They are all SCREWED

by Terry 9 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Terry

  Jehovah's Witnesses acquire peculiar ideas.

  Those peculiar ideas give rise to warped views.

  The more warped a JW's outlook becomes the more the association with others whose thinking has twisted will conform and radicalize them.

  For example?

  Consider this simple statement of scripture, first.

  1 Timothy 5:8

  Revised Standard Version (RSV)

  8 If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

  Worse than an unbeliever! Who is worse? A person who doesn't make provision, provide, care for, support--their own family.

  Jehovah's Witnesses somehow don't really get this, do they?

  Witness women, generally, are pressured to stay home rather than pursue careers. For JW's a career is just about anything that we'd call "a job."

  At any rate, the "MAN" of the family is left to provide. And yet?

  And yet, JW's cannot stretch the boundries placed around them.

  A young man is stifled in any pursuit of higher education. This means a "born-in" has limited use in the world of employment.

  How many blue collar JW's abound? Janitors, window washers, manual laborers are quite common, competing with illegal aliens for these jobs.

  All the above said in order to say this. HOW CAN A MAN PROVIDE for his family and relatives if he has a crappy job and he's required to attend

  meetings after manual labor? How much time is left to PROVIDE emotionally, as well?

  Now it's time to pull out this scripture and fly it as a large banner over your local Kingdom Hall:

  Matthew 23:4

  New Living Translation (NLT)

  4 They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

  Yes, being a Jehovah's Witness is to be crushed into rather pathetic life of burdens, demands and heavy judgments.

  We have to ask this question:

  How is it possible to provide for your family, put Jehovah (i.e. the burdens of the GB) first and not break down under the load?

  Matthew 11:30

  New International Version (NIV)

  30 "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

  WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

  The fellow who WAS my best friend, and who really got me in to the Jehovah's Witnesses married a 15 year old girl who never graduated from

  High School and who never worked an outside job in her life. She never attended college. She has never read any books other than Watchtower publications and romance novels.

  She has stayed home and reared FIVE kids to adulthood.

  Her husband only graduated from High School. He worked as a truck driver and uniform salesman and finally at a cemetary.

  Their kids, all of them, are now grown. All those five kids (yes all) of them are disfellowshipped.

  The husband and wife (superb Jehovah's Witnesses) live in an empty nest with only their Watch Tower books to comfort them.

  Now I ask you, was it worth it?

  They did everything by the book (well, the GB's version of "the book") and never turned in less than ten hours. And yet, their kids

  are DF'd and they've got no life savings or retirement benefits.

  Does that sound like sufficient description of Jesus' words:"For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ?

  This family has never screwed up but they are all SCREWED.

  Thank you Watch Tower Society and your Governing Body of slave-driving Pharisees.
• 

  losingit

  Oh Terry, I feel for that couple... thank God I'm out!
• 

  DATA-DOG

  Sadly, that is not an isolated incident. Great post, as usual.
• 

  adamah

  Fortunately for JW's, the Bible offers a veritable smorgasborg of pick-as-you-like scriptures which are contradictory.

  So this:

  1 Timothy 5:8 Revised Standard Version (RSV)

  8 If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

  is met and raised by the words of Jesus, in Luke 14:26:

  If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

  The NT is FULL of examples where Jesus told people to ignore their family obligations (eg "let the dead bury the dead"), expected his disciples to leave family obligations, and repeatedly harped on giving away all of one's worldly possessions in order to join up as a follower of his itinerent preaching party ("the birds don't worry about what they eat"), etc.

  Utterly foolish advice, unless his audience was actually avian....

  Adam
• 

  AbaDaddy

  I would take comfort, since there are so many 'worse than an unbeliever' brandishings, in simply being an unbeliever if it weren't for the accusation against me of being worse than 'worse than an unbeliever', since I have 'heard' what Jehovah has to say and 'spat him in the face', or less histrionically, rejected him.
• 

  rocketman

  When Matthew 11:30 was read and/or considered at meetings, the question would always pop into my mind: 'Why, then, do I feel so burdened?' It's because, as Terry points out, the JW religion is burdensome. Any religion that expects its adherents to form their lives, goals, and dreams/aspirations around it is a burden, and that's exactly what the Watchtower expects from Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Good post Terry.
• 

  Theredeemer

  Jesus is one of the most contradictory spiritual leaders ever! Turn the cheek, except when you use a whip to drive people out of the temple? Hate your father, brother, mother, his own life to be his disciple......but if you hate your brother is a murderer? He didnt come to make peace but to bring a sword....but if you live by the sword you die by it? Love your enemies and bless those that curse you...unless you are a pharisee in that case "you fools!! Generation of vipers!! Hypocrites!!"
• 

  Separation of Powers

  Good post Terry.

  Family is NOT important to the average JW. Therefore, there is no need to worry about taking care of someone. I remember talking to a brother who had been accepted into circuit work. I reminded him that his parents were older and that he might need to return home to help take care of them so he probably shouldn't divest himself of everything he owned. He shrugged it off and quoted that scripture from Psalms, "I have not seen a righteous man forsaken or his children searching for bread." No, for him, Jehovah and the congregation would take care of them...After all, THEY RAISED HIM TO REACH OUT FOR SPIRITUAL GOALS!

  Most JW families are a sham. They are a collective group of dysfunctionals that PRETEND to be happy so that they garnish praise and privileges. They have been displaced from the real world and all that matters is how the collective views them. If one of them falls out of line, typically, it will be another family member that will throw them under the bus while someone else in the family is driving it.

  It reminds me again, sorry I'm rambling, about the Danish movie where the young girl is DF'd and she goes to a funeral and sees her family. Her dad says something about her being selfish and she asks him why he is a JW, "So I can live forever in paradise," he says. Well, who is the selfish one then?

  SOP
• 

  adamah

  The Redeemer said-

  Jesus is one of the most contradictory spiritual leaders ever! Turn the cheek, except when you use a whip to drive people out of the temple? Hate your father, brother, mother, his own life to be his disciple......but if you hate your brother is a murderer? He didnt come to make peace but to bring a sword....but if you live by the sword you die by it? Love your enemies and bless those that curse you...unless you are a pharisee in that case "you fools!! Generation of vipers!! Hypocrites!!"

  It's contradictions like those that indicate Jesus was merely a character of fiction (perhaps based on a real character), where "too many cooks spoiled the broth", and inserted details into Jesus' mouth that contradicted other claims made by other authors removed in location and time, completely unaware. And realize those kinds of contradictions persist, IN SPITE of prior efforts to "harmonize" the inconsistencies by a multitude of editors of Biblical canons.

  "Inspired" process? Hardly. The Bible itself is prime evidence #1 that an omniscient being didn't have his finger in it's writing, no more than the Lord of the Ring trilogy deserves to be considered as inspired by God since it contains orders-of-magnitude fewer contradictions than even the much-shorter Gospels.

  Adam
• 

  Terry

  Slightly off-topic, but interesting is this.

  If we keep in mind the nature of how the so-called New Testament came to exist it explain plenty in the way of contradiction.

  The NT is many VERSIONS of what people told each other.

  The Jesus story is hand-me-down oral tradition.

  This went on for years and years before anybody sat down and wrote their OWN version of the hand-me-down versions.

  So it is perfectly logical different stories from different people aren't going to match other versions from other people.

  The Christian epic is largely IMPRESSIONS and emotional reactions passed along until certain obsessive-compulsive personalities micro-managed

  the stories into doctrine and policy.

  Remember, when Jerusalem's temple was destroyed, the original Jewish-messianic Christianity was chased into the hills. Paul found his audience among

  Pagan, non-Jews with a completely different idea about divinity.

  Pagans felt very much at home with demi-gods (half man/half god) and their opinions of Jesus were more divinity oriented.

  Anyway, I digress...

  The Jesus of the Bible changes every single generation according to human needs.

  The Jehovah's Witness version of Jesus has undergone dramatic and violent changes in the last hundred years.

  C.T.Russell had an almost traditional Lord Jesus. J.F.Rutherford had a G.I. Joe Jesus.

  Worship of Jesus ended in 1954. Jesus became a mascot and big J (Jehovah) the bar-room brawler took over with testosterone blazing into

  Armageddon worship.

  The GB view members of this religion as worker ants in a vast colony. The busy-busy-busy preoccupation with ending the world and selling stupid and badly written theology screeds puffs them up to Pope-level status.

  The leaders of the Watch Tower cult don't love anybody but themselves. They are Narcissistic, self-important, megalomanical fascists greedy for the deaths of billions of humans.

  It is no surprise they turn familes into self-destructive laboratories of failed religious zealotry.