by metatron 26 Replies latest jw friends
I remember one of my routine lines in family prayers was, "We pray for Armogeddon to come and destroy all wickednesses," I realize now that I left out the part of killing of near 6 billion people.
Hmm maybe I need to go back to being a JW, get prayer privleges and correct myself. "Jehovah we pray for Armogeddon to come, to kill everyone except JWs - please God kill all six billion of these satanic creatures because we are the one true religion, Amen." Then quit going again.
Hating sinners but not sin comes to mind...with the dubs being very selective about what sins they crack down on, they allow molesters to remain...one would think they would all get along amongst their filth.
At the last big assembly I attended............(I was already getting pissed off with it all by then),I was trying to find seats near the "mothers room", in such a caring and loving organisation you would think this would not be such a hard thing to do! Ha, wrong.! Every single seat in that area had bags and books strewn across the aisles and travel rugs right along the rows! No evidence whatsoever that these seats were taken by other mothers with babes in arms, but rather glitzy hand bags and accessories and food bags.
I was really pissed off, the people that had 'booked' these seats were obviously friendly with the attendants or whoever else had got there early enough to save them. So I moved the books further down the row and plonked myself and children right there. I was confronted at the start of the opening song by a gang of teenagers but refused to move.
Another thing that annoyed me was the environment that mothers and babys had to endure during those torturously long assembly days. We were usually relegated to mens changing rooms that had no sound, we had to tune in a radio! (second thoughts maby that was a blessing!)
I also thought it was a bad show that the end seats were never available to mothers and babys yet if we had to get up to take our children out, what a bloody commotion having to squeeze past all those ignorant people. All those tuts and sighs used to drive me mad.
yes h-man i am a thinking/feeling huiman being of what the Word is, and it says to love your neighbor as the second greatest commandment. it doesn't say only love your neighbor if they're a JW in good standing and thats what they are taught and thats how they act. done that been there.!!!
yes going to a convention and getting a seat was like watching bulls running into a matador. It was pathetic, like a regular stampede. And everyone seemed to think that the end seat was theirs. Love Love Love!! Barf Barf Barf!! At the Kingdom Hall brothers always took the outside seat as if it had their names inscribed upon them. Heaven help it if a sister took the spot. And then being assigned a student talk with sister so and so, oh I don't want her as my house holder, she always messes up and doesn't have any feelings when she talks, I would rather have that other sister who is great on the platform. Now what excuse can I give to that other sister. Love Love Love. Gee I don't want to work with that person in the service, I can't stand their personality yada yada yada!! That elder thinks he is so high and mighty, why just last week I saw him and his family at that movie that the Watchtower said was not good for Christians to see. How disgusting. She wears mini skirts at school and at the KH she dresses completely different. What a little hypocrite. I saw all those teenagers at a club in Toronto at a Rave and their conduct was disgusting and they have the nerve to tell everyone that they are JWs and they preach from door to door. And they snitched on a brother for smoking at school. what a bunch of rats. sure they love each other. Did you hear the latest gossip, brother and sister so and so almost made out in the van on the weekend and someone saw them and now its all over the Hall and there may be a disfellowshipping. Love love love. A brother is bringing lobster and shrimps from Newfoundland and he has invited the uppercrust of the congregation and doesn't want the others in the hall to know, in fact he has invited some from Bethel and my sister and her husband got invited but I am mush, and poor, and so I got no invite, Yes Love, Barf it sickens me to no end....Their little secrets their little rich cliques, there abandoning of those not so fortunate. Elders and their secrets and their wives and their little sneaky groups. Families fighting, Friends becoming ememies because of businesses. The list is endless. Didn't Jesus say that a house divided against itself will not stand. Well guess what their house is falling down. And its happening real fast.
Orangefatcat.
While I agree that LOVE is NOT an identifying mark of the Jehovah's Witness organization as a whole, I have to come down on the side of happyman with regard to the situation at Kingdom and Assembly Halls that I have attended.
Maybe I'm incredibly naive, but I NEVER refused a talk with any sister at the Theocratic Ministry School. In fact, I sometimes helped my friend write her talks because she wasn't particularly confident in her writing ability.
At assemblies, I admit that we usually arrived just in the nick of time, so I just sat wherever the attendant seated me & my kids.
At conventions, I ALWAYS sat where my congregation was assigned to sit. Which, in my case, was in the nosebleed section of the Pontiac Silverdome. We got the lousy seats because we had the least distance to drive to get there. That compromise made sense to ME, but I DO understand that not everyone felt the same way. Not too many from my congregation actually sat up there with my family and I in the nosebleed section. Some had sections where they "always sat" with their families. Others just weren't going to sit that high up where it could get extremely HOT.
I never refused to go out in service with people I didn't particularly like, either. (Although I DID breathe a sigh of relief if the elder in charge skipped over me when assigning someone to work with one particularly obnoxious sister! <<-- the same sister I was always SURE was going to be my *test* of love when the persecution started in earnest and for whom I would be asked to lay down my life - lol)
I DID experience a cooling off in attitude when I began missing meetings the couple of years before I was finally ratted out (is snitching on your 'brothers' LOVE?) and decided that DA'ing myself was the way I wanted to go.
When I visited other KH's I was always treated graciously.
When we were in PA where the in-laws had a cottage, the congregation helped us out when we needed potable water even before we started spending every other week there in the summer and 'adopted' that KH as our second hall.
I'm finding out NOW from another ex-'friend' that lots of nasty things and immoral things were going on of which I was happily oblivious. I was NOT, however, oblivious to the tension between certain elders in our congregation as well as between our PO and an elder from the congregation with whom we shared our hall.
Also, I never believed that God would kill everyone but JWs at Armageddon. Never. That was too arrogant a thought! So while I prayed for wickedness to end, I never was like that awful Pharisee who was glad that "he was not like that awful am-harets guy" -- you know, the humble sinner?
Problem is, the arrogance and lack of LOVE begins at the TOP of the Watchtower organization, and finds its way downstream, where, of course, normal human foibles are compounded by the ridiculous and unloving doctrines and rules which are truly NOT Bible-based!!!!
outnfree
Bay64me.....getting up to take care of your children was probobly not as embarasing to you as it was to the fat sisters and brothers you had to squeeze through to get to the isle...I remember that a lot. LOL (not making fun of fat people, making fun of fat people/or anyone else for that matter) who would give dirty looks to a mother who had to take care of their children.
TT
DOH!
outnfree, I went to a Pontiac Silver Dome convention, probobly in the 80's - there were people passing out left-and-right because the air conditioning wasn't on. WOW what a small world.
Edited by - TTBoy on 23 September 2002 20:39:59
Witnesses love each other?
Then why does the Watchtower have to remind them (again and again):
Geesh, tell me about it bro. The neverending barrage of counsel about how True Christians (tm) should be Conducting Themselves in These Last Days (tm) so as Not to Bring Reproach Upon Jehovah's Organization (tm) got to be almost comical to me, my last couple o' years in the troof.
I remember really cracking up at some of the pics in the mag, showing two sisters standing apart from each other with their arms folded in one pic, then the follow-up pic has them sharing tea and cookies at a perfectly arranged table(with a perfect flower arrangement of course), smiling pleasantly having obviously overcome their differences following the Bible-Based counsel from the slave LOL. Made you realize just how far removed from reality the boys in Brooklyn are.
JWs have what you would call conditonal love. Yeah, sure, they'll love you alright, as long as you're playing the game with
them. But the minute you slow down in your "kingdom" activities, the "love" disappears into thin air.
Personally, I think I have learned to be more loving and understanding, and also feel a better sense of spirituality since I left JWs.
JWs are way to exclusionary for my taste.
Can you say Pharisee?
Just my 2 cents worth.
Vita
Love is not possible within a community where tattling has a higher priority.
Love = freedom and responsibility
tattling = fear and self-righteousness
