Posts by OneEyedJoe

44

Men are not looking forward to becoming Elders or Ministerial Servants

by Hidden-Window in

jw
friends

i have noticed an apparently increasing number of men who are not interested in becoming ministerial servants or elders.

i also know of some that have voluntarily stepped down (which is my case) for no obvious solid reason.. i remember, during my teenage years or even during my twenties, the brothers were always looking forward to being appointed... although many still do, i have noticed there are many others with whom you do not know what the deal is.. since there is no freedom of speech within the organization, we remain in the dark about the motives and desires of everybody else.

i attend a congregation with only two ministerial servants, while it is full of men who do not seem to be willing to do more.. it is hard to tell exactly what is going on, since honesty is not possible while you are inside, but i am starting to think that more and more are becoming disillusioned.... .

OneEyedJoe

This was the general rule in my area. If you were a young man who (1) avoided getting into serious trouble with the elders (2) was regular at all meetings and (3) put in at least 10 hours a month in field service, you'd make ministerial servant by 20/21.

Maybe I was just always in the wrong croud, but I didn't know many young pioneers and everyone I grew up with that didn't get in trouble where MSes in their mid-late 20s. There's one uber-dub in the group, though, that was made an MS at 18, elder at 22 or 23. Man did that do a number on his ego. Its rare that I'll encounter anyone with a way of speaking that equals his in pretension.

I was publically reproved for drinking when I was 20 or 21. I can't remember the exact year anymore. In any event, I went from feeling like some giant stud to feeling like an outcast. My reputation had been destroyed. I began dating a girl a few years after my reproval and it was going great until her family found out I'd been reproved. You'd have thought her dauther was dating a drug-dealing, gang-banger with a felony conviction. It was awful.

A little off-topic, but it always struck me as shameful the way people would treat someone who'd been reproved, even if it had been years prior. Years ago I knew a girl that started dating some former bethelite that had been reproved about a year prior (of course, no one knew what for, but EVERYONE assumed it was fornication). A number of people questioned her choice because he'd been reproved. The contrast between this behavior and Jesus' words to forgive your brother 77 times (as well as many other oft-cited principles on forgiveness) was quite stark.

75

New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version)

by Simon in

the time has nearly come to switch over to the new forum software.

of course it's not completely finished yet (and never will be) but i think it's good enough to go live with and probably already better than the current one.

i'll give you a quick overview of what to expect and post more detail about the changeover process later.. cloud platform.

OneEyedJoe

'So where is this promised forum parousia of his? Why from the day Simon posted this thread, all things are continuing exactly as in the days of our forefathers.'

Ye of little faith! The dates given are accurate, for these are Simon's dates, not ours. Surely we have misunderstood the meaning of the word spoken, but can have faith that the timeline is accurate. The new forum is present, as promised, it is merely an invisible presence!

25

Public Speaker Training stifled by wt, it's new 'school' programme.

by prologos in

the 2015 school setup, discussed this week eliminates the last "school talk" by brothers in favour of 'demonstartions" (a la sisters conversations) of family worship sessions and the like.. is this not a shift away from encouraging bright young ones to hone their (under-estimated) speaker skills ---to.

now using more of the die-hard, org-bound, --even elders in indoctrination demonstrations?.

do you see this trend?

OneEyedJoe

One other detail is slightly different from the opening post. The brother giving the Bible highlights actually only has TWO minutes to give his point. So one of the only times a brother has the opportunity to express his own thoughts about a passage of scripture has been cut in half.

I remember when the highlights were an unscripted 6 minutes for the brother - then it was cut to 4 and now 2.

Two minutes and he is only allowed to consider one highlight point. Information control much?

Yep, now even if an awake elder/MS gets the part, any anti-WTS point that might be made will quickly be drowned out by the comments of the other elders and elders' wives. At the same time, they make the part "easier" for those that are just floating and avoiding getting appointed because they don't want to do more talks. win-win for them.

44

Men are not looking forward to becoming Elders or Ministerial Servants

by Hidden-Window in

jw
friends

i have noticed an apparently increasing number of men who are not interested in becoming ministerial servants or elders.

i also know of some that have voluntarily stepped down (which is my case) for no obvious solid reason.. i remember, during my teenage years or even during my twenties, the brothers were always looking forward to being appointed... although many still do, i have noticed there are many others with whom you do not know what the deal is.. since there is no freedom of speech within the organization, we remain in the dark about the motives and desires of everybody else.

i attend a congregation with only two ministerial servants, while it is full of men who do not seem to be willing to do more.. it is hard to tell exactly what is going on, since honesty is not possible while you are inside, but i am starting to think that more and more are becoming disillusioned.... .

OneEyedJoe

When I was in, a lot of women wouldn't consider dating a man unless he was serving in some official capacity. On the flip side, having some sort of appointment could give a young man access to women he'd otherwise have no shot with. The incentive was such that a lot of young male JWs would seek the appointment even if they weren't fully invested in JWism.

In my experience the kids usually get married before they're old enough to be serioiusly considered as an MS (unless they're the super-zealous type that makes elder by 22). I suppose, though, that women marrying men that aren't at least an MS may be an issue, since it managed to make it's way into AMIII's zone visit talk. Though, by that logic, men wearing tight pants is also an issue in the org - trying to make sense of that talk is a bit of a crapshoot.

43

does the wt always carefully phrase sentences so as to never take blame?

by sowhatnow in

im recalling a time when i sat and circled words in a watchtower article, indicating strongly the fact that it is in fact the writters opinion.. however just the suggestion in the sentence these words are ignored.. for example.

it is our understanding.

we believe this to be the case.

OneEyedJoe

It is interesting to compare WT literature paragraphs which use qualified (aka 'weasel') wording, with the questions that often accompany the paragraphs. It is not uncommon for the question to want the reader or audience to make a definite assertion to what the paragraph is only tentative about.

This, or the paragraph will say "many feel xyz about..." and the question forces you to internalize this to yourself "how do you feel about...?"

The writers aren't willing to commit to feeling that way, but you'd damn well better!

44

Men are not looking forward to becoming Elders or Ministerial Servants

by Hidden-Window in

jw
friends

i have noticed an apparently increasing number of men who are not interested in becoming ministerial servants or elders.

i also know of some that have voluntarily stepped down (which is my case) for no obvious solid reason.. i remember, during my teenage years or even during my twenties, the brothers were always looking forward to being appointed... although many still do, i have noticed there are many others with whom you do not know what the deal is.. since there is no freedom of speech within the organization, we remain in the dark about the motives and desires of everybody else.

i attend a congregation with only two ministerial servants, while it is full of men who do not seem to be willing to do more.. it is hard to tell exactly what is going on, since honesty is not possible while you are inside, but i am starting to think that more and more are becoming disillusioned.... .

OneEyedJoe

In my congregation, there are three types of ministerial servants:

1. The born-in children of the suber-zealous service overseer. They all still live at home and have absolutely no world experience.

2. Adult converts, of which there are 2 in our congregation. Both moving up very quickly in spite of clear...er...mental challenges. These men are idiots and fit the janitor/window washer stereotype that's thrown around here perfectly.

3. The older born-ins that have no interest in being an elder - there's probably 4 MSs that are in this group and they're in their 40s and 50s now.

There's a few others in the 20-30 year old range (born-ins) that don't seem to have any interest in "reaching out." I don't think any of these are really aware of TTATT on any level necessarily, but they're just tired from life in a cult and want to float and be left alone. The problem with kids failing to reach out has become so bad in our congregation that the elders decided to hold a special meeting one sunday just for the males in order to guilt-trip us about "reaching out." I guess in their mind the only thing that could be holding us back was our humbly thinking that we're not good enough to be appointed, so they brought pictures of the elders from their highschool days to show us how unruly these people used to be. Since then (like 2 years ago) only 1 adult convert has been appointed to MS, and 1 MS from the 3rd group was made an elder, so I guess an over abundance of humility isn't the problem.

26

Campaign to Israel

by humanperson in

i have been wanting to introduce myself but i don't know where to begin.

my husband and i are enjoying our third guilt-free weekend of our lives (both born-in, almost 30).

he has been out mentally for the last year and a half but patiently waited for me to come around.

OneEyedJoe

[...]

But life has been getting better and better. It's still hard but my husband said that it used to be "one step forward, and two back" and now it's the opposite. Wow, this is getting long. It feels kind of self-indulgent to write a long post about "My Journey" haha. But I have appreciated reading other peoples, and I hope it can help someone even just a little bit.

Thanks for sharing, even if it felt self-indulgent. It's always encouraging to hear success stories, and yours hits me particularly hard (in a good way). I often feel very frustrated trying to "wake up" my wife since it seems like there's never any progress, and I can see that your husband probably felt exactly the same way. I'm glad you two were able to make it out together, too many marriages are ruined by this cult.

If I might ask - how/when did your husband introduce you to CoC and Hassan's book(s)? Bringing up those books seems like a mine field - if my wife refuses to read them, she'll just make up a narrative in her mind about what they say and demonize me in the process just like JWs are trained to do.

Again, thanks for sharing your story. If nothing else, it always helps to have yet another bit of proof that I'm not alone in this struggle.

39

OMG! The world is worse than ever! This system can't last! Violence is increasing! Wait, what's that you say?

by sir82 in

jw
friends

if you read jw literature, the world has been progressively getting "worse and worse" since 1914.. is that really the case?.

for a more rational analysis, look here:.

a few highlights:.

OneEyedJoe

He said, "Well, you know, the Bible does say that things will get better right before the tribulation."

It always amazed me (even as a more or less believing JW) how people could say things like this and not realize that it's just hedging against any eventuality. Whatever happens, they'll say Ha! the bible predicted this! the end must be so close! This hedging was actually one of my principle doubts early on.

In any event, the bible says nothing about the gradual improvement we're seeing. It says there will be a widespread cry of peace and security and then the end will be INSTANTLY upon them. I guess that wouldn't make a difference, though...if "soon" encompasses the last 130 years, then "instantly" could well last long enough that everyone forgets the cry of peace and security anyway.

Even without that, though, this sort of long-term trend completely disproves the WTs basic premise - that mankind cannot solve their problems or make anything better and we NEED god's intervention. Meanwhile, humans have been solving their problems left and right for centuries. I just can't wait until 1 Corinthians 15:26 sees fulfillment: " And the last enemy, [religion], is to be brought to nothing." (sorry, my desire for intellectual honesty won't let me remove the brackets on the changed word)

114

What is truth?

by Heisenberg in

jw
friends

well, i have been lurking on this site for several months and i recently decided to join as a member.

i have made several observations and would like to make a few comments.. first, i am perplexed by the attitude of many on this site that are either former or active (but apostate) jws.

they seem to have a strong hatred for the wts and also for rank and file jws.

OneEyedJoe

Also, let me add: If you're up to the challenge, please head on over to the thread linked below. I think we're all very interested to see if an active JW can successfully defend the "truth" without resorting to rampant fallacy. Best of luck to you should you try it yourself.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/275576/1/Active-JWs-can-you-defend-THE-TRUTH

114

What is truth?

by Heisenberg in

jw
friends

well, i have been lurking on this site for several months and i recently decided to join as a member.

i have made several observations and would like to make a few comments.. first, i am perplexed by the attitude of many on this site that are either former or active (but apostate) jws.

they seem to have a strong hatred for the wts and also for rank and file jws.

OneEyedJoe

LG beat me to what I was going to say about your claims that exJWs are hypocrites for criticising JWs. It's a pretty common sentiment around here that we're all ashamed of our behavior when we were believing JWs. If a drug addict cleans up his life and proceeds to insist that his friend do the same, is he a hypocrite or a good friend?

So much of what you've said reminds me of how I once thought - if there's a god, then the JWs must be the truth. Unfortunately, I came to that conclusion after being born into the cult (I'll get to that in a second) and never really caring enough to do thorough research into the true doctrines of the bible (and certainly never considered that the JW bible had been tampered with in order to better fit their doctrine) - but why would I? The JWs were kind enough to provide their doctrine all laid out for me, complete with cherry-picked and out-of-context scripture to legitimize it. There's no room for dissent in JWdom so why research if there's the possibility that the research may reveal a flaw in your belief system?

On the topic of it being a cult, you'll want to investigate your definition a bit. I think most here don't necessarily refer to any religion that has an authority structure as being a cult. While it could be thought of as something of a spectrum (in which all organized religion would have some degree of cultness to them) I think it's usually pretty clear when a religion crosses the line into being a cult. For a good start on a better definition of a cult, try reading the information at the link below. This model of a cult was written by a man who had no exposure to JWs (but was, for a time, in the moonie cult). He identified common traits that all cults feature. See if anything seems familiar to you:

https://freedomofmind.com//Info/BITE/bitemodel.php

I'll offer you the advice that I wish someone had given me when I was at your stage - take things with a grain of salt, and be wary of making ad-hominem attacks in your head. There's no one path that you'll be forced to take. If you find that someone is an atheist, it doesn't mean that their biblical refutation of the JW doctrine is invalid. If someone became a satanist (a bit of hyperbole, but you may run into one or two), it doesn't mean that they were never a genuine devoted JW that left for legitimate reasons.