Long Intro From A Long Timer

by hillary_step 185 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Gopher

  HS,

  You asked:
  

  All will answer to Christ as individuals for what they have done. The idea of community responsibility is another Levitical anachronism that clouds the true picture of a beautiful individual friendship with God and Christ. How do you feel about this?

  Here's my honest answer.

  We all stand before Christ. That is so true and clear.

  The idea of "community responsibility" is part and parcel of what the JW's teach. It is one of many concepts from the Hebrew Scriptures that they bring forward and apply to the modern world & Christianity. So when I said "when will you free yourself of complicity in the organization's wrongdoing", I was only holding up a mirror to show the effect of the WTS teachings. They often apply principles to outside religions (such as it's okay to question your views, etc.) which they do not want applied to themselves or their adherents. OK. Fair enough.

  What do I think of it personally? I believe what you said earlier, that it comes down to our love, motivations, etc. personally, that's what we have to answer for.

  However, I have many friends (even elders) who are caught up in the big JW machine, which has done a great deal of emotional damage, well documented here and elsewhere. Even though each person does not personally act evil, still they are part of the "tree" Jesus spoke about when he said, a good "tree" cannot produce bad "fruit", and vice-versa.

  So really Jesus took that idea of community responsibility and brought it forward. This is no leap of logic. Who wants to be part of the bad "tree" when it finally gets cut down?

  Surely you can see that there's some huge, almost apocalyptic event in the future of the WTS organization. Either it has to change in a huge way or it will come crashing down.

  I do not agree with you that the prospect for beneficial change is very good. So I think it's time to deal with Jesus & his father individually (or perhaps in smaller study groups), rather than as part of an organization that has become stultified and harsh.

  Gopher
• 

  hillary_step

  GOPHER

  Thank you for these points.

  The WTS will never change. It was not myself that held out these hopes. In my original post I made it clear that the WTS would defend its borders at all costs. Any changes made would only be to stop its borders being stormed. So we have clear agreement on that between us.

  As to this part of your message I am less sure.
  .......Even though each person does not personally act evil, still they are part of the "tree" Jesus spoke about when he said, a good "tree" cannot produce bad "fruit", and vice-versa.

  Jesus in Matt 7: 17, 18 seemed to be applying this passage to the wolves in sheeps clothing as individuals, as he goes on to say after discussing the good/bad fruits scenario 'this is how you will recognise these MEN'. I.e. Each tree was an individual person bearing
  fruit.

  The wheat and weeds are still growing together, these are individual Christians and hard to identify according to the parable. If Organisations, which are easily identified are included how would this level out? Just a thought.

  I am off to bed! Step
• 

  Mommie Dark

  This statement of yours set off jangling alarms in Mommie's cynical old brain:

  " I presume that you are married as a single person would not have the confidence and life experience to attack the motives of a married person who has to think for two people in these situations not just one."

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  What kind of Victorian authoritarian control freak thinks he HAS TO THINK FOR HIS WIFE???????

  Hilary, you need to take some baby steps toward basic ethical balance before you try to pretend to be conquering any mountains.

  Disgusted and knowing you won't even understand why,
  Mommie Dark

  appreciating COMF's take on this guy more all the time
• 

  Gopher

  H_S,

  At the risk of turning this into the "Bible Discussion" board, I will answer your points.

  I have no trouble with the "wheat and weeds" parable applying to individual good & bad Christians all growing together, and the wheat being gathered to their salvation, etc.

  I do not believe it's the same as the illustration of the "tree". To try to equate the 2 only muddies the waters.

  The illustration of the bad/good tree, if I remember correctly, was applied by the WTS itself to organizations rather than individuals. Read on:

  Matthew 7:19 "Every tree not producing fine fruit gets cut down and thrown into the fire." NWT cross references this to Matthew 3:10.

  Matthew 3:10 "Already the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree, then, that does not produce fine fruit is to be cut down and thrown into the fire." John the Baptist here was speaking to evil Jewish religious leaders. Their religious 'tree' was about to undergo judgment. I know it speaks of 'trees' in plural here, but bear with me. This verse in the NWT is cross referenced to John 15:6

  John 15:6 "If anyone does not remain in union with me, he is cast out as a branch and dried up; and men gather those branches up and pitch them into the fire and they are burned". Here Jesus refers to individual Christians as 'branches' rather than trees. This verse cross references to Romans 11:20 which speaks about branches being broken off of the Christian 'tree' or 'vine'.

  So I am inclined to think of these Greek scripture accounts as part of the same parable: religious trees are organizations, and branches are individuals (i.e. the wheat and weeds) therein.

  So the question remains, who wants to be part of any bad tree when it comes crashing down?

  Gopher
• 

  IslandWoman

  Gopher,

  I do not believe in the doctrine of "community responsibility". IMO Abraham's questioning of the Almighty about the rightness of destroying the righteous along with the wicked and the response he was given, disproves the doctrine.

  IW
• 

  digderidoo

  Welcome to the board hilary,

  I am just wondering tho, why u have chose the name....

  Is posting on this board your hilary's step?....or is the hilary's step still to come?....or are you now trying to climb the hilary's step?

  ......just curious

  Yours dig

  Try to add life to your days, not days to your life.
• 

  hillary_step

  MOMMIE DARK

  Hello,

  If you had taken the time to read the previous posts you would have read that my wife was a staunch supporter of the WTS. I needed to think of her well being as well as my own. i.e THINK FOR TWO. As in, I could not please just myself. Get It? That is why I have had to stay in so long. What I do understand Mommie Dark is that you react before you read.

  Some of you seem to have set yourselves up as some sort of online Theo Jaracz. You use the very same tactics as the Organisation that you claim to have seen through and abhor. Instantaneous judgments, guilt by association, straining at words, missing the spirit and principle of the messages, collective bullying, selective quotations, a total intolerance of viewpoints that confound your own and above all an astonishing and arrogant confidence in your own point of view. All in all many of you seem to have become the kind of people the WTS made you. So much for your 'freedom'.

  As Denis Healey, one of our politicians would say, 'I feel as if I have been savaged by a toothless sheep'.

  Step - up in the early hours
• 

  Moxy

  i cannot for the _life_ of me figure out why people seem to react so strongly to hillary's posts!! comf, you are being way to presumptuous about his motives. ill just say that.

  and mommie, i was just about to correct your wild take on HS's comments about his wife but i see he beat me to it.

  hs, you are responding to this quite well. keep it up. i think that people here have just gotten used to people showing up with totally false persona's that theyve invented, either to troll (make inflamatory remarks solely to get reponses) or to try and 'catch' someone in an argument. but i think maybe people are bit too cynical of newcomers if theyre hoping to encourage entrants to add to the pleasant mixture of posters in here. well, you say youve been reading posts here for a while - im sure you know what its all about it

  mox
• 

  SixofNine

  Some of you seem to have set yourselves up as some sort of online Theo Jaracz. You use the very same tactics as the Organisation that you claim to have seen through and abhor. Instantaneous judgments, guilt by association, straining at words, missing the spirit and principle of the messages, collective bullying, selective quotations, a total intolerance of viewpoints that confound your own and above all an astonishing and arrogant confidence in your own point of view. All in all many of you seem to have become the kind of people the WTS made you. So much for your 'freedom'.

  unfortunately, I'm afraid that rings a bit truer than most of us here will like to admit. Still, I hope you have seen another view of things.

  That last line though, "so much for your 'freedom'", I really think you ought to rethink that. This freedom, is wonderful. And if we on occasion abuse it, some one else has the freedom to let us know in no uncertain terms. If we abuse it, it is our own name that gets sullied, not Jehovah's, and certainly not the "congregation".

  Yep, this freedom is pretty special, and something no JW has. For me, it makes life so much richer, fuller...just all around better. It's the freedom to be completely honest.

  No more, 'stopping your mouth before you say something, just because what you were going to say is not inline with present truth'. No more, 'stopping your mind before you think something, because that thought is going to wreck the foundations of what you've been told (and bought into) is the supreme truth, the foundation of your very life'.

  So much for our freedom, indeed.
• 

  LoneWolf

  I wholeheartedly agree with Moxie's and Sixofnine's sentiments. Keep up the good work Hillary.

  Plus forgive me for getting the gender mixed up. The joke's on me.

  As far as I'm concerned, I'd answer COMF's reservations about cooperating with the WTS's arrangement - to a point - in this manner:
  Never in the history of the earth has there been an organization that lived up to what it was supposed to be. There have always been corrupt and/or ignorant leaders, and they have always caused suffering and heartache. It will always be that way until someone with a lot more intelligence and integrity than we have takes over.

  In the meantime, we have the difficult task of panning out the gold from the dirt. We can throw the whole works out, of course, but if we do that, then any possibility of progress from those painful experiences is lost, and we're all back to square one.

  Here is where maturity and self control comes in. Personally speaking, I'm grateful to the WTS for having broken the back of such nonsense as immortality of the soul, hellfire, the trinity, etc. My desire is to hold on to the progress that has been made, resist that which is not right, and refuse to stagnate in the cesspool of hate and resentment by looking for ways to continue forward. I think by-and-large I've succeeded.

  For those who criticize this: keep in mind two things --- 1. Sometimes a leaky, half-rotten boat is better than none, and 2. Not too many of you have a greater reason than I to resent the WTS. I dare not allow that anger to run off with my good sense, as in the long run, they aren't that important.

  Farkel: If you talk to that mutual friend, tell him I said it's just fine if he tells you about what's going on. 'Course, there's an excellent chance that I'll post the details right here in a few days anyway. Yes, my email was criptic, as I wasn't sure if I had the right party or how secure that address was. Things have been getting a bit hot.

  LoneWolf
  alias: Tom Howell