Witnesses are Spiritually Starving

by metatron 18 Replies latest jw experiences

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  metatron

  Consider the typical character of Witness life: "Spirituality" as a word is twisted and misapplied into a sterile life of dead

  meeting attendance and peddling magazines - instead of emphasizing active compassion and ethical qualities. This tendency

  started , long ago, with Rutherford, who criticised "character building" amoung Russelites - who CORRECTLY understood

  what the Bible was asking for - in display of Christian principles -instead of Service Meeting salesmanship.

  Today, you have Witnesses , often afflicted by their own servitude to the Watchtower, Inc. , desparately looking for any hint of

  Armageddon in every assembly talk - while words like "charity" may as well be in a foreign language.

  Notice too,in recent years, the utter decline of SPECIFIC APPLICATION of good Christian principles in areas of critical concern. Why should

  Witness DIVORCE be so bitter, hateful and vengeful? Why should Witnesses be functionally incapable of remembering to put all

  agreements in writing first - or remember to 'never be alone with another sister you're not married to'?

  The answer is that they have systematically reduced Witness adults into willing retardation - as little more than children, unable to

  think for themselves or conduct their lives with maturity - or grace. Good God! Even Hasidim or Mormons or other cultish control

  religions manage to build SOME KIND OF INTERNAL STRUCTURE to help their people find jobs, build careers, make business

  contacts, find child care, or just GET HELP - beyond tired elders who listen and do nothing ( except disfellowship, of course!)

  Don't think that ANY doctrinal fraud will ever result in a mass awakening of Witnesses. Whether child molesting, 1914, blood

  transfusion or otherwise, there's nothing there to trigger when 'truth' is simply determined by whatever the next magazine declares

  to be "light". No structure of logic, system of theology, or well thought out rationale is even necessary. Evolution is false, the Bible

  is true, the Governing Body is led by God - because WE say so!

  Don't get too bitter at the sad people who shun you - they may never understand what victims they've allowed themselves to become

  when they agreed to abandon reason in pursuit of a promised paradise that never quite arrives.

  metatron
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  AlanF

  Excellent thoughts, Metatron!

  AlanF
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  ozziepost

  Absolutely! Many are the comments even from "die hard" Dubs that "things aren't what they used to be" in the WTS. There seems to be a hard edge to everything. Spirituality? Don't make me laugh! Not spirituality, but servitude.

  Cheers, Ozzie
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  AlanF

  Ozziepost, please email me at [email protected] . Thanks.

  AlanF
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  Lil Phoenix Bird

  Alan, it has been my experience that though the witnesses say they don't believe in evolution, they certainly do believe in survival of the fittest. They believe only the strong should survive. If you become weak and need help you become like a millstone around their necks. If you have any problem you become a liability to the congregation. Could this be mostly due to the fact that the Elders don't have the education, training or qualifications to deal with the very real and serious problems people in today's world are experiencing?

  A sad and ludicrous example of this twisted logic is the Elder or Elder Body who tries to "help" a mentally ill person by disfellowshiping them.

  Can you imagine a psychiatrist telling a mentally ill patient's family and friends to shun him? Oh yes that would go over big with the AMA, malpractice in serious form. Yet Elder Bodies disfellowship mentally ill people all the time. I have seen it countless times. You have incompetent, untrained men "caring" for the most fragile of all people, the mentally ill.

  Since the Elders have no training to help the mentally ill or weak they just ignore them or kick them out.

  This is just one example of the survival of the fittest mentality that grows and spreads like a terminal cancer within the WT org.

  ~Heather~
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  AlanF

  You're absolutely right, Phoenix Bird. Untrained elders -- which includes Governing Body members -- have no business dealing with mental ailments. Many of them have no business dealing with anything more challenging than scrubbing a piece of dirt off a window.

  About ten years ago I became aquainted with an elder who very much wanted to help people with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder, aka Multiple Personality Disorder). There were a lot of JWs in his area who seemed to suffer from this. He and his wife did a lot of good for some of them, but after awhile the Society told them in no uncertain terms to quit. He lamented that a number of these poor people had been DF'd. The Society, he said, reasoned that if one of the personalities deserved DF'ing, then so did the whole person -- even if the 'bad' personality was only a small part of the whole. I know this is bizarre, but that's what this elder and his wife dealt with for some years. He also lamented having to constantly fight with other elders who were all too happy to DF people for anything and everything.

  AlanF
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  acsot

  Metatron: You've beautifully summed up what I was agonizing over for years before realizing the truth about the troof. I figured it was my fault, that the lack of compassion, goodness, works springing naturally from a grateful heart, were because I wasn't applying Bible principles properly. Yet, as I looked around, I didn't see many others doing that either - door to door work, yeah, getting it over as quickly as possible, but nothing on a deeper, internal level - character development if you will - which seems to me to be important if one is to put on the personality of Christ.

  At the point where I am now, it seems like Buddha's better able to put on the Christ-like personality than the FDS.
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  JamesThomas

  Why stop with the Witnesses? religion is "spiritually starving". They have shrunk and diminished what is Infinite into a finite deity that punishes and rewards, which breeds fear and greed, the two things most destructive of "spirituality". JamesT
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  Lil Phoenix Bird

  Alan, your experience with the Elder who tried to help people with DID, how wonderful that he tried to help. How sad that he was stopped from doing it. As metatron pointed out there is a lack of spirituality and character building in general in the org. James T. points out that greed and fear are two important causes of the problem.

  In the movie Titanic, which was full of artistic license, there were examples of cowardly men who swindled their way onto life boats only to push women and children out of the way to their deaths. Fear and greed again were operating there. Similarly, it is fear and greed that breed an "only my survival matters" mentality in the org.

  So much attention is given to presenting a superior moral appearance to the outside world that the GB have forgotten to remember it is also important what the org. looks like to those still inside. As long as it impresses the world who cares if the WT org. alienates it's own members? As long as the GB survives who the hell cares if the rest of JWs do? As long as the WTBTS saves face in the world who cares how many JWs are swindled out of that "lifeboat" and sent to their deaths? After all, isn't the WT org supposed to be the big ARK in which you must be to survive armegeddon?

  ~Heather~
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  Noumenon

  Enjoyed reading that post immensely - however, evolution IS false, and sooner or later God's will on this earth WILL be done, and that means paradise restored. I have no bug with that. Just because I'm no longer a dub don't mean I reject all their teachings.