New Article - Birthdays, Why the Watchtower stance is wrong

by jwfacts 65 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  dropoffyourkeylee

  I like how a 9 year old thread can get resurrected and finds a new audience with insightful comments.

  I've always held the belief that the birthday ban came about in the Rutherford years when 1) he wanted to jettison anything Russell liked (the Daily Manna book back in the day had a place to mark down birthdays) and 2) a way to put a division between the Russelite-Bible Students (the 'evil slave' of the time period) and the newly named JWs, especially when there were family members on both sides. Eliminating family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as birthdays, drove a wedge between the families.
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  DNCall

  “Lee:” when you claim to be the One True Religion you must be able to point to beliefs and practices that are unique to your religion, that set it apart. These have been described as identifying marks of the true religion. It is branding, no more, no less. Those affected adversely by this branding be damned as far as the organization cares.
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  Acluetofindtheuser

  The article on birthday celebrations by jwfacts was nicely written.

  Another detail to add would be that birthdays would had to have been celebrated before and after the flood. A number of people mentioned in Genesis knew exactly when a person was born and died in the listing of the genealogies. That celebration would be the reminder of how old you were in the stream of time. We knew birthday details of Noah, Shem, Abraham and many more faithful people in early bible times because it mentions exactly when they died.

  If God thought birthdays were evil he would have spelled it out the prohibition in the Mosaic Law. Since he did not do that then celebrating birthdays is not a sin and the jw leadership is presumptuous on God's thinking. One of the first kings of Israel was accused of presumptuousness by God and we knew what happened to him. God left him and would no longer give him divine instructions. Same thing has happened to the leadership in the jw religion.
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  WokenfromJWcult

  I recall someone saying “we all have only one Birth, day. Each year after that is just an anniversary “
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  Vidiot

  What dropoffyourkeylee said.

  It's been a really effective way of socially isolating JWs from non-members.
  
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  Rattigan350

  "we all have only one Birth, day. Each year after that is just an anniversary “" That is so correct. Like a wedding is once and then after that it is a wedding anniversary.

  But the JW stance on birthday celebrations is wrong because: people in the Bible killed others on their birthday celebrations so that automatically makes such things generally wrong.

  The Bible describes the devil as a dragon, so all dragons are bad.

  The Bible says a serpent, snake was used by the Devil, so are all snakes bad?

  What is bad is the generalization, the stereotyping. One thing bad, everything of that category is bad. is the opposite true? One thing good and everything in that category is good?