When a JW's life comes close to its end...

by suavojr 31 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  suavojr

  Talking with a long time elder last night, was very revealing. He has been a JW for over 60 years, a man that was incarcerated in Cuba in his early 20’s and faced great loss and suffering over his beliefs and for being born in a communist country. This brave man is now brittle and low-spirited.

  While nightfall’s on his life, he is made aware the end is near. He continues relentless with the expectation of a “paradise earth.” But what does he have left from decades of waiting? 100 years of an invisible King and his Kingdom.

  He was asking me to refresh his memory on all the recent changes the Borg is doing… I could not believe that an elder so committed to the JW movement could not keep up with all the changes. I saw his eyes lacking certainty but still clinging on to the last breath of hope, hope that soon all evil will be wiped away by an awe-inspiring, stronger, almighty God. Yet his hope is dwindling and stated:

  “I think humans will eventually go extinct if Jehovah does not do anything”

  He was right, humans will go extinct. On the other hand, I could see how he found comfort by ending the sentence with his favorite deity, but his eyes gave it away. The cruel and cold realization that maybe, just maybe, the cosmos simply does not care.

  What I took away from that brief moment in time, was also the realization that life is a continuous cycle until an event ends it. Sooner or later life itself will charge us for the ride. Whatever we do now, whatever we decide, will get added to the tab of our future generations.

  Will you continue to live life in the negative? Or will you have the courage to live life in the positive and give your best while you can?

  I hope we can all work on improving our lives and forget about the bad choices in life and start to build from the ground up.
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  Cold Steel

  Just because his faith is misplaced does not mean we return to a cold nothingness. People can believe what they wish, but man is said to be God's crowning achievement, and our struggle in this life is a struggle between good and evil, overseen by a God who can not and will not deny us our free agency. Christianity is based on the notion that any evil, any suffering, in this life is an experience that will help us in the next. I've read far too many near death experiences that are so incredibly consistent (regardless of cultural backgrounds) to discount a life after death.

  As one scholar wrote “If this is what liberation from the [Christian] ‘myth’ makes you—a vulgar and sometimes duplicitous crank, cackling with malice and spite—then I would prefer to spend the few brief years left to me (before I dissolve into the irreversible and never- ending oblivion many [atheists] prophesy for me and all humankind) with people who have not been liberated.”

  He also noted:

  A neighbor and friend was stricken with multiple sclerosis in her midtwenties and now, in her thirties, lies bedridden in a rest home. Barring some incredible medical breakthrough, this is her life. Absent hope for a life to come, this is all she will ever have to look forward to. My own father, for the last six years of his life, blind from an utterly unforeseen stroke suffered during routine and relatively minor surgery, was incapable of any of the activities in which he had once found satis faction and pathetically asked me, every few weeks, whether he would ever see again. What comfort would there be in saying, “No, Dad. This is it. Nothing good is coming. And then you’ll die.”

  Of course, something may be unpalatable and unpleasant yet accurate. I can certainly understand coming to the sad conclusion that this is in fact the truth about the human condition: That we live briefly, then we die and we rot. That so, too, do our children and our grandchildren. And that so, also, does everything we create—our music, our buildings, our literature, our inventions. That “all we are is dust in the wind.”

  But I cannot understand those who regard this as glorious good news.

  He quotes famed playright, philosopher and author Albert Camus, a noted and prolific atheist:

  If we believe in nothing; if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance. There is no pro or con: the murderer is neither right nor wrong. We are free to stoke the crematory fires or to devote ourselves to the care of lepers. Evil and virtue are mere chance or caprice.
  
  At the point where it is no longer possible to say what is black and what is white, the light is extinguished and freedom becomes a voluntary prison.

  A good friend of mine knew Camus during the war and up until the time he died in an automobile accident. He said that at the time he died, Camus had completely rejected his views of atheism and was even contemplating entering the Catholic priesthood. I studied several of his works, including The Myth of Sisyphus, a cynical look at religion. My instructor, also a dedicated atheist, never told us that Camus reneged on his atheistic beliefs.

  .
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  Black Sheep

  I've watched them die.

  It's all about not admittiing that they made a mistake by following a particular religious leader in their youth. The more failures their religious leader had before they joined, the more important it is that they don't admit those failures to you, or themselves.
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  designs

  Nearly everyone in my parents generation are gone now. They never saw the vaunted New Earth come. My mother was so disappointed to not live to see it.
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  new hope and happiness

  in witness land its hard to love the people we used to be. Why? because the past is filled with broken promises and so its always better tomorrow. Today my only promise is i hope to see another beautiful may 17th. But this May 17th is special my team is in the F.A cup final...( yea thats a silly thing to write) but as a jehovers witness this day would be a bad day, better be in the ministry....

  come on ya Arsenal...
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  DesirousOfChange

  I wonder if they would still say: "Even if it's all wrong......it's still the best way of life."

  Was it really the best way to spend their life?

  40, 50, 60, 70 years spent hanging onto some bogus "future" promise that always goes unfulfilled. Is that REALLY BETTER?

  Better than what?

  Doc
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  designs

  DOC- you just can't beat sitting in a Sports Stadium for 3 days and not seeing any sports....
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  im stuck in

  suavojr That kind of stuff absolutely breaks my heart. That a group of ruthless old men who should know better keep the rank and file so loyal through lies while they enjoy the goog life in the manner of Old Joe. I myself am a victin of over 60 years from youth up. Although I am no longer part of the religion I pretend for my family whom I love so much.
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  suavojr

  Im stuck in

  It is very sad... I am in my mid 30's and thankfully woke up early in life. But I am also pretending for my familly whom I love. How do you cope with your situation?
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  Mandette

  I'm happy that I stopped being a "sleeping sheep" in my mid 20's. Recently I heard from an 80 something that, "Oh things are going to be fixed but it's going to take a while longer.". REALLY?????? After all this BS of never graduating, retiring etc. Now it all changes again and people are terribly disappointed.

  Not this girl. Not ever again.