night and yet those questions would just linger there, getting no answer from anyone unless I found the cojones to explore and answer them for myself (I only raised a few "doctrinal" questions to the elders and they couldn't handle it, and disliked my "attitude").
It comes down to your questions in a big way. Who are these people, you ask? Shouldn't there be a rather shiny, peculiarly "JW/THE TRUTH" quality emanating from at least a sizeable majority of them? Shouldn't you FEEL good by being around them (instead of hemmed in, as I imagine you do)? Shouldn't these qualities shine forth in some reasonable proportion to the really TALL claims being propounded by these folks (or merely stomached by the majority of them who are "sheep" by their own admission)? I think it is not at all cynical to look at matters in these ways, especially if you are being as honest and clear-headedly simple about it as you can be. "Jehovah" (or whatever) supposedly gave you a mind for a purpose, and it wasn't to be some tool which if used to its maximum potential (as it wants to be used) would simply at most if not all turns put you in grave danger of butting heads with the designer of that equipment. It shouldn't be a deathtrap designed as a tempting toy, now should it?
Especially when you consider that you are a "spiritual babe" in this context (compared to the other contenders in the story), or else some other vulnerable being thrust into an already damaged and hellish world which is sadistically pillaged and raped daily by the third smartest, most magnificent being in the entire universe other than which none but this could have been, so that this angelic being, in spite of all his magnificent attributes and ready access to wonderfully direct and wonderfully valuable information about God Himself and everything else under God, somehow preferred to bypass all that in order to recklessly commit the most blatantly stupid kind of suicide imaginable. Yeah, I'd think that you shouldn't then be equipped with a faculty which in all lights should lead to good questions and good answers when put to proper use if in the end it was really unable to do anything except "lead you astray" and down false roads doomed from the beginning. What kind of "non-robotic" will is this that we are supposed to have if it can be governed by nothing other than the raw choice of abdicating itself in the face of no reasonable alternative? No reasonable alternative not because it was able to reason out alternatives, but precisely because it was fundamentally unable to do what it was supposed to be able to do. What kind of "reasoning faculty" is that? What kind of choice is it to be made when I have to pit my will against the single most powerful will in this and any universe? It doesn't even take a moment of thought to know that I am doomed to destruction or worse, so how in the HELL could such a mighty and magnificent being as "Satan" ever be so abhorrently stupid, or perhaps "blind" to the obvious? What the hell kind of "choice" is it other than suicide to pit oneself against God, which by definition IS the essence of the universe as something than which nothing else ever could be at all? And this dimwit has a case? OTHER "angels" are "watching to see the outcome"? WE are supposed to be so gullible as to believe the outcome to be as the self-important Jehovah says it is, but the ever wise and God-close ANGELS are still waiting to see proof of some sort? What kind of kangaroo court is this anyway?
Why wasn't the idiot who rebelled against his own existence by being so fundamentally stupid just edited out of the glorious story on the spot? Why should it have had options to mess with other's free will decisions? What makes being tempted to do something that there is not a single good reason to do in the first place be any sort of fundamental "test" anyway? Let's see, I eat from this here tree that GOD said not to eat from, or I do what a SNAKE says? What kind of idiot is this? AND HE decides my fate through his deformed DNA? What a JOKE!!! And just because this God is supposedly so generous, He's going to put me through ALL THIS just so that in the end, I'll get a chance to believe whether or not all these rediculously ad hoc stories are true which I hear through mutilated, absurd-sounding accounts, and decide based on that rather than my five God-given senses plus the crown of reason by which I SURVIVE AND MAKE SENSE OF MY WORLD EVERY SECOND OF MY EXISTENCE BY DEFAULT of NATURE AND BY DESIGN of GOD, whichever or both.
So I hear stories, and have no way to make any better sense of them than the third most magnificent being in all physical and metaphysical aspects of the God-created universe/reality as such, and yet I'm supposed to make a BETTER decision? Yet the story is already stacked according to the side that is supposed to win (according to the story), so I'd have to be "stupid like Satan" to choose his fate, yet was he stupid by design I wonder? Do you every day do things even one one-millionth as stupid for no apparent reason other than a whim (and where does that whim come from?)? Do you for instance smash your foot with a hammer every once in a while, simply because you can? That's small compared to being in Satan's position and going "forget this, I'm better than you", don't you agree? We'd think someone that smashed his foot with a hammer every once in a while was a mentally defective genetic mishap, be we are supposed to think this metaphysically superior and awesomely glorious being had his functions operating properly? I don't think so. This whole story reeks of a stupid scam, as it always has been.
These lie peddlers are no better than the ancient ones who began this confidence game. They figure they'll sell you on the worst junk that they can get you to buy, so they can have the maximum profit in the short run and in the long run. They'll reinterpret with new light as the game goes on, I suppose they figure. They probably do this to themselves if they are really sold on this nonsense. But what do you get out of it? If you are honest, you were sold on this stuff out of a mixture of YOUR desperation and their oversold confidence, but nothing much else. All the rese was high-pressure salesmanship and then the "dollar bid" mentality except that you were bidding time rather than money, and you won't even win a dollar in the end.
What do you say to this?
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nancy drew
A previous post referred to the creator as a terrorist, think about what the organization teaches. They say that God is going to kill everybody horribly, however if you can get them to sign on the dotted line he'll spare them temporarily until the 1000 yrs in which they could be killed at any time or at the end when their tested again. Another thing to consider is if you and them later don't get out their & preach wholeheartedly I'll kill you & them too. the choice is yours god says I'm innocent and I'm love remember that.
Doesn't that just warm your heart? makes you want to attend meetings & identify yourself as"one of Jehovahs witnesses" the god of truth & love.
It won't be easy to leave why would it be the terrorist is calling the shots.
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free2beme
You get enough people together. Combine their fear, their hope and find reason and rational answers that fill these fear and hope with something that makes them feel better. You create a religion, a faith and in my opinion a God. So, to answer your question, yes it is God's Organization. The God they created and the God they worship. As long as their answers fit for some, fill the need of their hope and soften their fears. That God will exist in that combined mental state of the Jehovah's Witness religion.
"Yes Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus!"
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wiser
No. God has a personal relationship with people.
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Butterflyleia85
Do I say I can’t really see what elders do anymore to help people? They are overworked automatons who barely have time for their own and certainly no time for others. They preside over mind numbing meetings and judicial committees.
What do you say at the doors anymore? Come over and join my religion where we all truly love one another? Come over to where we teach the Truth about the Bible and the end of the World, until it’s time to change what we believe?
Is this God’s Organization? Can you tell by the people? The truth is I know a few JW’s who are the most wonderful, spiritual people I’ve ever known. (Can’t the same be said though of other organizations? Do you think that JW’s have a monopoly on wonderful people? They would have you think so. )
What’s also true is that the most rotten, hateful, and despicable things ever done to me and my family have been done by JW’s. The sad part is the latter group far outnumbers the former. At least that’s my opinion.
So where does that leave us? I can’t prove anything but my gut feeling is that a vast number of the 7 million people associating with JW are lost with nowhere else to go. They are going through the motions because they don’t know what else to do and to do nothing reaps dire consequences. They won’t say because it means expulsion. So, we suffer in silence. Including me. How can this be true when it is God’s Organization?
All good Questions. I use to have the same thing come upon me every now and then when I was in. But it grew heavy when I felt like I had the power to do what I want! It's crazy but I went through the motions beleiving that it will all work out in the end and I knew more then most unbeleivers! Ha How truely ignorate I was. Now it's all change and wow... after reading some of what you said sounds like you exposed yourself to some understanding of what repretion does to a person... put them in control and if I knew what I know now... as do you... I would have gotten out along time ago but preached these to my close family that would listen to me... now that I'm out they wouldn't dare to descuss spiritual things. and it's not a stumble it's the truth! (sigh) if only they could understand...
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frigginconfused
Can someone tell me why many people on here let man get in the way of God? If the WT and GB are doing things wrong why do we get mad at God? Why doesnt anyone stand up for themselves? So what about shunning and loosing familly. Real familly wouldnt stop talking to you because the church is mad. Why arent there more people challenging these things?
The dubs say they are the true religion because when apostates try to start another sect they always fail. I think they fail because too many of them have selfish motives. I think the JWs are the closest thing to the truth. But close isnt good enough. The hindu's and buddists are close too. Still dont make them the true religion. Why isnt there one true religion on this planet? Something easy to see and follow. I dont get it.
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free2beme
People are mad at the God they invented and promoted. Angry at the product.