A Recovering JW
recovering
Previously I have vented here about anomalies that stood out in WTS /JW.org literature and meetings. Today the anomalies keep coming, but they now leave me unruffled. I have changed. I now see myself as a recovering Jehovah’s Witness.
Yes, I still feel the pull of years of intoxicating indoctrination and am learning that spiritual sobriety is not an easy path to follow. Daily challenges present themselves. The voice inside the head of a recovering witness tells him to continue the indoctrination, since it’s the only way with a future. Go to meetings, contribute, engage in field-service and most of all, listen and obey. Only then, according to WTS teaching, can anyone be happy – the entire world, so we are told, is actually unhappy, though the people don’t know it. Strange isn’t it?
When a doubter tries to argue this with himself, the voice in his head floods his mind with guilt.
change
However, while individual change-of-heart and/or individual growth is anathema to the WTS / JW.Org, this religion nonetheless makes its own changes of metamorphic proportions. After laboring for years to change into something bigger, brighter, better, the WTS has finally been able to morph into JW.Org.
Leaving its old WTS caterpillar-like shell behind and donning its new JW.Org garb, the ugly old WTS caterpillar presents itself to all and sundry as a modern, technologically savvy, but otherwise innocuous religious butterfly.
The GB must hope and pray that all the natural predators that stalked the WTS caterpillar, will be thrown off scent by the new JW.Org regalia. The hope, as it flits from one doctrinal position to another – as butterflies flit between flowers – is to suck up financial nutriment at every point, unhindered by previous enemies.
The big question is:
Can the metamorphous from WTS to JW.Org assure the organization a safe and prosperous future?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
language
With all this going on, JW dubs must be puzzled as to which language to listen to. JW.Org’s verbal language, or JW.Org’s body language?
JW.Org’s verbal language hasn’t changed over the past 100 years.
The end is imminent – look at the state of the world.
Don’t be distracted by chasing an education for yourself or your children?
Don’t start a savings’ retirement plan, you will never need it.
Don’t worry about health cover. Nobody will be ill in the new system.
However, JW.Org’s body language says: ”implement your next 100 year plan today. Buy-up investment properties; build your most opulent mansions; employ the best available defense lawyers, tax avoidance accountants, strategic financial planners, property developers, political lobbyists, and so on”.
This language conflict should confuse the average JW dub? Yet it doesn’t seem to. JW dubs see with absolute certainty, only those things they have been taught to wish for in the coming new order.
Should we be optimistic that JW dubs will one day learn to read the body language?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
prayer
On the matter of hopes and prayers, millions of people now living and tens of millions of people no longer alive, have been misled by the WTS / JW.Org regarding what to hope and pray for. It is true, all churches mislead their parishioners on the matter of prayer, but not all boast they are God’s personal representative and that they alone have the truth.
JW.Org has consistently taught that while God hears all prayers, he acts only in response to JW dub prayers. To be blunt, God never acts on behalf of prayers from Catholics or Born Agains, or for that matter, from anyone else, according to JW dub beliefs.
However, what if you are a JW dub and you don’t get what you have prayed for? Dummy you! You have asked for the wrong thing. The problem is of your own making.
So what sort of prayer should one make? From an objective standpoint, prayer can be categorized as:
D.I.Y. Prayers
(D.I.Y. has the same connotation here as in D.I.Y. home renovations.)
This is a prayer where the successful execution of the prayer rests almost entirely in the hands of the one praying. As a result, Do-It-Yourself prayers have a higher success rate than Other Prayers. E.g.
You pray to lose weight – the prayer will work only if you alter your diet (friends may give encouragement);
You pray to stop smoking – the prayer will work only if you quit smoking (friends may give encouragement);
You pray to find a parking bay at the mall – the prayer will work only if you keep circling the parking lot until a parking bay becomes vacant.
Many examples come to mind.
Other prayers
This kind of prayer is one where the successful execution of the prayer does not rest in the hands of the one making the prayer. As a result this prayer invariably fails. E.g.
A winter prayer for a clear sunny day – since the weather is out of your control, you might receive a thunderstorm;
A prayer for a loved one not to die – since life and death are out of your control your loved ones will go the way of all flesh and eventually die;
A prayer for your bitter enemy in the congregation to die – this won’t happen quickly either, unless you make it a D.I.Y. prayer! In this case, many friends would most likely offer help. (Just making a point. Do not try this at home.)
reflection
So, after a long and thorough search of the veracity of WTS / JW.Org teachings and doctrines, I find myself – somewhat like a person lost in a desert – back where I started.
I’ve walked in circles. All I have found is that the millions of searchers before me have also wandered in the same circles, in the same sand, and none could find the “way” out. My paradox is summed up below:
“Myself when young did eagerly frequent doctor and saint, and heard great argument about it and about: but evermore came out by the same door as in I went.”
(Omar Khayyam)
mtwtf