Birthdays - most logical explanation...

by bottleofwater 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Scully

  Blood is considered "holy" as a representation - a symbol - of life.

  What is more valuable to someone who understands where the value lies: the actual thing itself, or the symbol that represents it?

  Would a collector value a reproduction of, say, a letter written by George Washington, or an actual letter written by George Washington? Any relic appraiser will tell you that reproductions and forgeries are worthless in comparison to the real thing, even though they approximate and are sometimes indistinguishable from the real thing.
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  Cold Steel

  I don't think anyone said the apostle Paul was "better" than anyone else. He was, however, called and ordained to his office before he was born (Jerimiah 1:5) and he was commissioned and ordained by God to do the work of the ministry through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

  The WTS believes that every word that dropped out of Paul's mouth was scripture, but most reasonable people think that he became a little too zealous when it came to the role of women in the church and other things. Not all the writings in the Bible were inspired of God. The Song of Solomon, for example, has no business being in the Bible. It's a love letter, fer crying out loud! And parts of Ecclesiastes also were speculation and philosophical jibberish! Solomon, if he wrote Ecclesiastes, sinned in his old age and took heathen women for wives -- and some of them established altars to foreign gods. He also went a little nuts in his old age, yet the WTS bases their entire life-after-death eschatology on just a few verses from this book, disregarding all the other verses to the contrary.
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  Heartofaboy

  Birthdays (& Christmas) used to be celebrated by early BS/JW's, I understand they used to have a special places in the year book to mark in a birthday as a rminder.

  I reckon the reason birthdays were outlawed by the org' was because it got out of hand as the Bethel homes grew in size & they had to come up with some tortuous reason from the bible for banning them.

  Nothing to do with 'New Light' form Jah.
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  dozy

  My 2p - birthdays are usually childrens celebrations - the older we get , another passing year becomes less and less something to celebrate. The WTBTS has always been very much negative on children - most GB members and their wives (if they are married) are childless , as are most Bethel workers , so there wasn't really any problem in banning them. In practice , I know many JWs who go out for a big family meal on a childs or adults birthday or who have annual "present days" for their children (though not on the specific day). As one elder told me "there are ways of gettting around the Societies restrictions.

  Bizarelly the society approve of parties for anniversaries and these have become major events in JW land. Notice the weird logic in this Watchtower article from 1977 .

  w77 4/15p.253 OurTwenty-Year Project—Being Parents

  "For instance, each year we have a big party on our wedding anniversary, with gifts for all four of us. We stack these on the piano days in advance, and enjoy a special meal together. It is not just our anniversary, but it was because of our wedding that the children came along—so it is their party too."