I think its a function of blind obediance....the more bizzarre the activity dished out with the greatest of urgency coupled with oblique explanations that it pleases God, the more each individual will feel guilty for not engaging and find their own rationale for doing it and defending it.... the stronger the emotional investments the stronger the defense by those involved
zen nudist
JoinedPosts by zen nudist
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26
the real purpose of field service
by what_Truth? ini've been racking this around my brain for a minute now.
you've got people puttin in an average of 10 hours a month, giving away countless publications, and still only converting one or two families every 20 years or so.
this raises an obvious question, "if the door to door ministry doesn't bring in converts why do it?
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Examples of JW's taking one scripture and EXPLOITING it
by Black Man injw's are expert at taking one passing thought in scripture and forming a whole belief system or control mechanism around it.
ex: matt.
24:45-47 faithful and discreet slave......one parable, illustration.....no other mention of it in scripture....but if you do a search of it on the cd-rom, it is one of the most talked about/written about subject in their history.
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zen nudist
JWs not unlike the rest, will take a scipture which SEEMS to support their point of view, like the dead know nothing and then interpret all other verses in light of it... such as fear not those who cannot kill the soul.... or the souls under the throne cried to God, which must be figurative because this other scripture says the dead are not conscious, etc.
and it seems that the other religions with no less justification have simply taken the reverse reading and reasoning.
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Did God lie about Satans rebellion to justify his own actions?
by jeanniebeanz inkeeping in mind that his followers malign the reputation of departing witnesses regardless of their reasons for leaving, do you think that god made up lies about satan's motivations for rebelling in order to justify his own harsh course of action?.
just a rambling thought this morning.
jeannie
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zen nudist
Satan is an interesting bible character
the only link we have that the serpent and satan are the same come from indirect connections much later
in the bible like revelations calling him the original serperant, etc.
the first time we meet Satan in the bible is the book of Job, there he is free to come and go in heavenly court. and even though there is NO indication that he is an enemy of God, the way it talks about him is with not a little contempt on the writers part.
in early jewish mythology satan works FOR Jehovah as the high court cheif prosecutor who is later removed for arrogance and doing his job a bit too well.... this is echoed in later n.t. writings too...the accuser of our brothers.
in Job we find a Satan who seems almost the equal of Jehovah challenging Jehovah, not just Job and making petty bets not really concerned about human life or dignity.... reminds me a lot of the eddie murphy movie -trading places where a man's life is ruined over a dollar bet.
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The idol of 'accurate knowledge'
by Noumenon injws certainly do bang on a lot about 'accurate knowledge'.
for most christians john 3:16 is the most important verse in the bible, but to jw's john 17:3 is.
jw's are so enamored with this concept of 'accurate knowledge' above all else that they have basically made an idol out of it.
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zen nudist
placing ideas and ideals above the people that hold them seems to be systemic in just about every religion on earth
only buddhism to my knowledge has as a fundamental that all life is sacred regardless of what errant or harmful ideas is infecting the host.
this leads automatically to most religions seeking to isolate or destroy those containers which hold the wrong idea or ideals that cannot be removed by coercion or indoctrination or force.
the first several centuries of church fathers seem to have left a good deal of infighting and damning of others who hold the wrong infections of ideas
anathema to so and so and all wh o follow his error seems to permiate a great deal of their writings.
unconditional love seems to be little more than another myth often told but rarely if ever seen in the
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When the desire to preach dies.
by El blanko in.
i have realized lately that i am far less "preachy" than i used to be and as a result, i do not feel as far up my own backside as i used to.. i think my ego is finally, finally, becoming easier to whip and control.
i grew tired of hearing my own voice.. do you feel this way?.
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zen nudist
a turning point for me came when I realized the source of guilt.
after reading a book called Societies of the mind [marvin minsky MIT]
I saw that we model everyone we meet and these models are invested with varying emotional charges and they sort of sit
mostly invisibly in the back of the mind in their jury box watching everything I do and everything I think..
.and I was always justifying myself and my actions to them as if their opinions mattered more than my own. They were the largest part of the inner voices which I had to argue against and defend myself from.
.. but then I realized that all of them were no better nor worse than me and most were not nearly as well read or concerned with any remote attempt at trying to figure out the meaning of things and so what really was their opinion worth.... and to top it all off, I reailzed these models were not even accurate to the real people they supposedly represented and were of little predictive value.
I was instantly releived of a lot of unnecessary emotion.
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At least 3 years...
by Confession infor some time now i've been searching the wts' publications for a policy that i clearly remember from my time as an elder.
but i just can't find it.
it was the one which stated that if someone--even a congregation servant--came forward and confessed to wrongdoing, there would not have to be a judicial committee, nor would a servant even need to lose his privileges--if at least three years had passed and the individual had put the sin behind him/her.
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zen nudist
for most of my ten year time with JWs I was under the false impression that JWs were different from the catholics they mocked for having such a human institution as confession.... what a shock I got when I learned this was not the case... but much of the literature does give the impression that one must only confess to God and that no humans need be an intercessor as Jesus was in that spot.
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the love of money is the root of all evil? or is it?
by zen nudist in.
i have not see anyone mention this..... but it seems to me that money is the one unifying force the world over, as more and more countries become just different aspects of the corporate world world peace seems more likely than anything religion has ever been able to accomplish... war is bad for business over all which is something you dont hear with regard to drug trafficking.... the more an area is dominated by one drug dealer the more peaceful the neighborhood as he finds violence on his turf to interfer with his money.
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zen nudist
The peace you talk about in a drug lords territory is the peace of the gun, you step out of line you die. The same peace brought by the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe. Now that the gun is gone, they kill each other willy nilly.
people who work for money dont seem to murder nearly as many as those who work for religion... true people are commodities to corporations, but they are cannon fodder to religious leaders... sheep sent to the slaughter more often than not.
I suppose any idea or ideal can get out of hand if placed above the people who hold them...which is what religion excels at... but then money is just another idea in that way.
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zen nudist
why did I have a sex drive which could put out an eye
that I could not use as a teen and
why has it nearly vanished now that I can?
damn those viagra people
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admit it
by tijkmo inyou get annoyed when one of your threads peters out...or you make a comment on someone elses thread and it goes unacknowledged....but isnt it great when an old thread you'd forgotten about gets ressurected
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zen nudist
I know that I like feedback, and I suspect most others do as well... we cast our bread upon the waters and hope it will return to us 100 fold...
sometimes I feel like I am starving to death here... and just when I am near to cyber death in this place, someone toss a crumb of acknowledgement and sustains my emaciated cyber hide for another day
I am chat junk food junky looking for my fix, I admit it... I am seeking many accomplices to commit pre-meditated chronocide and I dont always get the fix I need here, but I dont have many other forums that do better...so I come to the trough and beg for my daily bread :-)
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the love of money is the root of all evil? or is it?
by zen nudist in.
i have not see anyone mention this..... but it seems to me that money is the one unifying force the world over, as more and more countries become just different aspects of the corporate world world peace seems more likely than anything religion has ever been able to accomplish... war is bad for business over all which is something you dont hear with regard to drug trafficking.... the more an area is dominated by one drug dealer the more peaceful the neighborhood as he finds violence on his turf to interfer with his money.
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zen nudist
I have not see anyone mention this....
but it seems to me that money is the one unifying force the world over, as more and more countries become just different aspects of the corporate world world peace seems more likely than anything religion has ever been able to accomplish... war is bad for business over all which is something you dont hear with regard to drug trafficking.... the more an area is dominated by one drug dealer the more peaceful the neighborhood as he finds violence on his turf to interfer with his money.