Jehovah's Witnesses: DO THEY FACE REALITY

TerryWalstrom

ARTICLE 1.The Organization itself denies access to reality and substitutes its OWN version, interpretations, and meanings. a.Only Watchtower approved publications are allowed. b.No higher education is to be pursued. c.No non-JW friends or associations are encouraged with their "outside" points of view. d.No freestyle questioning of doctrine or criticism permitted. Curiosity is verboten. e.Threat of being "marked" or disassociated looms over them 2.Between every real-world event and the rank and file, JW's mind is a roadblock. a.The moment of identifying is short-circuited by an interpretive moment of RE-LABELING in Watchtower-speak. b.All things happening are forced into a narrow storyline and propagandized as End Times happenings leading to Armageddon. 3.Social and Personal IDENTITY is expunged and replaced by a collective PERSONA: "Jehovah's Witness". a.Private thinking is red-flagged as selfish and sinful. b.Personal improvement, welfare, and ambition is crushed and door-to-door ministry substituted as "worthy" endeavors. c.Self-conscious obsession permeates Witness awareness as each person is transformed into a public spectacle of performance for judgment. d.Since you aren't an individual you don't really have a right to fall in love and marry or educate or earn. You are the property of the local Kingdom Hall, the Governing Body and ultimately Jehovah. 4.Both History and Future cease to be objective occurrences a.Every human activity is constantly represented as part of Jehovah's Plan for mankind leading to an inevitable conclusion b.Great Leaps of advancement for humanity are disregarded as "important" for civilization since the New World solves all problems eventually. c. The worst atrocities are magnified as proof positive of Satanic influence in a doomed world. d. Individual triumphs and tragedies have no particular value, but, only as indicators that the Watchtower is right about End Times signs leading to Armageddon. 5.Talent, Creativity, and Genius are transformed into useless and wasteful ego problems. a.No room is made in the Organization for personal praise for achievement since all glory is for Jehovah only. b.Neither Musical, Artistic, Scientific or Mathematical ability is needed or encouraged because of the preaching activity trumps and supersedes all. c.Critical Thinking leads to questioning, doubt, skepticism and eventual disfellowshipping--so--intelligence itself is marked as suspicious. 6.Ignorance, poverty, disease and mental disturbance are NOT worthwhile problems for charity, education or institutional asking for JW's. a.Building hospitals or colleges diverts precious time away from the JW ministry. Besides Paradise brings repair and perfection anyway. b.Becoming a physician, social worker, volunteer in the community or joining any established task-oriented organization DISTORTS rather than solves human problems because Armageddon is coming so quickly anyway. c.Humanitarian activity, disaster relief, and institutional charity promote secular and false-religious creeds instead of Jehovah's solutions. d.Personal financial concerns aren't important to the congregation. Your finances are a symptom of End Times only, not a focus of brotherly remedy. 7.Human perception is untrustworthy, corrupted by sin and dangerous a.Only thinking the thoughts which come from official Governing Body writings are safe. b.Personal opinions, life experience, and original analysis constitute hubris and running ahead of Jehovah's plan for his people. c.Calling attention to doctrinal irregularity, questioning "new light" and repeated calls for clarification red-flag spiritual weakness and danger. 8.There are no "Good" people in any other religion. If they were good they'd join Jehovah's Witnesses. a.The appearance of goodness, charity, benevolence and selfless devotion to others by Catholics, Baptists, Buddhists or other religious types is only an artificial misunderstanding of their human ignorance of Jehovah's long-lasting solutions to mankind's true problem: sin and death. b.Most do-gooders are religious fakes, imposters and money-grubbing charlatans who should be exposed and not admired. c.There is no one good except Jehovah anyway 9.Everything you read, see, experience and think is a distortion by Satan for the purpose of deflecting you from Jehovah's TRUTH. a.Watchtower study replaces the corrupt images, thoughts, and ideas with clean, purified and approved versions b.The human heart is desperate and corrupt. What you "feel" is probably sin and not compassion. Don't trust yourself to know anything. c.The entire world is in the control and power of invisible demonic forces hellbent on destroying humanity 10.Doubting Jehovah's organization isn't the result of logical awareness of their errors a.They never said they were perfect b.Jehovah eventually repairs any damage c.Disloyalty to the Organization is disloyalty to Jehovah himself. Armageddon will settle that score. In view of the Ten reasons above there can be no doubt that Jehovah's Witnesses have REALITY completely REMOVED from their awareness. Being denied a right to reality is to have one's mind stolen from them. Without having your own mind to think your own thoughts you cannot be an actual person or individual. The only thing left is to belong to a group that thinks FOR you and instructs you what to do and say and be. Without that GROUP there is only terror, doubt, emptiness, and longing to be cocooned by the "other". And you wonder why it is hard to break free? You wonder why your JW family member won't listen to reason? You wonder why the obvious isn't at all obvious? Well, now you know! JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES SIMPLY CAN'T FACE REALITY. For them......it just doesn't exist! It has been surgically removed by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses organization. (On purpose!)

TerryWalstrom

The formatting I had when I pressed the button VANISHED and everything was squished into a giant block of dense wordage. Very sorry for that. I see no EDIT button. So, I'm stuck with it.

Finkelstein

Yes your absolutely right Terry, the WTS promotes a diversion of reality which they sell to people on the premise join us or fu.k off , its supposedly backed by the bible the holy spoken word of god.

Unfortunately what they sell is neither truthful or an accurate interpretation of the scriptural Gospel but rather a tainted commercialized version devised intentionally and originally to proliferate the literature the WTS publishes.

It has relatively worked though because there are to this date 8 million people who bask in this diversion or illusion of reality.

Some see through this corruption, some unfortunately dont and I would assume most dont even care.

scratchme1010

Jehovah's Witnesses: DO THEY FACE REALITY

No. That's what religions and cults are about, not facing reality.

Unstuck

Brilliantly written Terry - and well worth wading through despite the lack of formatting (don't you hate that when it happens!)

You have crystallized beautifully the thoughts tumbling around in my head recently. Yesterday, I had a long talk with a very active JW whom I had lived with in my much younger days. We had pioneered together and she had just heard along the JW grapevine that I was no longer attending meetings.

I had a very careful conversation with her (as I'm not d'Ad or d'Fd but feel the vultures circling) and I kept coming up against a lot of what you list above. To her credit, she listened, wasn't defensive (how can you be about the ARC for example - what's to defend!) but she was trying to reason with me and find positives about the ORG. I really had to try hard not to laugh when she said: "But the GB have never claimed to be inspired" - and you captured that little gem above too. I just remarked that the language from the GB is contradictory: on one hand: "we're not inspired", on the other hand: "we are the F&D slave and we provide food at the proper time from Christ and Jehovah" - I told her that you can't have it both ways, you can't claim to be God's channel for spiritual food and yet not be inspired. She didn't have a response.

Anyway, I won't bore you all with the details but reading through your post reminded me so much of the conversation I had with her. She tried, but she can't actually see where I am coming from as I'm introducing ideas that are not allowed to be considered. It's a wonder she didn't use the A word - although I'm positive she was thinking it.

Tick, tock, The days are ticking until my game is up, I'm sure. In the meantime, I will continue to act with dignity, poise and grace and to respect those JWs that still bother to speak with me, never forcing my views or trying to tear away the fabric of their indoctrination. I want to be able to hold my head high that no matter what provocation I will not behave in a manner that justifies their twisted opinions (although I'm not naive to think that no matter how admirably I act I won't be branded evil anyway). At least in my own opinion I will have conducted myself with honour and integrity.

Apologies - I kinda made it about me in the end didn't I! What I really wanted to say was THANK YOU for a very thought-provoking and well constructed post.

Love and light to all

Unstuck

Finkelstein

Religions like the JWS promote an avoidance of reality which inevitability harms all of its participants one way or another, the resulting consequences .

sparrowdown

This is precisely what makes cults so psychologically damaging.

Doubtfully Yours

JWs keep their own alternative reality. Many are quite happy, law abiding people.

Leave them alone as it could always be worse. If you don't believe it, check out the series 'Believer' with Reza Aslan on CNN (YouTube it).

After checking out said series, no complaints having JW as a religion. Nope!

DY

just fine

Leave then alone, it could be worse?

ummmm no. I will not "leave them alone". Maybe if they left other people alone, who only wanted to leave their stupid cult, I would be more inclined to.

TerryWalstrom

Usually, at a funeral, I see my old "friends" from the local Kingdom Hall.
It sounds unkind of me to say the following and I assure you such is not my intention.
These old "faithful to Jah" friends look like the WALKING DEAD because all the LIFE has been denied them
and they are like people who stood at a bus stop waiting for a bus to Disneyland which NEVER CAME.

They are emptied out.
Unless they've got a certain amount of discretionary money available, they've been stuck like a tree stump in a razed wasteland.

THE DON'T DARE GIVE UP NOW-------at least that's the lie they've bought the mortgage on and keep holding.

Jehovah's Witnesses: DO THEY FACE REALITY

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