by jam 30 Replies latest watchtower bible
Prologos, your analogy of the internal clock dropping digits and therefore fewer being counted is close to an idea I've had about the speeding up of time as we age.
I've thought about how as we age, our senses become duller, and we take in fewer bits of information. Fewer data is read by our brain as "faster."
I dunno, though, I'm "only" 42. But, I've been going gray since I was in high school and if I didn't have a very friendly relationship with Miss Clairol I'd be nearly completely gray. ;)
here is a corollary from going through time apparently so fast in old age:. You treasure time more, because you sense that you have only so much travel distance left. so:
I have become afraid of heights. I drive my motor cycle mostly over familiar roads with great foresight, but the thrill has not diminished. It take less action, less lean to get the same terror, thrill. I enjoy the sense of balance. I am afraid I might lose 15 years of my life, whereas when I was approaching 20 and not 90, I was ready to sacrifice a lifetime for showing that I was fit to be "the accomplished man".
I never considered to live forever a need to be a "serving" as a j "witness", just living in peace was enough of a recompense. The "superior authorities" reversal ended my confidence in wt writers.
We are very dependanr in our feelings, thinking abilities on our bodies*, hormones and all.
I got married AGAIN in my my early 60s and is was sweeter the second time around, and two children (16 & 2 old now) later, in my 9th decade, it would be a less hormone-driven- based marriage, and of course the ratio between my wife's age and mine changes with time . when we got married the bride was much junger, now the difference is closer to ~1:2. so even the hormone levels will align.
I feel, as my body gives out, I will not fight death, but welcome it as a deserved rest, a finale.
*Prof. Stephen Hawking's flights of fancy notwitstanding
GRR TEACHER, yes your desription of what might happen to the brain matches what I thing about the sense of time, less clicks counting between intervals.
The idea that we perceive the movement through time in relation to the time already passed, i.e as a function or ratio of our age is only a theory. The idea that with god everything goes by so fast is wrong, see above. the blankening of our brain is real. perhaps the shortenend sense of time is related to the loss of memory, particularly short term memory.
I did not get grey hair in High School (our trule GRREAT teachers did) but
I started LOOSING my hair then, but the process is still going on, perhaps with age it stabilizes ?
I have had trouble knowing what day it is since my daughter graduated from high school 9 years ago. My husband works a job where he often works weekends, so my days run together. I am also a part time pet/house sitter and some days I wake up and have to stop and think where I am, if I am in my own bed or at a clients house! I just ordered the Bobby Darin Show DVD and noticed that he has been dead over 40 years and I remember when his short lived TV show was on. Yikes! Like a few of you who have commented, I am also in my mid 60's, but my life is fuller than ever than when I was trapped in the JW's.
Magnum,
I walked into a Kingdom Hall for the first time in 1944. I was baptized in 1948. Our Hall was a storefront in a shabby part of town. It had a makeshift stage, folding chairs and an American Flag. It was a different religion than it is today.
Falling out of the religion was a slow possess. I think the first “bump” was in the early 1950s. At the annual meeting (1954 sticks in my mind, but I’m not certain anymore) Knorr ripped the congregations for lack of zeal. His entire talk was based on a misunderstanding of statistical analysis. He did not understand that the larger the number of publishers became the lower the percentage of growth would be. We had polite words. It made no difference.
Mostly through the 1950s and into the 1960s it was a comfortable religion I believed was the truth. However, comfort is not a measure of truth. In this period I was a Company Servant, later renamed Congregation Servant. I was teaching at a state university. Measuring the pseudo-scholarly, footnoted articles that sometimes appeared in the Watchtower against scholarly standards was a teeth chipping experience. I recall one article (I’m not going hunting for it and don’t remember the date) that was full of footnotes. They were all fake. The writer read only one of the books. All the other footnotes were drawn from it but presented as if each book had been read separately. I’d fail a student who did that.
Another pimple on the Watchtower’s face was using the name Houghton Mifflin, a text book publisher, as the name of an author. This is careless work. Sometime back in the 1950s, Franz found prophetic applications in Josephus. I shook my head. I didn’t like him. He was a fruitcake. But he could produce sound scholarship. The 1964 articles on Resurrection still stand out, even if current belief is a return to the past. Still, those things were minor to me. I believed we were helping people. Seeing people abandon harmful, unproductive lives for a better life was gratifying.
I was in various circuits mostly in western states. There were some troubled congregations, but mostly the congregations were friendly, and the members were committed and knowledgeable. They knew their religion. That’s not so now.
The 1975 prediction was jolting. Watching the new “elders” develop in to self-entitled, abusive, unprepared “princes” was what took me into a years long fade. I’m old and ill. I resigned due to illness, officially. I really quit because I couldn’t work with men who abused their brothers and sisters.
There was a reservoir of doctrinal questions too. Major prophetic statements seemed to have no basis in anything but imagination. When I read the book New World, a commentary on Job, I was impressed. Two decades later, in the 1960s, I had read almost everything the Watchtower had ever published and was left with the lingering question: “How do they know that?” The answer is, of course, they don’t. They see themselves as inspired, even though they deny that. They know ‘it’ because they want to see themselves as a prophetic movement. They don’t know anything at all. They make it up.
The organization’s structure fosters authoritarian abuse. That more than anything, even more than my questions, took me out of “the truth.” Men who did not prepare when counsel was needed, who showed up at committee meetings prepared to disfellowship but not prepared to assist someone weak mark this religion. Elders who study the publications in a desultory way and are biblically illiterate are common.
There is good in the religion, but the good does not rest among elders or other ecclesiastical authority. It rests among the average believer who wants to please God and have his blessing.
I would imagine things moves a little slowly in JW world.
When I was young I thought Xmas would never arrive,
JW the end of the world..LOL
Thanks Old Goat, great read....
thanks old goat. wow. a life lived well. and thoughtfull.
Yes, and I remember the troubled congregations: super egos in conflict.
my help in old age: a sense of humour, at all cost, even developing a slight case of foot in mouth disease.
OG: Great stuff. Some of the worlds great archeological finds were by amateurs. Try the great library of ninevah.
Now retired the one luxury i permit myself is to get up when i wake up not when the bedside clock says so. This means I am getting some where near proper sleep for the first time in many many years. Yes time.. my grand daughter is now in school hell it was only days ago i held her as baby.
Old Goat thanks for your thoughts. "Franz used prophetic application in Josephus" my generation 60s 70s we were not allowed to read books qouted in Cathoilic,Jewish encylopedia,and Josephus. They were books of the world! I looked at these books in the 90s because older WT books qouted from them. My sisters was going to the library and looking up qoutes in the 60s and 70s! LOL, it was the thing we were never suppose to do. I tracked Michael and Archangel starting from the "Truth" book to older Catholic encylopedia to Jewish encylopedia. Found it strange Russell qouted from the book of Enoch and the JWs kept recycling this information as if it was from the bible. I just went into shock. LOL!
You sound like you've had a fullfilled life. I enjoy reading what you share.
