Dec 15th WT: "Be like Solomon and don't go to university / don't be like Solomon and join a sports team!"

by cedars 44 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cedars

  I just don't get it though - what is it about sports?!! Why pick on harmless recreational activities such as playing games competitively, whether your opponents/teammates are Witnesses or not? We've had the DVD "Young People Ask: How can I be more unpopular and make my classmates ridicule me?" in which the young fictitious aspiring athlete has his ambitions well and truly quashed by Brother Holocaust Survivor... we then have the October 15th Article which states that you're not allowed to like a sport if it's competitive or if it's competed at international level (thereby provoking nationalism)... and then only two months later another swipe at those who would be foolish enough to join an "extracurricular" sports team, which is equated with lying, marrying a non-witness, and tax evasion.

  I mean, seriously, what is it with the Governing Body and sports? Did one of them suffer a nasty sports-related injury as a child or something? it really winds me up (in case you hadn't noticed)...
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  Quendi

  Can someone enlighten me on what "OP" means?

  As far as using Solomon as both good and bad examples, this is nothing more than another cheap emotional manipulation on the part of the WTS, this time aimed at the most vulnerable part of its membership: youth. With only one-third of all those born in a Witness household remaining in the religion after attaining adulthood, something is obviously rotten in the state of Watchtower. But in typical WTS fashion, the Society's way of cracking a nut is to sledgehammer it, the cited article being another case in point. No wonder they are seeing a mass exodus of their young people into "the world".

  Quendi
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  baltar447

  Original Post or Original Poster.
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  Magwitch

  Tax evasion = Joining a book club at school

  I
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  Quendi

  It's not just sports, cedars, that is a bee under the Governing Body's bonnet. All sorts of games are on their hit list, and I don't just mean "violent video games". Chess, backgammon, and other strategy games have also drawn the evil eye. And I'm sure there are many other recreational activities that have been condemned down through the decades. The point is that if you're not spending your spare time with your nose between the pages of some WTS publication, then you're engaged in questionable or even "brazen" conduct.

  Quendi
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  Quendi

  Thanks, baltar447.

  Quendi
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  Magwitch

  Quendi - I may have to rethink joining your book club, especially in light of this noo lite.
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  cedars

  Thanks Quendi

  In my view, insisting that all young ones should have their noses between the pages of a WT is counter-productive to the Society. The more closely enquiring minds examine the pages of this literature, the more likely they are to spot the obvious flaws. Surely it would be better for them to be out playing volleyball in blissful ignorance of the Society's scams, so long as they turn up at the KH each week and do their time on the service? Obviously the Governing Body don't see things that way, and they would rather run the risk of young ones exposing the flaws in their reasoning so long as they have a greater chance of indoctrinating them. What they will end up with, of course, is a generation of socially-inept couch potatos who don't know how to interract with the world around them and who are completely unfit and out of shape.

  Cedars
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  Bella15

  I don't get it ... are they using Solomon as a good example.

  "So the Lord became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the Lord God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the Lord had commanded."

  Looks to me he did not truly treasured divine wisdom.

  Didn't he have 700 wives and 300 concubines?
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  Bella15

  Actually the Watchtower is a good example of tax evasion ... and telling lies, I mean "untruths" - very suspicious use of this word, why don't they use LIES? Perhaps in the future they plan to say ... we didn't lie, we did "unTRUTHS" kind of meaning that they were still truths but not lies.