'Spiritual food' and the global south

by john.prestor 15 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  john.prestor

  I'm watching John Cedars rebuttal of the Annual Meeting, and right at the start Stephen Lett starts going on and on about spiritual food, how nutritious it is, how filling it is, it comes across as weird but it doesn't help admittedly that the guy looks like Bozo the Clown forgot his act. But the thought just came to me as I'm eating dinner.

  Not everybody gets dinner. Not everybody gets three meals a day. Not everybody can buy good food. Not everybody can buy food, whether any food or enough food. And while I get that he's making these remarks to people in Warwick I think, or is it New York City... wherever it is the people the organization invites aren't struggling to survive in a refugee camp... but these videos go up on www.jw.org, and people watch them internationally. A lot of these people will watch it from the global South, places where Jehovah's Witnesses continue to grow, the Caribbean, southeast Asia, Latin America, places like that where people struggle to buy enough food to stay alive because they make so little everyday. Many don't even have clean drinking water, and they often live in shacks or shanty towns.

  It's in really poor taste to go on and on about how delicious your magazine is when some of the people listening to your speech won't even eat that night.
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  TheTruthBR

  Sorry but I stopped reading in "I'm watching John Cedars"...
  
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  Tobyjones262

  Lett is a muppet. He is such an asshat. Well arn't they all.
  
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  Biahi

  Toby Jones, I think Stephen Lett downvoted you. Lol
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  Diogenesister

  I cannot upvote this post enough. It’s one of the major things that turned me off Watchtower even when I was piMi.

  I remember a direction in Watchtower when they were pushing the friends to preach in the refugee camps, particularly those fleeing war in Syria. The first thing they mentioned was to tell the refugees straight away they were JWs and warn them we don’t do charity so that they didn’t have a bible study just to obtain food!!

  what really drove me mad though was bragging about the pittance the brothers ( not Watchtower, mind you) would sometimes give if they discovered a JW who was fleeing war. They said...and I quote...” how grateful the brothers will be for the donation of a NECKTIE in these circumstances!!” A freeking tie!! 😭😩

  They cannot go to a Christian meeting....starving and traumatised as they may be...without a necktie!! It’s the only thing of charity a jw is sure to receive!
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  john.prestor

  A necktie? Damn how generous, what's next, a free hug?

  Yeah, all of that comes across as cold and callous, what, the first thing you tell the refugees is you won't feed them, what a dick move in and of itself. I'm sure they love needing to pass some kind of sincerity test before you'll talk to them.
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  smiddy3

  Spiritual food doesn`t make hunger pains go away to those in need .

  WT/JW need to put there money where there mouth is.

  Oh that`s right all of the money there raking in now all goes to HQ in the USA ,in other words the GB.
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  Xanthippe

  I always think this about the drivel that comes out of the mouths of some people in first world countries to those in developing countries. Work hard and you will prosper, a positive mental attitude is the key, nobody ever died from hard work.

  Rubbish, poor people have been working themselves to exhaustion for centuries but corrupt governments, poor nutrition and inadequate medical care kill them and their children.

  They don't need platitudes from anyone, certainly not rich American GB members that never do a day's work and get treated like celebrities everywhere they go.
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  eyeuse2badub

  Spiritual food is "invisible" like the second presence of jesus. It's there, you just can't see it or touch it or taste it or eat it.!

  just saying!
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  john.prestor

  Xanthippe, couldn't agree more, hard work only gets you anywhere if you're in the right context... People work their asses off on plantations, in factories and fast food restaurants and fhe homes of the rich where they work as servants, and still live in abject or relative poverty. And coming from men who sit around a state park all day, talking about quote-unquote spiritual realities (questions which boil down to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, I mean how does Gog and Magog factor into any practical everyday reality lived by any Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide) makes that kind of pull yourself up by your bootstraps line sound all the more hollow and feeble.

  It's not like the Governing Body doesn't work at all: they meet with the entire body and whatever committees they sit on, they edit or approve documents, they visit and audit branches, they give speeches, but in doing all of that they enjoy a pretty cushy lifestyle with frequent visible and invisible perks, international travel, good liquor, green handshakes, that kind of thing. At times I get the sense that this work really just gives them an opportunity to see the world and enjoy it in moderate style.