I had the same initial thought about the "is religion dying out?" cover as the one I had when my wife made a point of leaving out the "Is science replacing the bible?" magazine a month or so back. My thought was "Let's hope so."
I love the WT study articles. Train your kids to serve the cult! Good to see they're still loosing kids!
someone please tell me how or if i can find proof that the rumor [that is pasted below] that was posted by a friend [still in, but should know better] on my face book page is false, [which of course we all know it is,] this makes me so angry, i have to stick my neck out and comment on this post but need something to back me up....anyone want to enlighten me where this got started?
i need proof he never said such a thing, it seems to me its false.
whats interesting is this, the bible in the photo accompanying the statement below is the latest version.... [photo].
i was born into the jw's religion.
was an active jw for over 30 years.
i remember when i was a child my mom would take me in the bathroom and switch me so hard with the nice little switch she got from the tree outside.
because of the belief that the bible is quite literally the word god jws must shut out many logical concepts and theories.
it's not just evolution although that is a large one.
i know when i was in there were certain concepts that made sense to me but i would try not to think about them too much.
Well of course they don't think about those things. They can just point to me and say "he allowed himself to consider those concepts, and now look where he is! He's in the world!"
Thinking about stuff like that was definitely instrumental in my waking up.
i've thought and said too much to ever gain jehovahs forgiveness and love if i want to be a christian again.
i made a topic on my unforgivable sin and blaspemy of the holy spirit.. i feel saddness everyday having no relationship with god, no religion and fear of the afterlife.
even when i was kid i feared death and the end of the world.
Yeah, I agree with Morpheus and FMF. I consider myself generally pretty well-adjusted (in spite of my upbringing in a cult) and generally happy, but even so therapy has been helpful. I think in your case it may really help you to understand many of the cognitive distortions that you're employing that give you a rather dim view of yourself and of your future.
If nothing else, I would recommend that you read up on cognitive behavior therapy, which can be quite helpful in situations that you seem to be facing. A good book on the topic is "Feeling Good" by David Burns.
There's absolutely no reason why you need to live in a state of fear and anticipation for a terrible future. That's the type of thing that can often result in self-harm and I hope that you are able to avoid going any further down that path. Please, please, please find a way to get some help.
Again as morpheus said, this comes from a place of concern with absolutely no judgement (hey, I'm seeing a therapist myself!) so I hope you will at least consider it.
the governing body have painted themselves in a corner, so to speak.
if they acknowledge their response to abuse claims was insensitive, unloving and inadequate they are denying the belief that "god's way" is best and risk losing abuse cases.
if they stick with it and say it is "god's way according to the bible" they will be seen as cult leaders and risk losing abuse cases.
Why are there lawsuits against the WTS/GB but not lawsuits against the parents of the victims???
Reporting that you have (or your child has) been abused to the police is a very difficult action to take. It requires a huge amount of courage and humility and the whole thing is awash with complex emotions. In some cases it is difficult for these ones to see that reporting the abuse not only serves justice in their case, but also prevents the abuse of others. This should not be difficult for the elders to see, however.
Furthermore, in many cases the elder's negligence goes far beyond failure to report. They have assigned molesters to work directly with children. They have written letters of reccomendation for molesters that specifically indicate that they are good with children and fail to mention anything about the molestation.
Third, there are many accounts of the elders discouraging parents/victims from reporting the abuse. Because of the power that they hold (being that it's a cult that employs powerful mind control techniques) they hold undue influence over these people to prevent the reporting of abuse. Their discouragement of abuse reporting is not without teeth, either, as there have been numerous accounts of victims and their families being DFed for attempting to report the abuse or warn others that are at risk.
Yes, in many cases the parents are negligent as well, but lets not pretend that this cult has had nothing to do with the continued abuse of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of children.
i'm sitting here drinking my morning coffee and opened up the yahoo page to see jw's trending at #10. clicked on it and the first article is about the child abuse.. did something happen lately that would get so many people doing a massive search?.
What about Google?
When I google "Jehovah's wittnesses" the first thing that pops up (even before jw.borg) is an "in the news" section with tons of links to news articles about how they hid child abuse.
I wish the timing of this had been better...just imagine if this had happened in August of last year when they were distributing the jw.org fliers. The backfire on that would've been truly spectacular.
has anybody confronted any jws with the royal commission reports on the news yet?
i showed my 8-year old daughter a newspaper headline about it, and when she told my jw wife that the jws in australia were in trouble for not reporting over 1,000 child abusers to police, her response was "oh, really?
well, i don't know what the rules are over there.
In the comments there seems to be lots of pro-JW rationalizing....but there are also some righteously indignant commenters making excellent points as well.
Which of course leads to spittle-inflected cries of "apostate! Apostate in our midst!"
I wonder what it would do to someone who sees themselves as a faithful JW if they're called an apostate for being disgusted by child abuse. I feel like it might make them wonder if maybe there are some like-minded people out there that have already been vilified for taking a moral stand. I wish there was some way of knowing just how many people end up leaving the cult because of this one act by the Australian government.
we know that after the 1975 fiasco there were some revolts and disappointments in the brotherhood, which finally caused the removal of raymond franz and overseers like james penton, and so on.
so, may be these news could cause the revolt of some members in the leadership.
any thoughts?
The difference is that the leadership (assuming you're talking about the GB and those directly below them) already knew of the problem. This isn't a prediction failing, it's a problem they're aware of being exposed. I think the reaction will likely be different due to that fact. Furthermore, since it's coming at them from secular authorities (and not the inexorable passage of time) it's more likely that they'll direct their anger somewhere other than at the cult.
What I do hope, though, is that this leads to a revolt of some elders and R/F JWs with children.
so i have not reported a single hour of fs or family worship in over 8 months.
have not given a single comment in a meeting for over a year.
a few weeks ago, my brother in law, who is an ms now, approached me.
No, they're not trying to make you feel bad, they're encouraging you! Don't you feel encouraged?!?
I've known a number of brothers that in doing the school assignments they would assign talks about why x is bad to someone that they suspected were doing that but couldn't prove it (or if it wasn't a DFing offense, if they'd been counseled on it before but haven't changed) so I think there's a fair chance that this is all intentional. It may not even have been your BIL's idea to ask you...could've been from the person that assigned it to him.
