So last weekend was my last District Convention. I plan on breaking the news to my wife real soon. Nowadays even at the meetings my blood pressure raises and my back gets all tense as I sit and listen to some of the stuff we are supposed to believe.
I knew I would probably keel over from an aneurism or something at the District Convention if I employed the same methods of listening that I did at the KH. So I took an opposite stance and actually took semi-copious notes. Figured I would share them with all.
If you are working on your family members for getting out of the JWs - a heads up on some of these talks may help you to make off-handed comments to your loved ones during the course of the convention. There are a few opportunities:
Some general patterns of the talks that I noticed:
Most on the convention's theme of "Godly Obedience" started with how worthless we are as imperfect flesh. Then they would being up Jehovah's saving ability, and our "obeying" will make us feel less worthless - maybe even valuable in Jehovah's eyes. There was a lot of "if you love Jehovah you will want to obey". To me this sounds more like an abusive relationship.
There was a catch phrase used through almost every interview with publishers, etc. - "No regrets" - in their decision to avoid lucrative secular employment, scholarship opportunities, etc. This was uttered countless times - almost every life experience (several dozen) from youths on up had that phrase. And if they didn't use it particularly - the speaker would ask it - "Any regrets?"
This was highlighted with the drama that everyone marveled over... how Timothy had "no regrets" of choosing the full-time ministry over college and a lucrative business career with his friend and how he was blessed.
More generalizations that shouldn't surprise me anymore, but still do, is the frequent insinuations that all educated people are snobby elitists, doctors are the same way. They imply that educated ones don't take to the "Truth" because they are too full of themselves. One speaker (which I will detail later) quoted from another religious magazine that said, "The higher the education level of a person, the harder it is to lead them." What gall they have. My wife was particularly impressed with that quote - to which I responded - "But you have to be careful with a statement like that - does this mean the Society wants only uneducated people as followers? If so, that sounds very cultish."
Another pattern I noticed - on Friday and Saturday they really let the hammer fall as far as obedience goes. Especially Friday. I surmise this has something to do with the fact that Fridays you won't have many general public or newly interested ones (This is only my opinion though) . Saturday was pretty harsh too. Then Sunday all of a sudden everything was about Jesus and "true Christianity". Sunday is when the bible studies and general public supposedly attend. Stepping back and looking at it from my perspective now it seems so obvious - or else I am just a conspiracy theory type of guy (I did LOVE X-Files ... heheh).
There was a talk on the resurrection (notice a recurring theme on the resurrection ... interesting). The speaker said, "Some people have even gone so far as to make comments like, 'You'll never have to grow up in this system, Armageddon will be here by then.' Never would we want to be that presumptuous." I was like, WHAT? The only reason people say stuff like that is because the Society has printed that in their literature since the early 1900's! Geez.
Another talk on meeting attendance opened with this sentence - "There is evidence that Jesus likely instituted specific times for gathering his followers together for worship." Of course, they backed this up with no scripture. A couple minutes later they were speaking as if this were fact - that Jesus instituted specific meeting times. Oye. I asked my wife, "Did he say Jesus LIKELY instituted specific meeting times?" She said, "I don't know, I didn't hear that part."
Of course not ...
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