by Lostandfound 55 Replies latest jw experiences
i have 7 grandchildren born into the cult----aged 20 down to below 10. ive yet to meet them. but i'm ever hopeful they will follow the trend whereby about half will leave sooner rather than later.
my most recent grandson --born last may---is thankfully born free of it.
I feel freddos comments are exactly right, decent working people as backbone of org vanishing, I doibtifthe failures and no workers they are getting now will be able to support this organiztion in its post publishing kts own money heydays. Congregations comprising pensioners, oddballs and the odd loon are never going to put significant money in the box. No proceeds from literature so they need another money stream, they are trying begging but that limited. As an example my wife and I regularly looked for the Big Issue seller when we visited the supermarket, missing him for a couple of weeks we asked how he was and had he been ill, " no, he replied I was on holiday in Canary Islands...." Needless to say we do not contribute to him anymore and I am sure JWs will tire or run out of patience at constant hectoring for Money. Or more likely their membership will have no money to donate and simply switch this stuff off. The better off membership gone just as Freddo explained , nothing to stay for.
It was almost 60 years ago that my mom accepted her free home brainwashing sessions. I have to agree with my fellow travelers here of my "generation" that today's JWs seem especially dumb and weak, "un-qualified to be ministers," we might say.
This is the fault of the WTB&TS itself. They built their Watchtower on the sand of false prophecy, fabricating "bible-based" chronology as it suited them, patterning a "New World Society" on the laws of ancient Israel, gleefully ignoring the concept that Jesus came to FULFILL and DO AWAY WITH Mosaic law, drawing goofy conclusions about how THEY fulfilled almost EVERY prophecy ever recorded in the Bible, playing "fill-in-the-blanks" games with their membership, then blaming that membership when the blanks were filled with the conclusions, anticipations, speculations, and expectations that were provided by the WTB&TS in the pages that THEY WROTE. This has been topped off by an "Armageddon is very close but probably won't come in your lifetime" sense of non-urgency. So the time for boring public talks has been reduced, the time for boring meetings has been reduced and the time requirement for boring door-to-door work in the face of an unconcerned public has been reduced. Soon a pioneer will be putting in ten exhausting hours a month.
Back in my day (the old man complained) we may have been WRONG, but we BELIEVED our message and we believed that ours was a life-saving work that was required if we were to save OUR OWN lives. Today, not so much, it seems.
Each succesive generation of JWs has a different "relationship" or "connection" to the organization. I was raised in it during the late 50s through the sixties and have vivid memories of the "old school" Witnesses from the 20s and 30s who knew their stuff. Man, could they debate issues and confront slack thinkers! I so admired them at that time. of course, they are now long dead. They really would have been better to have redirected their fearsome energy elsewhere given how much they embraced the delusion.
And, yes, I agree Wasanelder Once, the literature back in the 50s and 60s was substantial and required hard study (okay it was slanted to the Watchtower's views but it was "meaty").
Of course, there have always been "hangers-on" but as the decades have passed the proportion of hangers-on to committed active publishers has hugely grown. One of my strong impressions before I left in the 1980s was how much of a social club the organization was becoming even back then. From family and acquaintances reports, that is more so the case nowadays.
Today, your average Witness is incredibly poorly able to defend his/her beliefs - but (and this stands out big time) doesn't even seem inclined to want to defend those beliefs. Yes, there'll always be exceptions - but again, its the numbers thing: Very few Witnesses are able and/or prepared to really sift through the arguments.
Shunning those who question certainly has many advantages! You don't have to think issues through for starters.
And the calibre of the current literature is embarrassingly lightweight with huge fonts and large "pretty" pictures. Where are the heaving blatant warnings of the imminence of destruction that typified the literature of yesteryear? I loved the pictures of Popes riding the multi-headed, blood-soaked beast from Revelation.
This organization has always been about change in one form or another (e.g., Rutherford left the organization in a totally different state from Russell's day, and Knorr transformed the organzation even more during his presidency).
However, recent changes, especially the sudden embrace of the internet, have rendered the organization superficial in outlook with an almost bumper-sticker mentality of mindless adherence to policy and procedure.
Oh, and it's great to see that, in this kind of simpleton setting, more and more brave souls are not only waking up, but choosing to investigate the hogwash featured in jw.org's "smile-heavy" literature.
The friends in the 60's and 70's that became JW's, teachers, doctor, salesmen, city supervisor,
professional athlete yes professional people in my congregation. What is interesting most
of those folks are still JW's today and struggling financially.
+1 I can really attest to the complete losers that are in the hall where I am going now for my reinstatement and I am not saying this to bash anyone or make it seem worse than it is. Some of the older established ones are good, sincere, smart people who just would rather go down with the ship than admit that they are in a cult because they have been in it so long and have everything to lose at this point. That is the bottom line. But I have got stories about the creeps that are coming in nowadays LOL [[[[shivers]]]]]
I agree with Freddo. The 1995 change was really the moment that the Society transformed away from what Rutherford and Knorr setup, into what it is now. Prior to that, there was always a sense of purpose and direction. That everyone was charging ahead with a feeling of urgency and there was still some sense of excitement, because The End was coming Real Soon Now.
After the death of Franz, and the subsequent re-imagining of the "generation", everything just stalled. It was obvious they had no idea what to do next. The only "ideas man" who could come up with wacky interpretations of prophecies to keep people excited was dead and no one was stepping up to replace him. None of the predictions or expectations that they had been talking up for so long had come true. Even after the 1975 fiasco, they still always had the "generation" to fall back onto to keep some kind of deadline that kept everyone motivated. But now that was gone, and none of the litany of things that had to happen prior to the big A had even come close to happening. There wasn't even a King of the North anymore.
It was at that point that you started seeing less and less "deep" study articles on prophecy. The last big one that I remember studying was right around 94-95. The articles instead got fluffier and fluffier. Same handful of topics over and over. Obey the elders. Love your family. Stay away from porn.
The more recent "adjustment" of the generation teaching was an attempt to try and rekindle that feeling of urgency, but it's completely fallen flat. Mostly because the majority of Witnesses can't even explain what the teaching actually is, since it defies all logic and reason.
1995 was the end of an era, and Society has basically been treading water in the 20 years since. How long can they keep it up? Who knows.
I completely agree.
It all started with the book study night got cut. From then on the emphasis on teaching, and creating teachers (especially among MS and Elders) started to become systematically eliminated.
Even from a JW perspective (one with a head on his/her shoulders) has to see that that current meetings have almost no value. Meetings are just horrible in every way. Attendance will continue to drop, people in service will not get better at attracting people with a 6th grade school level or higher. It all seems about keeping power over those already baptized and getting kids baptized.
The Book Tart Carts have very predictably been a giant negative when it comes to conversion of people to the cult. Who the hell would go up to someone at a cart? Just more and more service hrs used in pointless and fruitless causes.
The only people I see getting baptised are older poorly educated women, and some kids.
The end cannot come soon enough.
