Amnesian you really read my mind on that priviledge part. How true. Every friggin time the KH needed to be cleaned that "priviledge" rant was shoved down our throats. I had never seen it being used with the men. One time I was so sick I had the flu and was still guilt tripped into raking leaves and cleaning up the old moldy cellar---I was so ticked off I went to the KH with a Brooklyn Dodgers t-shirt and payed no mind when everyone else started mumbling about my shirt, at one point I threatened to take it off and walk around only in my bra.
Can You Discern What The Society Is Really Saying?
by minimus 58 Replies latest jw friends
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rebel
I don't know if any of you have had a chance to see the new 2003 calendar yet. It is quite different to the usual sort. Every page tells the story of a current brother or sister who lived a dreadful life until they came into the 'Truth'. They were either on drugs, alcoholics, suffering from depression etc etc. They all completely turned their lives around when they were saved by the WTBTS!! It gives before and after photos of each person - they are fairly recent stories. It's funny, but after telling myself that I wouldn't be taken in by their propaganda again, I started feeling really guilty after reading the calendar. They are very crafty people.
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Francois
Rebel, you've hit on a very important point. These people you describe who are alcoholics, drug-addicted, depressives, etc. are just the kind of people who are looking for something like the WTBTS, something bigger and better than themselves, something to make their meaningless, lost, and wasted lives take on a meaning they would otherwise not have. That's precisely why these loosers are so hard to get out of the organization; it's why these people will deny, deny, deny even obvious truths about the Society. For them to admit the painful truths about the Society is the same as admiting their own failures and presauges a return to their lost and meaningless lives. Thus their hard-headed, anti-intellectual, lock-step attachment to this organization created by losers for losers.
Naturally, I'm gonna recommend you read Hoffer's "The True Believer," which is the best book about mass movements and what they are and who joins them and why I've ever seen. Try it, you'll like it. And it will arm you to do what JWs hate the most: psychoanalyze them and their motivations as opposed to arguing their "theology" with them.
francois
Edited by - francois on 25 December 2002 16:12:42
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Scully
I wrote:
Almost everything the Society says, when you listen to it long enough, means:
Give us your money. Give us your time, using it to find other people who will give us their money. Then, give us some more money and more time.
I left something out. My apologies.
I forgot one very important point, to wit, the boiled down version of everything the WTS says means:
Give us your money. Give us your time, using it to find other people who will give us their money. Then, give us some more money and more time. Be prepared to kill yourself when we say so.
Love, Scully
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uriah
What gets my goat is when the WT makes satements like:
"The brothers wondered what to do and where to go when the Watchtoer of 15 Jan 1938 showed the way in a brilliant flash of light, how garteful those brothers were" type stuff. It is written as if the Watchtower was some etherial 'being' totally indepenant.
Another is the use of coercion with regard to not disobeying elders (aka WTBTS) "Glorious Ones" "Princes". I also want to know what this "hard working elders" work is. I also hate the "ones" tag, these ones this and these ones that.
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twain30
Dear Amnesian: The explanations you gave as to Privileges of Service, Serving, and Being Used are very appropriate. JW men will jump through alot of hoops and sacrifice alot of self-respect in order to receive a "Privilege." A good example of this is the competition among elders to sequester the favor of Circuit Overseers so as to get a talk on the assembly program. For a JW male to be accepted in his society he is made to feel like he HAS to have a title to be accepted. The more prominent the title, the more you are accepted and given reverence. How contrary to what the Apostle Paul said concerning, "IF any man is reaching out to be an overseer he is desirous of a fine work." He certainly didn't say that you had to be an Overseer to be respected.
To me this is a sad political heirarchy which is far from what was laid out in the Greek Scriptures.
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Pistoff
How about the song and dance about blood?
Until 1998, hemoglobin and hemoglobin solutions were forbidden. In 1998 the September article on blood did not include it in the list of forbidden blood "parts", meaning that you could not be df'd, er I mean da'd, for taking it.
How many witnesses picked up on that? Not me; I had never understood the policy in the first place, I thought we avoided all blood. I learned about the change on AJWRB.
So, you had a major shift in policy, and almost no one in the org discerned it, because they of course would not come right out and SAY it, too many people would have blown a cork over it. Instead, they just no longer condemned it, saying that FUNDAMENTALLY, witnesses do not take blood.
Now that is the code of all codes; read the article, compare it to older ones, and then see what is left out.
Irony: the hemoglobin solution, at least one of them, is made from cow's blood. Think about that: animal blood is what it was all about in the first place, and what was being discouraged in Acts, that being in reality a politically expedient dietary restriction.
Now a witness can take cow hemoglobin directly into his veins, filtered of course, and fractionated, no "major parts" for us, no thank you!
Wow.
Edited by - Pistoff on 25 December 2002 21:17:27
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UnDisfellowshipped
Very good Thread.
"Theocratic Warfare"
Lie your butt off to everyone who is "Not Entitled To Know The Truth" in order to protect the Watchtower Society's Image!
Have you read the New February 1st 2003 Watchtower Questions From Readers?
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Scully
Undisfellowshipped writes:
Have you read the New February 1st 2003 Watchtower Questions From Readers?
No. Would you mind posting it here? I'd love to see some scans.
Love, Scully
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Farkel
uriah,
: I also hate the "ones" tag, these ones this and these ones that.
I can help you out there. The "ones" you want specifically identified are blood relatives of "some." "Some have wondered...., some have speculated about Armageddon, some are opposing Jehovah's True Organization(tm), ad nauseum."
Hope that helps!
Farkel