Parts like these always left me feeling dirty. Almost felt like maybe I was in a cult. I don't think I ever heard a list of potential grievances given from the platform, but man that would've been the cherry on top for me - I could've related to a lot of those for a very long time before I actually woke up. When they tighten the grip out of fear of apostates like this, I think it ends up pushing away a lot of the fence sitters.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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29
Local Needs part given after Ministerial Servant left the organization
by cappytan inhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbb8rt2bem8.
some crazy cult language in this talk.. some highlights:.
18:15 - obey.
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Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ... Yes it's a REAL church.
by SecretSlaveClass innow this is a church an athiest would be really happy with.
hilarious!.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/flying_spaghetti_monster.
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OneEyedJoe
When I was still in, a ~17 year old kid gave a comment in which his goal seemed to be to point out how silly other belief systems (i.e. anything but JW) were. He illustrated his point by talking about one group that even believes that a flying spaghetti monster was the creator, insisting that it was a real religion that people believed. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the church he was using to illustrate his point was created to illustrate how foolish all religion is. This may have been the best display of unintentional irony I ever witnessed. -
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When you were in
by Esmeralda001 incoucou,.
i hope you are well?!
i have a few questions that i'd like to adress (if you don't mind of course).
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OneEyedJoe
I was born-in
I first started questioning when I was ~13 and my first question was why it seemed that JWs were generally less intelligent than "worldly" people and shouldn't it be the smarter ones that are able to find the truth? Shouldn't it be concerning that we've made the same choice that people of clearly below average intelligence have made? Obviously that wasn't enough to push me out, but it was a start. Thinking about their cult-like behaviors (independent thinking and education discouraged, shunning, etc) made me think "that's a rule I'd implement if I were to start a cult." Then the failed generation teaching combined with some basic knowledge of the failures of 1914 and 1975 was what really set me into questioning that lead to find TTATT online.
Of course the fact that I am what a JW would call an apostate has crossed my mind.
All the ones that I saw getting converted had serious problems (mental illness, addiction, recent death of a spouse or divorce, etc). This just made me doubt more because I never saw anyone joining because the doctrine was well explained and they determined it to be the truth, they were joining because they had problems and needed support.
I was always pretty strong in my faith, in a way. I thought my faith was backed by firm evidence, so I guess I didn't consider it to be faith at all. I always wanted my beliefs to be in line with evidence, I just didn't know the evidence I'd received had been filtered and manipulated. It wasn't until I knew TTATT that I was looking for a way out. Up until that point, I was mostly looking for a way to silence my doubts so that I could stay a JW in good conscience.
As a kid I was the holier-than-thou type because I had a penchant for memorizing doctrine and explaining it. I could beat most adults at that game by the time I was a teenager. Through college I started to become more moderate (the more I learned in school the more I realized I didn't really know anything) and then after getting married and moving to a new congregation where I knew no one I became "spiritually weak" only getting the minimum in service and missing the occasional meeting. I'd started to see that JW stuff really didn't benefit me in any way and I had a lot of new responsibilities that I was better off attending to vs going to meetings or wasting my time walking up and down the street trying to recruit people into something I wasn't sure about myself.
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Favourite Movie quotes...
by Tornintwo ininspiring, funny...you choose.... i'll start with inspiring: .
frodo: i wish the ring had never come to me.
i wish none of this had happened.gandalf: so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.
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OneEyedJoe
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move.
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Video: 607 & 1914 Why These Dates Matter to Jehovah's Witnesses
by LevelThePlayingField inthis is a great video.
i think it's his best work so far.
everything you ever wanted to know about 607 in 30 minutes.
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OneEyedJoe
I think ex-JW's care more about this than current witnesses do. I really can't remember caring about 607 / 1914 when I was in.
Well, the ones that really care about these dates become exJWs. I never really cared much about 607, but I was definitely invested in 1914. Towards the end of my time in the cult, WWI happening in 1914 was basically the only thing my faith was based on.
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Is zeal beginning to vanish?
by Caupon init has to be starting to fade somehow.
the very last time i went out in field service, hardly any were out.
maybe just about nine people were out and man if you could just see their faces.
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OneEyedJoe
I don't know if it's the congregation I've been in for the last several years but I've definitely noticed that there's been a big change in zeal compared to my childhood. Of course its always been a chore and you'd hear people talking about needing to "get their time" but in the last few years the meaning has changed from getting 10 hours to getting any time at all.
Though in your case it sounds like you're trying to discern a pattern from one event, which is probably not a great plan. I do think that there's a general lack of zeal washing over the R/F these days, but I'm guessing the service day that you describe may just be a random fluke or perhaps people are tired from that end-of-the-year push that often happens at work or because the days are shorter or whatever.
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The X-Mas thing...
by punkofnice inchristmas means nothing to me.
i have no abiding, cosy, childhood memories of it.. i don't buy presents or cards....i have to be reminded.. i feel a bit weird.
people are celebrating and saying: 'i'm feeling christmassy.'.
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OneEyedJoe
I'm with ya. Christmas seems to be more about nostalgia (like you, I have none for my upbringing) and seeing the season through the eyes of your children (I have none) so without those things it just doesn't mean anything. I haven't been out long, though, so maybe it'll change with time.
I did wrap a couple of gifts (nothing fancy stuff that was essentially free to me that I was planning on giving them anyways) for work friends and enjoyed seeing that they genuinely appreciated it. Of course they expected nothing out of me so that may have enhanced their reaction somewhat.
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Yearbook 2016
by Gorbatchov instil no 2016 yearbook on jw.org, due to my fade i forgot the normal publishing date.
do you remember when the yearbook was released?
i'm just curious about the 2015 publisher data.
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OneEyedJoe
I've been wondering if the baptism numbers are 185600 rather than 18560 and somehow a zero has been accidentally lopped off.
This seems unlikely to me because this number is derived from the difference in peak publishers year over year, not baptisms. For the number to be off in such a way the mistake wouldn't have been a missing zero it would've been under reporting peak publishers by 167040. That doesn't turn out to be such a tidy off-by-one type error.
Furthermore, looking at the numbers for 2014 and 2015 together it paints a clearer picture. There was a larger increase in peak pubs in 2014 (probably due to their big august push of jw.org flyers combined with anticipation that oct 2014 might see armageddon) than usual. Because the factors leading to the 2014 increase could not be sustained, the numbers corrected and dropped back down. Taken together the average increase for 2014 and 2015 is ~126k increase per year which is more in line (but still a good bit below, in most cases) previous years.
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Does Jehovah Intervene - JW Teaching
by thedepressedsoul ini have been a jw my whole life and i have never been able to get a clear answer on this question.
jw's do not believe that jehovah will intervene if someone is sick, dying or stopping a car crash.
they feel that jehovah is letting "this world" play out before he solves all of these problems.
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OneEyedJoe
I see what you are saying but it still doesn't explain why they say Jehovah intervenes for some things and yet when it comes to sickness/accidents that he stays completely out of it.
My point was that this is a contradiction that comes forth from an attempt (this happens in most religions) to take credit for good things while avoiding responsibility for bad things. This is not unique to JWs. There is scriptural basis for thinking that you may be tested to the point of death (i.e. no intervention from god) and there is scriptural basis for thinking that god might help you out. When you're a believer your cognition is based upon the assumption that god is good and worth serving, and when you enter that into the equation it doesn't take much for the believer to start fitting their life experience into the framework that's given to them. Anything good that they're surprised by, they attribute to god and are grateful. Anything that's bad gets attributed to bad luck, satan or whatever and they're unhappy. God doesn't have to do anything.
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JWs Don't Really Believe This Scripture...
by JW_Rogue inso the bible says this about god at rom 1:20 for his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the worlds creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and godship, so that they are inexcusable.. however, jws don't really believe this scripture to be true.
whenever something comes out about nature that they don't like they will instead say that it is due to imperfection.
animals are predatory and will kill to survive, well, that must be imperfection.
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OneEyedJoe
That's a really good point. They'll talk about god having a sense of humor (duck-billed platypus) or being loving because animals take care of their young, but they never talk about animals that eat their young or predation.