Time of Trouble: Knocking on the Door of Jehovah's Witnesses (interesting article)

ldrnomo

Found this article on gawker.com

Check it out i'd like to get your thoughts:

http://gawker.com/5986407/time-of-trouble-knocking-on-the-door-of-the-jehovahs-witnesses?post=57721553

breakfast of champions

This looks good. . . Might share with my wife. Thanks

Hortensia

It's kind of funny, isn't it? She goes to the KH, stays for the meeting, gives them her name and address, and they STOP knocking on her door. I think the JWs prefer doors where no one is at home.

Tater-T

awesome.. loved it

The attached photo shows a young man walking out the door with his suitcase leaving behind his weeping mother. I want to ask about family and friends who would never in a million years join the faith. Can an eternal paradise really be that great if no one I love will be there?

After describing the male JW as having a droopy worn out suit and the female JW as having hair and make up that are the same "washed-out" color, I love this "householder's" later thought after closing the door on them:

"I thought of the irony of those two corpses offering me everlasting life."

....and later, as he's about to enter a Kingdom Hall:

"What if these are real-life zombies"

Corinna, the author of this piece, might know something profound there. People who have all the life taken out of them are telling people how to live and have fulfilled lives like theirs.

"It's like they're trying too hard to seem alive."

The Witnesses do seem to think that if they keep telling themselves they are happy with what they are doing, they might start believing it. The same with being alive. They keep telling themselves that the world is "dead" and only they are alive.

She seems to really capture the essence of understanding the JW's from a visitor's point-of-view.

moshe

I was reading the comments to the story on my IPhone this afernoon and they were like 10 to one in agreement with the story. Many people who commented were former JWs or had been raised as JWs and they all told their tale of how the JWs ruined their childhood and careers- When I looked awhile ago the comments seemed to have disappeared.

That said, I found her story painted a believable carricature of the JWs that, shall we say, does not help their recruiting efforts.

MrFreeze

I enjoyed the article. The descriptions were spot on. Now that I think about it, a funeral home is a pretty accurate description of a Kingdom Hall. When I think about my old hall... the "plants", the furniture, the decor. It screams house of mourning.

Aussie Oz

wonderfully well written i thought.

The JWs may well stay around another hundred years yet but they are going to be a lot smaller in number...and is it possible...even more corpse like...

Oz

cptkirk

I read about 40% of this; the guy seems to have a very lucid perspective, and after reading what i did, i think i felt more ashamed then ever before to have called myself a jw at one time. the description about the inside being like a funeral parlor (paraphrasing) really hit me. before i stopped going to meetings, this is exactly how i felt going in that hall. there were so many disturbed individuals in that kh....and yet so determined not to be the one to fall away (as the gossip which ensues subsequent to a fader is wicked beyond belief)...and they are all so determined not to be that person of great mockery....yet they are all miserable out of their minds.....i wonder to myself what the next step is for them. i am so happy to be out of there, regardless of what my own fate may be, at least it will be *my own* fate.

Fernando

"Great flock" sounds as if she knows about, and is hinting at, the Watchtower's two flocks (and two hopes) versus the Bible's "one flock" (John 10:16) and "one hope" (Eph 4:4).

She knows too much...