True North

Joined

• started 30 topics
• posted 125 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by True North

• 
  4

  xJWs: Anyone ever read this poem? Any thoughts? Any personal applications?

  by True North in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  anyone ever read this poem: http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm?

  [warning to those who may be offended: the poem contains the "f" word (although it's not used in a sexual sense).

  ] does anyone have any thoughts on it or any personal applications, particularly if you were raised as a jw?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  Anyone ever read this poem: http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm? [Warning to those who may be offended: the poem contains the "f" word (although it's not used in a sexual sense).] Does anyone have any thoughts on it or any personal applications, particularly if you were raised as a JW?
• 
  37

  What Are You Guilty Over?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i feel guilty that i don't give a hoot about anything that i believed in over the last 4 decades.......what are you feeling guilty over??

  ?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  I feel guilty over the fact that after I left the org. I continued to allow my JW wife to raise my kids in it in the name of family peace and unity. They've paid a terrible price for that.
• 
  9

  Is Ehrman's "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture" worth reading?

  by True North in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  most of my "knowledge" of the history and sources of the bible was acquired from watchtower publications.

  although i left the jw org.

  some twenty years ago, i never felt compelled to consider the subject much further.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  Narkissos, thanks for the link. I found the lecture interesting.
• 
  49

  Maybe I'm not a cultured as I though. :- /

  by Elsewhere in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i just got back from going to the nasher sculpture museum in downtown dallas.

  they are having a showing of a rare collection of picasso paintings and sculptures that everyone is talking about.. i'm starting to wonder... maybe i'm not as cultured as a thought.

  nearly every time i looked at one of his works i found myself thinking: "what the hell was mug smoke'in when he did that?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  Hey CHEVYSNTATS, That's so cool that you got to visit that museum. The film you're referring to would be "Un Chien Andalou" (An Andalusian Dog) with Dali's collaborator having been Luis Buñuel. Boy, that takes me back. I must have been only eighteen or so the last time I saw that. How did you like the scene with the guy watching the ants crawl around the hole in his hand?! Buñuel went on to make several movies and at least was, as I recall, rather well regarded by highbrow film critics, particularly for his film "The Exterminating Angel".

  Continuing my trip down memory lane, if I may, back when I was around nineteen (before I became a JW) I ran into a friend of mine who was a talented commercial and genre artist. He had just purchased a large "coffee-table" book of Dali's work. He seemed quite offended when I told him that while I liked much of Dali's work, I thought that Dali had settled on working a "schtick," repeatedly trotting out a bag of tricks (though very good tricks they were). My friend's retort was that I just couldn't appreciate Dali because I wasn't an artist. I can understand one artist appreciating another's impressive technique but I think that great technique doesn't necessarily make great art and that to require one to be an artist to appreciate one's work is less than ideal.

  In any case, I was once very fond of surrealist art, my favorite being the art of Max Ernst. (Unfortunately, I lost my devotion to art and film when I became a JW and I haven't really regained it, although I've been out of the org. for twenty years. Hmmm ... I'm glad this thread has happened -- this gives me something to think about. Anyone else have a similar experience of JW-related loss? Maybe it would be a useful topic for another thread.)
• 
  9

  Is Ehrman's "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture" worth reading?

  by True North in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  most of my "knowledge" of the history and sources of the bible was acquired from watchtower publications.

  although i left the jw org.

  some twenty years ago, i never felt compelled to consider the subject much further.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  Most of my "knowledge" of the history and sources of the Bible was acquired from Watchtower publications. Although I left the JW org. some twenty years ago, I never felt compelled to consider the subject much further. However, since recently reading some stuff on the Web about NT and OT authors citing extra-Biblical writings and traditions (including Leolaia's 25-Feb-04 post on "Apocryphal Jewish Tradition in the New Testament"), I've become curious about the history of the Scriptures -- both OT and NT -- and about the current state of scholarly opinion on these.

  Can anyone recommend a couple of good books on this topic? I'd like to read something accessible to the layperson but nonetheless scholarly in the sense of being up to date, well informed, well reasoned, and not too distorted by the author having an axe to grind.

  On Amazon, I've found some books by Bart D. Ehrman that sound interesting and that received a number of four and five-star reviews. Has anyone read any of the following?:

  The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament

  Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament

  Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

  Also, there seem to be a lot of such books covering the NT but how about the OT?
• 
  49

  Maybe I'm not a cultured as I though. :- /

  by Elsewhere in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i just got back from going to the nasher sculpture museum in downtown dallas.

  they are having a showing of a rare collection of picasso paintings and sculptures that everyone is talking about.. i'm starting to wonder... maybe i'm not as cultured as a thought.

  nearly every time i looked at one of his works i found myself thinking: "what the hell was mug smoke'in when he did that?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  I once read an alleged quotation from Picasso in which he admitted in his later years that for quite some time he had been running a con job bilking credulous art buyers. Of course, this could have been apocryphal.

  Personally, I've never managed to "get" Jackson Pollack's thrown, dripped, and dribbled paint works, and I've never felt especially motivated to try to. However, the best artist I ever knew, a former friend of mine, told me that these were actually quite substantial works and he was someone whose opinions on art I took quite seriously. (As a "footnote" to this, I used the adjective "former" because, unfortunately, when I became a JW, I unceremoniously dumped all of my "wordly" friends.)

  BTW, An interesting book on the subject of what art is that I've read is Leo Tolstoy's "What Is Art?" You may or may not agree with Tolstoy (some reviewers on Amazon give this book only one or two stars, others all five) but I think you'll find it worthing thinking about what he has to say. For a sample, here's part of his definition of art: "To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art."
• 
  17

  Christianity and The Hebrew Bible

  by DevonMcBride in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  what you were never told by your church and your pastor

  pastor craig lyons, m.div.

  the readers of this article will be shown comparisons of scriptural passages taken both from the hebrew bible and various christian bible translations.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  Has anything been written on this topic from an Orthodox Jewish perspective by Jewish scholars?
• 
  19

  Apocryphal Jewish Tradition in the New Testament

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  the nt frequently refers to people and events of the ot, but time and again these references include details and assumptions that do not occur in the original ot narratives.

  but these same elements are found, time and again, in extrabiblical jewish tradition.

  taken together, we see that the nt writers drew on popular tradition and haggadah on the ot texts and thus preserved traces of these ancient expansions of biblical stories in their own writings.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  Leolaia,

  Thanks for the list. It's very interesting and I would certainly enjoy reading more if you would care to continue it.

  BTW, I recently came across some of this on a Web page from a former Protestant who had converted to zealous Catholicism in part, he or she said, due to discovering that the NT writers had themselves accepted extra-Biblical tradition as sacred or inspired.
• 
  39

  Worst band names ever

  by Nosferatu in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this morning on the radio, they had a little contest to see who could nail the worst band name on a list made by some ideot.

  i tried to get through, but i was wrong anyway.

  the #1 worst band name was the beatles?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  Is it too late to suggest "A Flock of Seagulls"?
• 
  59

  Marriage Advice...

  by Tuesday in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  for all the ones that are married out there.

  i'm newly married, but i think there's a problem.

  i'm just going to go over the morning and say that this is a typical day.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  True North

  Tuesday,

  I wouldn't presume to fully understand your situation or feel confident about recommending an ultimate course of action for you. But, from long and sorry personal experience, I would advise you to not procrastinate. Don't let things fester while you're just hoping that somehow things will work out on their own. Both you and your wife are unhappy right now and that's something you have to bring out into the open and deal with, the both of you. You can't just suck this stuff up and internalize it.

  It will be uncomfortable, but go ahead and take the risk of talking with her about how you feel. Do your best, though, to not be perceived as attacking her or labeling her as a bad person; you're not trying to score points against her but to make both your lives happier. Be vulnerable and risk taking a few shots to the head and heart. Go ahead and let her have her turn. Find out if she's harboring anything against you. Maybe she doesn't even know why she's acting as she is -- you've got to find out if you can.

  Counseling might be a good thing. Even if she won't go with you at first, you can always go on your own just to get some perspective. Possibly you are misperceiving some things through the filter of your own hurt feelings -- which can be sort of the evil twin of rose-colored glasses -- and an experienced third party without a vested interest can help to sort things out.

  That being said, there's no guarantee that things will improve and you may be faced with a decision about continuing in your marriage. Just make sure that you find that out before you have kids. After that, after you have kids, you can find yourself in a situation where there are no good options and you and the kids will suffer for it no matter what you do.