Something else, I've never given too much thought to before you posted this thread DPL. What you mentioned about Paul talking to the fellow Jewish Christians and how they were overly proud of their lineage and their backgrounds. It makes me think of congregations with both individuals and prominent familes that love tooting their own celestial horns. We've all been in conversations with these types who love to dominate the conversation with theocratic one-upmanship. "I'm a third generation regular pioneer", or "my husband has been has been an elder for 25 years", "my son is planning on pioneering for a year and then going to Bethel" and million other titles and aspirations that they love to throw in your face. The worst thing about it is how they judge one another based off of these titles. Woman that works downstairs from is a JW. Every now and then we chat, I've mentioned her before on here. Today she asks me whether or not I'm an elder, to which I responded yes. She goes, "that's something" with huge eyes as if she's staring into my own as if I'm Picasso. I looked back at her and said, "if you say so." Wait till she gets wind of me resigning in the future.
I had to take a speaker out to eat last year as it was my turn for hospitality. The first thing I remember about this guy was he sounded like a girl. I was running late for that meeting, and I came in during his introduction. I was in the lobby so I could only hear the speaker, and said to another brother, "that a woman up there?" After the meeting, another brother approached me and said it was my group's turn at hospitality, which pretty much means I'll be footing the bill for this guy and his wife. I took him to a burger joint, and he decided rather than simply eat lunch and enjoy the baseball games on the multiple televisions, he'd rather give all of as at the table another inpromptu discourse. He did not shut up from the time we ordered our lunch until it was time to go. To top it all off, he sounds like a small girl when he talked. I don't know if he has a throat problem or what, but all I could think was he needs to deepen his voice a little. I kid you not, he has the entire Proclaimer's Book memorized, word for word. I wanted to tell him a couple times, would you STFU, and eat your lunch. Oh was so irritated by it all, because the reason he did that was to impress us with his vast wealth of theocratic knowledge and history of the organization. If he wsn't talking about the WT's propagandic history, he was sharing experiences from the Year Book. If I never see that brother again, it will be too soon.
Guys like him, and entire families go against what Paul was talking about in Philippians. There's nothing wrong with having pride in yourself, or what you do, but when it reaches the point of bragging, and tooting your own celestial horn, there's a problem.