Reddit thread Warning young JWs that ‘Spiritual Goals’ are Not a Career!

by LongHairGal 19 Replies latest jw friends

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  Mikejw

  anybody who pursues ‘spiritual goals’ only will end up with wasted time in the end with no money and no retirement plan… I couldn’t agree more.

  The crazy thing is the ‘new light’ this year is to plan for retirement 😮

  what about all those poor pioneers past middle age or even in old age who made a career working for free all their lives and only now get told you should have planned for retirement????

  what if you pioneered straight from school back in the 1960s or 70s? You were one of those on the platform at the Assembly saying you turned down this good career offer and got a cleaning job a couple of days per week to pioneer??????

  now you are old and tired you feel deceived that the end was right around the corner decades ago. There was never any direction to plan for retirement. Now that you are almost at retirement age there is suddenly out of nowhere some new light in watchtower to plan for retiring. WHAT!!!!!

  it’s a bit late now, I’ve sacrificed everything to pioneer because I was told millions now living who saw 1914 would never die! Then they said ok they have all died but there is an overlapping generation. Still most of the overlapping generation who knew ones who saw 1914 are getting very old now.

  what are all these pioneers supposed to do if they have no plan for retirement and cost of living is going through the roof????
• 

  LongHairGal

  MIKEJW:

  This is a human tragedy of big proportions and I am surprised it has not gotten more publicity!!!

  Back in the day, I was treated like Typhoid Mary in the congregation because I had a full-time job and didn’t pioneer!… Thank God I resisted all their scorn, criticism, shunning and whatever other unchristian behavior!…The sobering reality is that the Witness religion would not be supporting me or anybody else today. They don’t even have soup kitchens or food pantries to help the needy like other Christian religions!

  I wish you best of luck trying to get by in this difficult world.😞
• 

  blondie

  Mikejw, I was thinking of the recent trend of the WTS to layoff permanently many Bethelites with the WTS expecting their jw family or "old" congregation to pick up the slack financially and medically. What a surprise for them; none of this taking care of them at Bethel until they died (perhaps maybe GB). They don't qualify under US Social Security rules: How many years do you have to work to get Social Security in the US? "10 years The number of credits you need to receive retirement benefits depends on when you were born. If you were born in 1929 or later, you need 40 credits (10 years of work)." That's why Ray Franz had to work for 10 years after he left Bethel. Here is a quote from Russell about donations: Upon launching the Watch Tower Society in 1879, founder Russell claimed that if Jehovah was backing the organization there would never be need to beg, petition or take a collection for money.

  
  Watchtower 1879 Aug p.20

  "We have never considered it proper to solicit money for the Lord's cause, after the common custom . . . It is our judgment that money raised by the various begging devices in the name of our Lord is offensive, unacceptable to him, and does not bring his blessing either upon the givers or the work accomplished." Watchtower 1899 Aug 1 p.201

  ""We never take up a collection," explained Brother Russell." Watchtower 1915 Jul 15 pp.218-219.

  https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/donations-money-solicitation.php
• 

  Scully

  https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/1lgp4g5/the_next_book_were_studying_during_the_midweek/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

  Here's the link for anyone wanting to read the thread.
• 

  LongHairGal

  SCULLY:

  That thread is about a book aimed towards children and lessons to be learned from the Bible.. It’s not the one about Spiritual Goals not Being a Career. But thanks for trying to help!

  BLONDIE:

  And as if that were not bad enough news for anybody laid off from Bethel: - working ten years will only get somebody’s foot in the door for SS..They would still need to work for decades and make a decent salary in order to get a decent benefit.

  This thing with them proposing to ‘reassign’ very elderly from Bethel back to home congregations sounds bad.👎 Before this it was people in their fifties.. Those people at least had half a chance to get some kind of employment. Not so with the elderly. These people would expect to be supported. If the congregations continue to dwindle as they have been - what will the religion do? I often wondered if things got super-bad would the elders make cold calls in the community out of desperation? I don’t mean preaching. I mean asking for donations. I wonder how far fetched this could be(?) Some might say ‘never’ but who knows.
• 

  Betheliesalot

  In the 80,S , I would volunteer for overtime just to get out of going to a boring meeting, what a blessing that was which led to making better pay, higher positions and now a very comfortable pension plus SS. Those rythemic voices from the platform,were nothing but wolves in sheep,s clothing out to scam those that blindly listened to their false reasonings. So grateful I moved on and woke up
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  I quit!

  That's funny Betheliesalot. I did the same thing. I volunteered for overtime on weeknights to get out of going to meetings and also worked a half day on Saturdays. It worked out 100 percent for me. Not only did it help to keep me sane it also helped put in a better financial position where I had more money to spend, money to save to buy a house and more money to add to my retirement account which apparently somewhere in the back of my mind I was beginning to think I might need. I'm now happily retired without the financial worries I see some jdubs I knew have living in poverty still waiting for Armageddon which is always just around the corner.
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  blondie

  LHG, you see to get the whole picture of what I have said and added some good points. It is one thing to be in good health and have some skills to get a basically good paying job, but then a lot of jobs have no health insurance benefit even when young. I got something serious medically, had to go in the hospital for 4 days, surgeon waived his fee, but still I had a bill so high, I had to go back to full-time with good benefits because of work history, had good pay. I never tried ever again to "regular" pioneer. And no one offered to help me in any way to get out of debt, not even to help a regular pioneer. One reason I finally left. I talked to Ray Franz for some time how he and his wife managed, Ray was only 60 when he left Bethel, had to work to qualify for some SS benefits, lucky that an elder in his congregation hired him at a good wage and provided housing for free, no rent, as well. That same elder saw how Ray and his wife were treated, and that elder disassociated himself. I have many other horror stories. I have told elders that told jws needing real help, that saying god will provide, missed the point that their god was trying to have them see that god is trying to use that elder and/or other jws to step in with financial help, instead of telling these jws to find help from Satan's system. Well, enough rant. So, don't think that taking "a vow of poverty" makes you more likely to get everlasting life in the WTS paradise. I just remember that in the bible, the story of Jeremiah, that when his fellow Jews turned their back on him, that it was non-Jews that helped Jeremiah in a practical way.
• 

  LongHairGal

  BLONDIE:

  You tell a very interesting story. After your medical emergency and all it entailed, you could no longer be in the regular pioneer work.

  It was always my opinion back in the day that the only people who should be pioneering were retirees and young students on break or summer vacation.. Everybody else had to be in the workforce full-time if they wanted to eat and have a roof over their head.. This fantasy of hardly working and just being in the ministry was cooked up generations ago by men in a religion who didn’t live in the world we live in today!.. For anybody to be spouting the same foolishness today in 2025 is sheer insanity

  And as for saying that ‘elders and/or other JWs (should) step in with financial help’…any such ‘help’ could not be indefinite. Anybody who thinks otherwise is only kidding themselves🤣.. This big assumption also assumes these ‘other’ people would be willing. (I got knocked for working so I would never be.). .That is why this latest info about elderly bethelites being sent home after a lifetime is just bad news all around for them and any Witnesses still left in the religion!👎
• 

  LongHairGal

  HIDDLES WIFE:

  I enjoy your term ‘D.W.T.s’. 🤣 Dubs With Titles.

  As you correctly stated, these titles have no meaning outside of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion. They don’t amount to a hill of beans in the REAL world.. I once read a post where somebody felt the “term Elder has about as much importance as the president of your local book club”. Sorry if this hurts anybody’s feelings.

  To many people not raised a Witness - the religion’s titles really didn’t mean anything. In fact, I was baffled at JWs who kept saying decades ago that I should try to become a pioneer, etc… They made it sound so heavenly. But, I thought about it all and weighed everything and I just could not bring myself to quit my full-time job with benefits, etc. I don’t have to tell you that today all these years later I am Glad I made that choice.