Time for a update,Terry.
Bangalore
Chapter a day: MEMOIRS of a MANGY ex-CULTIST
by Terry 36 Replies latest watchtower bible
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donny
Great stuff!!
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Terry
Thanks for the reminder--I forgot all about it!!
CHAPTER 12 What really IS persecution?
If you touch a hot stove---on purpose--it hurts. Can I hear an amen? (Amen--I mean, "Duh").
Is the stove persecuting you for your righteous curiousity? How about "No, Mister Nutjob--no way!"?
And so it goes...
We J-Dubs got on a self-destructive path mostly thanks to the pathological Judge Rutherford that led to harm's way almost from the minute he took over as
President of the Watchtower corporation. Rutherford was a guy who might be described as "kicking ass and taking names." Not a charmer, Joseph Franklin Rutherford was a self-made sociopath who would never win any popularity contests. He never bothered to try.
What excuse can you give for rudeness combined with crudeness laced with the fragrant bouquet of alcohol? Rutherford was a bully who ran roughshod
over others on his way to reshaping the various Bible Students congregations into something he could dominate and exploit.
The most egregious example of this (and, believe me, there are many examples of this!) is the Judge's ham-handedness in dealing with Hitler and Nazi Germany. After kissing up to the Nazis to protect the inventory of books, bibles, magazines and such and going so far as to sympathize with the anti-Jewish
sentiments expressed by Hitler---Rutherford eventually snapped and lost his diplomatic pretense of going-along-to-get-along. He decided to use the German bible students and newly minted Jehovah's Witnesses as pawns. Having invented a new American religion he sought to brand it with official christian bona fides. In his twisted mind this was best accomplished by getting recognition through PERSECUTION.
But, as I said before, deliberately touching a hot stove does not qualify for a purple heart. Rutherford's brand of christianity had consistedd of calling-out
just about every group on planet earth and hurling insults, calumny and poisonous ad hominems at them. Catholics, Protestants, Governments, Banks, Big Business--you name it and he shredded them on his radio broadcasts and in his well-publicized sermons and writings.
When you insult what people trust, admire, embrace and love---what reaction do you expect in return??
To call it "persecution" is to destroy the genuine meaning of martyrdom as a sacred performance of pure worship.
Rutherford was like a kid on the streets who starts insulting your mother and when you lose your temper and are reading to box his ears--he disappears and sends out his unwitting siblings to take the heat! And all the while, he is way up on the roof taunting, chiding, cheerleading the damage.
This new religion had little enough to do with christianity because christianity is about Jesus.
Judge Rutherford was selling something like the UNcola. Call it the UN-christianity. Jesus' name disappeared and was subsumed by the tribal Jehovah of ancient Israel. Remember Him? He was the mean one--the fuming, hot-tempered deity ready to zap infidels with plagues, locusts, she-bears and world wide deluges that left a stack of dead bodies miles high.
Sure, Jehovah's temperament matched Rutherford's pretty well. Jehovah was out to make a name for himself and Rutherford was ready to oblige in modern times. The fact that Jehovah went AWOL after Alexander the Great conquered the ancient world is swept under the rug. The appearance of Jesus as the son of this cranky old tosspot was ignored because Jesus had already been co-opted by those whom Rutherford designated "Religionists".
That was his pejorative. He ate a bowl of pejoratives for breakfast, apparently. Whatever nominal christianity was FOR Rutherford set his mind on being AGAINST. And if it cost a lot of lives for the brand name Jehovah to cash in on christian gravitas Rutherford was only too willing to make it happen.
The scheme worked well enough: create an unstable situation through rhetoric and toss the members into the boiling pot. As the injuries began the public relations cry went out that it was PERSECUTION for righteousness sake by enemies of god!
That is where I enter the picture, of course. I was sent out with my marching orders straight into the jaws of the F.B.I., local Draft Board, Federal Court System and ultimately the slammer! The Watchtower's policies were clandestine and the strings of the puppeteers were kept invisible.
Those of us who dangled in harm's way were merely playing the role in which we were cast: martyrs, dupes and knuckleheads.
Jehovah's Knuckleheads isn't as catchy and legalistic as "witnesses" however.
And for all our sacrifice of home, friends, family, youth and ambition we had precious little reward from those who dropped us in the skillet!
Think of how the Civil War was fought with armies ordered to advance into the blazing muskets of insuperable forces and you'll have an idea
of how the Watchtower's wars were being fought by their feckless generals in the Governing Body.
In Malawi there were rapes, beatings, daily brutalities inflicted on good-hearted people whose only crime was BELIEVING they were serving
almighty god by refusing to accept a political party identification card! Half a world away in Mexico, we later discovered, the Watchtower smiled and approved of the very behavior others died trying to avoid. Is this knowing duplicty? If it is how can it be viewed as anything but sadistic sociopathic malice?
Nobody at headquarters has taken responsibility so far. Oh, and don't hold your breath until it happens!
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Bangalore
Time for chapter 13,Terry.
Bangalore
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Terry
Bangalore:Time for chapter 13,Terry
You've awakened me from my torpor!
CHAPTER 13
CONTRASTS
Being a Jehovah's Witness was actually much more fulfilling inside prison than it ever was outside.
The contrasts were strong.
Inside prison every sensation was repressed and your sense of yourself compressed into a tight focus of NOW.
The distractions of earning a living, entertainment, relaxing, going out to eat or casually drifting along day to day were absent totally.
Being isolated from the "real world" of civilians meant something significant. What I told myself was, "I'm here because this is worship."
How did I convince myself of that?
Caesar's authority (as in Roman's 13:1) was forcing me into a kind of martyr status (without the "death" part--I hoped) and each day was
a refusal of "satan's authority" and reaffirmation of Jehovah's.
Now, as soon as I wrote that sentence I sort of blinked and winced. It sounds constipated with piety from this distance.
Once you start viewing your SELF as a martyr you've become unhinged. But, I'd by lying if I said any different. I certainly did consider myself to be a Jehovah's "witness".
One of my JW buddies in Seagoville prison was a fellow named Joe Pruett. He came running up to me as excited as a puppy one evening with a dictionary in one hand and his green New World Translation in the other. Breathless, he blurted out as if it were the secret of the universe itself, "Do you know what the word 'martyr' really means?.....It means a WITNESS!" Joe's eyes were scattering light like a plutonium ingot had been shoved up his ass.
I confess I got excited too! Wow! really?
You have to realize there wasn't much that WAS exciting in prison to be on the same page with this, you understand.
Once your mind has fallen like the needle of an old phonograph record player into the groove of DEEP THOUGHT you'll find diamonds in a stick of chewing gum if you aren't too careful!
Besides being a MARTYR with my every breath, I found that I became easily sucked in to imagining all the Watchtower Society's publications (yes, even the moldy oldies) were treasures to be reckoned with.
I devoted myself to reading and discussing Rutherford's writings (and, unbeknownst to me, Fred Franz).
You'd never find a JW on the outside in a Kingdom Hall who would spend hours and hours with you digging into the bedrock of the original Watchtower loonies searching for profound wisdom.
Moreover, let's face it, there were females on the outside and none at all on the inside. Would you believe females could distract a 20 year old who had never experienced physical intimacy?
So, I'm saying, it was the perfect incubator for Theocracy mindset 24/7.
That was 1967-69 and the forces of rebuttal and the Internet were non-existent. The chance of any of us encountering disconfirmation was zero.
So, it did not seem a waste of our more than plentiful TIME to devote hours of concentration to vacuuming out the details from old books.
I can clearly remember the faces of the Visiting Overseers who came once a month (like Circuit and District overseers) when we pathetic wide-eyed
dilletantes reported the vast trove of OLD LIGHT as though it were something not to be overlooked as TRUTH.
To these outside guys, the OLD LIGHT sounded ridiculous and even astonishingly naive! But, they wouldn't tell us that. After all, who reads those
old publications? It came FROM the Society headquarters--so, how could we be critical, right?
The best these traveling visitors could summon was a mollifying admonition that we stick to the "new"light lest we become "confused" by the Old Light.
Uh-huh. Riiiight.
When family or friend arrived in the Visiting Room on Saturday or Sunday you can imagine how uncomfortable it must have been to sit listening, slack-jawed to all these nuggets of deep doo-doo from bushy-tailed inmates aglow with heavenly bulletins!
Such a great chasm existed between INSIDE JW-dom and OUTSIDE Jw-Dumb you would not believe.
The more I learned about the TRUTH (excuse the expression!) the more I confronted the total ignorance about the religion from card-carrying JW's who had been in the organization for years!
How could this be?
Well, we all know now how it can be: the Watchtower writings are about as dull as the finish on a junkyard 52 Chevy. The writing style was torpid, lugubrious and thick. You had to sharpen your teeth to break off something chewable!
I can now visualize Fred Franz sitting in his red plaid shirt stooped over a desk near a window in his Bethel apartment scribbling away while conversing with his shoes about Babylon the Great. On one side of his table : a stack of Martin Luther's ravings against the Catholic church and on the other size Franz would have a do-it-yourself Timeline with so many addenda only a magnifying glass could puzzle them out.
Between grunts and glances upward, Freddy would "channel" the make-believe into paragraphs which must have been written first in German and then translated into Chinese syntax and finally slapped into a semblance of English. Why would I say this? It took years to be able to read a sentence or a paragraph of Watchtower-speak without having your eyebrow peel and droop like paint chipping off an old barn!
And yet--that is what we had become proficient in doing in our weekly book studies of Franz's greatest hits! We began undersanding them.
The formula was emerging as comprehensible, too.
1. Every scripture could have an original application, a Messianic counterpart application and finally a Modern Day application!
2. Every verse in Revelation could be applied to the Watchtower organization as a historical fulfillment in some way!
3. All events proved unquestionably to be written for current warning that Armageddon was so close you could smell its breath!
The irony of it all was that it was simply:
1. Bad writing, bad thinking , awful logic.
2. Forced interpretation at the expense of the facts
3. Distortions beginning to end that would become so non-applicable to modern events it would be retired before even a decade went by uneventfully!
But, we inmates and martyrs were cranking away filled with zeal and awe at the glorious past exhibited by even the earliest JW's who fought hart
to put the other religions on notice: WE ARE THE ONLY ONES WITH THE TRUTH!
Gosh, that makes my teeth hurt!
The sad reality of it---now---is we were all young men isolated from a real life; wasting precious opportunities to create a decent life for ourselves.
We were like somebody about to take a trip around the world who manages to pack into tiny suitcases absolutely NOTHING USEFUL and we'd drag it with us wherever we went like perfect idiots!
Not only did we fool ourselves about the factual content of our beliefs; we were self-deceived about the strong bonds of brotherhood we were forging.
We all confirmed in our heart we'd remain fast friends forever. Nothing of the kind occurred, of course. We drifted off after parole into isolated, empty lives of drudgery and didn't stay in touch.
Just about every brother I had grown close to has either died, disfellowshipped or morphed into a douche-bag who won't even accept a phone-call from me because I'm an evil "Apostate".
It still turns my stomach I could have fooled my own self so badly, so thoroughly and so willingly!
Live and learn, no?
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LongHairGal
Terry:
Probably not too many JWs are aware the word witness means "martyr". I would bet that most probably think it has something to do with verbally praising God's name in public.
I certainly didn't sign myself up to be cannon fodder and I am so glad to be done with this charade that was just setting me up to be a victim in every way imaginable.
I was simply interested in end-time prophecy. I also was led to believe the JWs had no clergy class and this sounded good to me. Boy, was I wrong. I feel very stupid for being deceived by this hateful religion. Twelve years of being a "fader" has taken most of the sting out of my anger and I am glad I have no family there to be rescued because I would drag them out of there.
I hope you have made new friends and a happy new life outside the religion.
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Terry
I tried fading and I did fade. But, I got a phone call one evening from the overseer whom I hadn't spoken to in at least six months.
"Hi, how's it going, Terry. Could you come up to the Kingdom Hall tomorrow evening for a chat. We'll catch up on things. Blah blah."
So, it did not strike me as forboding that such an invitation would include the word Kingdom Hall when it wasn't going to be a meeting night.
Of course, it ended up being a JC (Judicial Committee) meeting.
Even while I was in this JC--I swear this is true--I had no CLUE it was a JC.
What a dim bulb I was.
You should have seen the look on my face when they rang the bell, closed the book and blew out the candle on me!