by minimus 49 Replies latest jw friends
I've heard a variety of reasons through the years:
No voting
education is discouraged
Will die before accepting blood (known and huge issue for non-jws)
no birthdays (non-jws don't get this one)
no New Years (non-jws don't get this one)
no Thanksgiving
no BBQ on Labor Day
door-to-door preaching
no patriotism
only associate with their own
No bbq on Labor Day? What is the "reasoning" behind that one? Never heard in the US, East, West, Midwest, South, Southwest.
I know that the 4th of July "celebrations" were counseled against by a few elders.
arrogance, argumentative,intolerant , cruel, felling of superiority,fakeness, and the general kind of eccentricities and loud mouthiness that the general public just dont warm to, the very basics of the blood ban/shunning/no religious holidays dont exactly get them off on a good footing. Also when the general public scratch under the surface and perhaps start a study / attend a few meetings /ass'emblies etc and find out what is demanded of them they find it is a burdensome/tiring lifestyle that requires emotional/physical and financial investment, this day and age in the western world! no chance thats why their membership is dwindling.
Blondie, I've lived in several parts of the US and got questioned about Labor Day from non-JWs on a semi-regular basis.
For many areas in the US, as you know, its a huge cook-out weekend. Many JWs will not cook-out or go the park\beach or so as not to appear to celebrate the holiday. Even if a JW has plans, whatever they may be, many will state that its not for Labor Day but simply because they have an extra day off from work. For a non-JW, its more about a religion that does not permit its followers to participate in an obviously harmless holiday and not so much about the actual bbq. Its the same as a non-JW asking why JWs don't eat turkey on Thanksgiving...the question is deeper than just eating turkey.
Regarding birthdays,
A few years ago at one of my previous companies, we talked about ways to be more connected with employees. A manager mentioned that we could send b-day cards to them. Another manager mentioned that he couldn't because he had a Jehovah's Witness on his team and didn't want the person to feel left out. I had no issues with it as I would just give cards for their "special day" (loop hole!). Then a guy from the upper echelons who seemed puzzled and perturbed by it blurted out, "What do you mean they don't celebrate birthdays? What's wrong with your birthday? WHO doesn't CELEBRATE their BIRTHDAY?!" Followed by a different manager stating he had a couple of them in his family and that JWs don't celebrate anything.
To keep all things equal, they scrapped the whole idea and decided to not acknowledge anyone's birthday. I am almost certain, the people in the room that day will NEVER become JWs.
I wish people would realize that Jesus is a very minor figure in WT theology. On the whole, I don't think it weird doctrine b/c every church has weird doctrines. The cultish behavior --the nerdy clothes, the lack of focus in the eyes, isolation from the world, hoping that God will destroy good, decent, and honest people, including infants and small children. Most find a specific date for A. very funny. JWs don't know their Bibles. If they deviate from script or the h/h deviates from script. all is lost. The arrogance of some very low socieconimc, noneducated person having the arrogance to teach you from lit. prepared by a publishing company in Brooklyn.
The initial offputting way is the pushiness to attend meetings. Evidently, reading the indoctrinating literature by itself is not effective in getting someone to accept the views presented, so it takes attendance at countless stupifying meetings listening to repetitive droning to get the teachings to lodge firmly in the mind.
Another thing that makes JWs unbearable is the smug "we are right and everyone else is wrong" superiority that they constantly remind their listeners of. They are even willing to go to the extreme of slandering 65 million Chinese Christians as being part of "Satan's organization" in order to uphold their bigotry.
Then the literature itself makes a thinking person cringe with the doublethink permeating it.
"There were always a faithful remnant of Christians." "True worship was corrupted and had to be restored."
"The Bible was faithfully transmitted to us and can be trusted." "The Bible had Jehovah's name taken out and it had to be restored."
"God reads people's hearts and we can not say who will be saved." "Only those in the ark of the organization have any hope of salvation."
The cognitive dissonance needed to swallow that is too high for most people to maintain those views and still retain some sanity.
A modicum of intellect . . .
annoying door to door work, waking folks up on sat/sun . this is probably all a lot of people know about jws. only we have the truth
no Blood and other crazy things that some jws do, no meat, no vaccinations, relying on alternate medicine too much
No holidays , although that is less now than when I grew up ( ie, it has less negative effect on the child as so many other religions do not celebrate either and now they won't even let schools put up Christmas stuff, just holiday stuff
lack of military service and not voting and not being involved with community
child molesters and treatment of women in general
lack of education ,. encouraging early marriages
not providing youth programs at the kH- this is bigger than you might think
while in Fs I found that the pictures of Babylon the Great or the( ?) headed beast frightened people , creepy Armageddon pictures
to be put off by shunning and other things like that would require they know a jws in some way who was affected by this, or maybe a family member, it is not something I found people knew about at the door. In fact in my small town jws are seen like most other religions and if anyone was kicked out of their church they would be viewed in a negative way by other church folks. ( churches stick together)
Minimus:
Before I ever knew what they were about, I was put off by the salesman-bookseller appearance.
It didn't seem "religious" or holy enough to me. I imagine the general public might have similar impressions.
