I do think this DC has ratcheted up the phobic cultspeak a few notches. What really struck me was the heightened binary—everything is black and white, either evil/worldly or good/approved by the org. There is virtually no room left for a conscience or personal decision making.
Some observations:
1. The first demo Fri am was of a bible study telling the sister that she can’t have her study this morning. “Last night, I got into a discussion with Steve about the Bible and I really let him have it. And do you know what he did? HE HIT ME!” sobs the bible study.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” says the sister. “You did not deserve that. Jehovah does not approve of hitting. But maybe you could have handled it better. Here, read [Scrip on showing love].”
“But Steve never does any of those things!” says the study.
“Well, who’s trying to be the Christian here?” retorts the sister.
Sound familiar? Yup, it’s almost word for word the experience in the Feb 2012 WT. Except for a careful addition: The first two sentences the sister says about you not deserving that and Jehovah not approving of hitting are ADDED. They are NOT in the WT. I went home and looked it up on the CD-ROM. Anyone else notice that?
So much for “authentic” experiences.
2. The first scrip read—the very first in the whole program—was Prov 4 on the light getting brighter and its application to how “our understanding of truth is progressive and refined.” That scrip was used twice during the morning and there were repeated statements about progressive revealing of truth.
3. Evolution is now lumped in with the trinity and hellfire as false doctrine. Go figure. I suppose they’re trying to recast it as completely disassociated from actual scientific investigation.
4. One of the final talks had the weirdest illustration I’ve heard in a long time—in fact, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the speaker was getting at until he finally explained the application. Suppose you are looking to buy a house and the realtor takes you to nice gated community. The house is great, except that the realtor says that there are a few rules within the community. First, everyone believes in free love and sleeps with everyone else. Second, there are “propaganda meetings” that are mandatory because the community wants to control the direction of your life. Any guesses? He’s talking about college campuses! This led to an extended discussion of how Christian parents would never expose their children etc. etc.
5. The Apostate talk was a doozy. I have NEVER heard of so much vitriol in such a short amount of time. The Bethel speaker was almost trembling. I decided that I would just take down every negative characterization. The most hilarious part, though, is that Satan runs a restaurant! Yes, Satan's diner, where demons are sous-chefs and human apostates the kitchen help. All I could think of was--someone's been watching a little too much Chef Ramsey.
Anyway, here goes. Without any grammatical adjustments or modifiers, in fourteen minutes, apostates are:
Evil, poisonous, unruly, poisonous lies, deceive minds, prefer the table of the demons, slanderous, infected, diseased workers, pushed away from Jah's table, decided on the table of the demons, oppose Jah's will, part of the seed of the serpent, prideful, reject counsel, have earthly wisdom, animalistic, pride that escalates into bitterness, jealousy, reject God's service, draw men after themselves, only claim to worship God, too prideful to preach, like kidnappers, prey upon others, speak twisted things, create divisions, resort to distortions, half-truths, lies, malicious, intend to deceive, speak counterfeit words, twist scriptures, employ clandestine methods, use smooth talk in blogs, don't care about others, hypocrites, false faced, claim to be your brother, don't have an original thought, only want to criticize, claim to serve God but reject his representatives. Reject GB, reject overseers, reject elders, lie to authorities, seek to discredit organization, use media to lie, picket in front of Bethel, have wicked works, like someone with an infectious disease, mentally diseased, want to infect others, like rotten fish, not sincere in their expressions, double-hearted, want to undermine your faith, opposers, walk against the truth, part of the antichrist, work with Satan in his evil kitchen.
I counted 64 negative characteristics in 14 minutes, which makes 4.5 or so every minute. That's without any kind of surrounding grammatical construction, which of coure, the speaker supplied. But this gives you an idea of the tenor. Actually, I thought a couple of things were odd: Not having an original thought! And "working with Satan in his evil kitchen." Direct quote. I had to giggle at that.
The speaker also said, "Don't we feel that you can say whatever you want about me, but don't say a word about my mother. Well, our mother is the organization. Shouldn't we defend our mother?"
The exhortation was imperative and repetitive: Don't read, don't talk, don't respond, don't say a word, don't even glance at what apostates produce. This was said over and over and over.
Yeesh.