by Sea Breeze 27 Replies latest jw friends
Years ago the meetings were not so scripted, speakers felt free to research own material and we always tried to personalise a talk so it was not boringly the same as they had heard before..
Congregations differed but frequently, especially midweek, the hall would see gales of laughter at something someone had said. It was a lot more relaxed.
Today they seem afraid of saying’ the wrong thing’ ….. They have lost more than they will ever know.
By contrast, after leaving WT, we had an assistant Baptist pastor at a church we attended from Tennessee. He was hysterical.
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For the most part I don't think they are any different than anyother other group.However, I think there are more dubs who laugh inappropriately when there is nothing funny,
My brother and a few others I know do this and it drives me crazy. They have this stupid smile on their face all the time no matter what they are saying and always chuckling.
We just had a presidential candidate who did this. It wasn't her laugh that people mocked it was like "why the hell are you laughing right now there's nothing funny." For her it was a defensive delay tactic to give a reaction to a question so that her brain had time to come up with a reply. Pseudobulbar affect (PBA) is actually a neurological condition maybe that's what they have?
As a ubm I can tell you that once you join the cult much joy and laughter will in fact leave your life as well as those around you. Some things that were previously funny to my jw (pre jw) days now must first be thought out if they are against jw rules somehow, then you can decide if it is funny enough to laugh or not. Well, by that time the joke is gone.
We (all non jw family, never been and he is the only jw anyone actually knows) however find many things to secretly giggle about or laugh later when he isn't around. Such as when he lets swear words fly, when he mistakenly does laugh at something that might be not quite jw approved or when he is a total hypocrite (as jw's are prone to) and the list goes on....
Ron W. - “…'he's too self contained. Us elders holding him back doesn't bother him, and we elders don't like that’…”
“We’re holding him back because we’re pissed at him for not caring whether or not we’re holding him back!”
🤔
BluesBrother - “Today they seem afraid of ‘saying the wrong thing’…”
This.
Show me one instance in the bible where Jesus laughed.
Thank you, nicolaou. I remember once meeting a chap, a critically-thinking lawyer, in FS who had never been raised in any "Christian" tradition, so his exposure to so-called Christianity was limited to the mainstream, liberal social gospel version that the media generally reports on as safe/normative. He said he'd recently read through the four gospels and was struck with how grim and judgmental Jesus was, and how dissonant the gospels were from what he had expected they would be. I told him he was far more spot on (or I guess it was "right on" in those days) than most religious folks.
People love to focus in on passages like Jesus blessing the children or the parable of the shepherd picking up the errant lamb and putting on his shoulders, and they discount (for all practical purposes), eschew, or at least avoid the many times he condemns not just his opposers, but the crowds overall, and even his own disciples. He states how few are on the road to life and how difficult the path to it is. These and his multiple anti-family statements are written off as "the hard sayings of Jesus" and rarely dwelt upon both by church attendees and biblical scholars.
I remember reading the gospels apart from the Witnesses and thinking how radical, how difficult Jesus' message was, and how I was reacting like the disciples, "Then who can be saved?"
No, he never laughs, but does cry, twice. I remember how condemned I was in JW-land for bringing up these points, but I suspect I would be even more so by church clergy and parishioners like those in the OP's post (no offense, She Breeze! I often enjoy your posts).
As Ecclesiastes 3 says, there's a time for everything. I remember the excessive laughter of the Toronto Blessing in the 90s, where entire congregations would be collapsed on the floor, laughing so much that they couldn't get up. You'd think 6 years of Pentecostalism would have prepared me for that, but there was something in that excess that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Sometimes a joyful attitude 😊 is a good thing. At other times, quiet and sobre reflectivity 🥺 can be helpful. All things in moderation. 👌
But you're right that being happy is a good idea, SeaBreeze. The second half of the proverb you quote says: "but a broken spirit drieth the bones". In this context, a merry heart is better 🙏.
It wasn't her laugh that people mocked it was like "why the hell are you laughing right now there's nothing funny." For her it was a defensive delay tactic to give a reaction to a question so that her brain had time to come up with a reply.
moomanchu, she's not laughing any more. Instead "trying to figure out" why she/her dem. cronies lost—all the while while not facing the real reason that the majority of voting Americans rejected her: the dems have gone too far in their liberalism. We witness the long-simmering anti-liberal reaction all over the West: in the UK with Brexit, in Hungary, Germany, and Poland with the rise of the radical right. People are scared of encouraging kids to choose their body gender surgically before they can drive a car or even reach puberty. That's what the liberals have brought about.
The Congregation I joined when I moved after marrying my wife in 1970, was much as Blues Bro described his first one.
But maybe a tad more relaxed, with even more laughter, I remember one occasion when something that was said, I cannot remember exactly what, resulted in uproarious laughter from the audience, and the Elder on the Platform laughing so much his head ended up resting on the Rostrum as he struggled for breath !
One new convert remarked to me "This place is more like a Music Hall than a church !" , he was referring to the many audible comments from the audience that were regular at the time, and often funny.
But today the org. is a dull miserable place, where laughter is minimal, and an event as above described would be frowned upon, so not happen.
The J.W's have indeed lost more than they know, and made the org. far less appealing.
