by Witness 007 37 Replies latest jw experiences
Outlaw.....you are killing me this morning. Two of your best zingers have been in this thread.
P.S. If these dumbasses found money in the gutter they would turn it in to the police, instead of thinking maybe Jehovah provided money to buy food with.
Think About It
yeah, they lie, I was listening to one of the lastest CO's talk from a CO visit and he used this experience and claims its true about some guy that found a bottle, and in the bottle was a note to the effect of "whoever finds this note can have all my assets", and it turns out it was the heir to the singer, like singer sewing machines. anyway, i look it up on the internet and its a total urban legend and not true at all.
OMG OUTLAW!!!! the dentist one..........that is hysterical!!!
yeah, these stories actually are pretty pathetic. i don't suppose the family ever considered washing the veggies that fell off the truck onto the street where dogs pee and poop.......
Hmm, it's too bad the caring brothers and sisters at the meetings couldn't have helped out... or that one of the parents couldn't be bothered to get a job to support their kids.
"We'd rather eat garbage than work!"
Once when I was conducting a Watchtower Study about "Jehovah's care of his own", a faithful old ex pioneer sister related her experience. When she and her partner had been really hard up, that had a bill to pay of a sizable sum and didn't know how to pay it. ...In the street though they found a bag containing cash ! You know what? it was just enough to pay the bill - Wasn't that a blessing from Jehovah??
I tried to collect my thoughts, not wanting to be too blunt with her, but I saw a few wry grins around in the audience...I had to say that I trusted that she had taken the money to the Police first and handed it in, before it may have been eventually given back to the finder, because anything else would have been stealing.....Her eyes went down and she remained quiet for the rest of the meeting
Why do they want to be martyrs?
Why? because that's the Christian tradition - its part and parcel of the Christian story, likely inherited from the Maccabees. Robin lane Fox in his great review of early Christian history (Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World) devotes a whole chapter to persecution and martyrdom. The concept, he notes, is informed by Jewish literature glorifying the political revolt of the Maccabeans against the Hellenistic Seluicid Empire that then ruled Syria (including Palestine).
After the Maccabees settled down to political independence they introduced some new concepts to Jewish religious thought, their war heroes were presented as martyrs, rewarded for their sacrifice by a place before the throne of God. Daniel was likely the first product of religious propaganda that the Maccabeans used to encourage a willingness to die in battle, (remember those stories of sacrifice?) but the books of Maccabees continued the process. 4 Maccabees (16:25) encapsulates this 'new hope:' " ... Those who die for God, live unto God." This religious propaganda succeeded in giving the 'spear-fodder' of the Jewish revolt a reason to risk death against the might of the Roman army. Three times in the first and second centuries, ordinary Jewish people were called on to risk their lives against the Romans for political objectives. The number of Jewish 'martyrs,' if that is the right word to use when ordinary people were so cynically manipulated by their rulers for political reasons, far outnumbered the later Christian martyrs, who again were often the poorer uneducated ones of the Christian Church, while the more educated Bishops found reasons in the scriptures to discreetly disappear until it was safe to show their faces again.
That's the background to the Christian concept of martyrdom, which is not a popular concept among today's differing Christianities, except among a few 'crazies' like the JWs.
But it can be expressed another way, that is as part of a life of sacrifice. Of course, some witnesses have faced literal death at the hands of some regimes, and such relatively few deaths have been used to the full within the JW organisation, just as they were in the early Church. The thought also informs the witness willingness to die rather than have a (possibly) life-saving transfusion, but as Hebrews 11:36-38, it as more often expressed through a life of sacrifice, " ... while they were in want ..." as the author of Hebrews words it.
By this sacrifice, they believe that they earn a 'greater place' before the throne of God. If you believe it, that's what you do. But once you start analysing that period of history when Christianity had its start, and the great intellectual, social and religio-political ferment that commenced with Macedonian (under Alexander) conquest of the Iranian Empire, and your eyes are opened, then one really questions WHY? That is, what point (why do it?) is there in going hungry, living in poverty etc?
Broken Promises/life is too short - thank you for your thoughts.
Chicken Little - I remember many years ago my father telling me that one day while out witnessing he felt an overwhelming need to visit a local brother and turned around from going home to visit this person who apparently had some issues to resolve. The next day the brother died. I can remember thinking at the time that god/a higher power does not discriminate, but uses whomever to help any person in need - this may be in any organisation/individual etc. I was quite young at the time and a zealous pioneer, but that experience clicked with me and from then on I questioned the 'exclusivity' of the WTS as God's (only) organisation. I've seen and heard of many such situations since - sometimes to do with JW's and sometimes not. The millionaire story and other self-congratulatory nonsense I do not believe - however... and I've heard lots of those!
Thanks Roski, its true what you say and just like your Dad we experienced something similar. It was the sheer number of these experiences that baffled me over the years when I was grappling with my doubts about the whole Jw thing. I hung onto the idea that this was proof that God was with this religion. I have realised as I wrote before that my experiences out of the religion have been just as awesome and at times inexplicable on the surface. Dig a little deeper and a logical explanation surfaces, usually connected to general kindness in people.
