New Article - Birthdays, Why the Watchtower stance is wrong (page 5)

NVR2L8

As always, great article JW Facts!

Forbidding the celebration of birthdays and other "pagan" holidays is meant to isolate JWs from their unbelieving family and to strenghten their hold on their members. It is a tactic used by all cults. In time the JW's life revolves around his newly found "family" and he has very little or no time at all to spent with his "fleshly" family...he has less and less things in common with them while all the "love" he needs is found in the congregation. This love from his "spiritual family" is conditional to his attending meetings and following the guidance of his new "mother" - the mighty organization.

I have left the cult 2 years ago and I no longer have "spiritual" brothers and sisters...and since I was a JW for 50 years, all my unbelieving family are now strangers to me because I never showed them the natural affection loving family members show each other...I am sadden by the fact that I will not have enough time left in my life to make up for the lost time and to regain a love I traded off for "conditional" love from cult members.

Aware!

Thank you.

King Solomon

Cool, thanks for the preview, jwfacts! When can we expect this to be submitted for publication in the Awake! magazine? :)

nugget said:

On someones birthday the idea is to make them feel appreciated, special and loved. None of those are bad things. You only get one birthday a year on which you are the centre of attention and you receive gifts and cards, however you will celebrate many other people's birthdays throughout the year in which you give without expectation of receiving yourself and in which you have the opportunity to make someone else feel appreciated.

Yeah, and that's exactly why they're against it.

It's a classic group-think tactic to do everything possible to squelch the uniqueness and power of the individual, to elevate the group. JWs are worried that individuals will get a big ego and swollen heads from a birthday (as if), and feel emboldened to dare think differently. Any special merit doled out is only for things like pioneering, etc.

mP said:

Weddings should also be banned. THere are lots of murders and killings at weddings in the Bible. We have the infamous story where King David bourhgt 200 foreskins after killing the previous owners as a dowry to Saul to marry his daughter. Perhaps the message in that story is that all xians should bring foreskins or a dowry to the father.

Ewwww.... That was considered a dowry, let alone an acceptabale one? It's passages like that which demonstrate how alien the cultural practices depicted in the Bible truly are....

jwfacts

Thanks for all the excellent additional material for me to add. Not sure about the crotch-rubbing trouser example though.

NVR2L8, sorry to hear of the situation you are in. The older that someone leaves, the tougher it becomes to build a new life. I am now concerned about my sister, as she is in her forties, so getting to the stage where leaving becomes more and more tragic.

00DAD

Great work jwfacts ... as always!

Lozhasleft

Excellent post. I spent years haggling similar points.

Loz x

NVR2L8

JW Facts,

Thanks for your concerns. I am not totally alone. My JW wife and son, wife and grand children live with me. My daughter and one of my brothers are not JWs...but I never had contacts with literally dozens of cousins except at funerals of my uncles and aunts...my mom had 20 brothers and sisters and my dad 7, and they allhad large families, but none were JWs.

Vanderhoven7

marked as excellent

Giordano

That's the way to frame a counter argument and it shows that even a long piece of writing can be read with pleasure and be understood. I wish some of our posters understood how long copy and paste posts are generaly not appreciated. Nor ill informed tirades filled with scriptual references exactly like the WT does it..

New Article - Birthdays, Why the Watchtower stance is wrong

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