Terry

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Posts by Terry

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  12

  A very short short story

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i wanted to see how short i could make a story and it still would be effective.

  you be the judge.

  did i succeed?.

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  Terry

  Vidiot--that is THE classic example of an effective short story without doubt.
  
  This May 16, 1910 article from The Spokane Press recounts an earlier advertisement which struck the author as particularly tragic.
  

  
  
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  2

  2-LEGGED GOD and 1-LEGGED MAN: A look at Divine Justice

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  1. god is perfect and righteous and just.. 2. god demands perfection, righteousness and justice.. 3. god creates man inferior to himself yet demands performance at his superior level.. .

  what is wrong with this picture?.

  isn't this like creating a man with one leg and demanding he doesn't hop?.

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  Terry

  __________________________________

  1. God is perfect and righteous and just.

  2. God demands perfection, righteousness and justice.

  3. God creates man inferior to himself yet demands performance at His superior level.

  
  

  What is wrong with this picture?

  Isn't this like creating a man with one leg and demanding he doesn't hop?
  
  

  For thousands of years, humans try not to hop but can't help but do so. They all die.
  
  4. God makes a Legal provision: each time you hop on one leg you pay a fine. You still die, but because you paid the fine, God forgives you.

  5. God appoints Priests to accept the fines paid by the Nation of Israel's hoppers.

  6. Everybody still hops with or without the law and the fines.

  
  

  What's wrong with this picture?

  All that hopping is due to having been created one-legged in a world which requires a minimum of 2 legs!
  
  Paying or not paying a fine for hopping doesn't address the core problem of one-leggedness.

  
  

  7. God decides he's had enough! He sends his 2 legged son into the world to show everybody how it's done, but this annoys the hell out of the one-legged Priests.

  8. Jesus teaches everybody to be as nice as a 2-legged Jesus, but he's executed for having more legs than the Emperor.

  9. God, his dad, brings him back to life. Jesus tells his best buddies he'll come back and get them real soon and they'll all live 2-legged in heaven, but in the meantime, they should tell others about how great it is to live like 2-legged people. If they just say aloud the magic words: "2-LEGGED JESUS," God will love them and ignore from now on all that 1-leggedness.

  
  

  What's wrong with this picture?

  Jesus did NOT return and take his buddies with him to heaven. 2,000+ years pass and 1-legged folks who say the magic words, "2-legged Jesus" consider themselves as forgiven for their 1-leggedness for the simple reason: God sees them as though they are 2-legged.
  God loves them!
  How does this make any sense?
  
  All the above problems would have been solved before they began if God had simply not created inferior humans with 1-leg and demanded they act as though they had 2-legs.

  
  

  ________

  Epilogue

  God's nature is above man's only because God created man inferior.

  That's the REAL problem!

  
  
• 
  9

  The embarrassing history of the misnomer called JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the scriptures portray a person named stephen who is termed the first "martyr.

  " the greek word means "witness.".

  ( greek : , martys , "witness"; stem -, martyr- ).

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  Terry

  CITATION:

  "The year 1914, therefore, marks the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of glory." Watchtower 1933 Dec 1 p.362
  
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  1

  EIGHT COMMON SENSE PRINCIPLES EX-J-DUB's can use for benefit

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  1. intellectual honesty:.

  willingness to be wrong when confronted with error.. courage to take the blow of our errors and move forward.. 2. skeptical optimism:.

  embracing an idea new to your mind; trying it to see if it works.

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• 

  Terry

  1. Intellectual Honesty:

  Willingness to be wrong when confronted with error.

  Courage to take the blow of our errors and move forward.

  2. Skeptical optimism:

  Embracing an idea new to your mind; trying it to see if it works. There is more failure in those who never try.

  3. Refusal to deny reality:

  Never hide anything from yourself you feel you aren't emotionally ready to accept.

  Look facts right in the eye. Stand silent in the chamber of liars and shout loudest when your ears hear a lie.

  4. Refuse to divide others into camps:

  Every group thinks it is right. Those who would conquer us with evil must first divide us with fear.

  5. What we Hate, we Become:

  Do we see enemies or do we see people just like us who have lost their way? Will we wound them as they have wounded us, or will we seek healing and reconciliation? Can we take their blow and rise above it or will we become the thing we have learned to hate?

  Will we wound them as they have wounded us, or will we seek healing and reconciliation? Can we take their blow and rise above it or will we become the thing we have learned to hate?

  6. Defeat bad ideas with BETTER ones:

  Saying someone is wrong means nothing. Insults mean nothing. Pointing to the better path, the higher ideal, the workable plan makes us a beacon and not a whimper. Living a better life than those who accuse us repudiates them one and all.

  Pointing to the better path, the higher ideal, the workable plan makes us a beacon and not a whimper. Living a better life than those who accuse us repudiates them one and all.

  7. A Better Life means World Repair:

  Grasp the smallest opportunities for praise, encouragement; help and commonality. In Judaism, the purpose of life is to "repair the world."

  Stoop to help someone smaller than yourself. Find the kind word and speak it; you might lift a heart when that lift means everything. You and I leave this world a better place than we found it while the empty-headed ones abandon ship only to drown in their own fears.

  8. Ask yourself each day, "Am I the poison or the antidote?":

  Commitments beat complaints like Aces beat a deuce. Have you ever heard the expression, If you aren't a part of the solution you are a part of the problem? Try thinking about that sometime.

  Be the hand that builds and not the fist that bruises. The smile that encourages and not the scream that deafens. Hope is a rough sketch, but a life well-lived is a thing of great beauty.
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  18

  A frothy question ABOUT DEMONS

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  have you ever been to a circus and seen a "clown car"?.

  the little "bug" volkswagon drives out and clowns get out.

  lots and lots and lots and lots of clowns!.

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  Terry

  I think you've hit the nail on it's head, eyeuse2badub!

  A WORD THAT CAN MEAN ANYTHING means nothing.
• 
  87

  What is your "INTUITION" about THE SECRET "law of attraction"?

  by Terry in

  1. social
  2. family

  ever hear somebody say, "trust your gut..."?.

  or, like obe wan kenobe: "trust your feelings...."?.

  have you ever followed that "little voice" that whispers to you that you should or should not do something?.

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  Terry

  I like to take a look at the etymology of words. The birth of concepts often springs from sources which clue us into what kinds of minds created the original idea.
  

  Sure enough, INTUITION has a dead giveaway in its sourcing.
  It has Theology written all over it.

  intuition (n.)

  mid-15c., intuicioun, "insight, direct or immediate cognition, spiritual perception," originally theological, from Late Latin intuitionem (nominative intuitio) "a looking at, consideration," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin intueri "look at, consider," from in- "at, on" (see in- (2)) + tueri "to look at, watch over" (see tutor (n.)).

  
  You see, I could go along with the word "insight" because it isn't coated with the slime of religious mysticism--but--intuition reeks of it.
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  34

  The Jehovah's Witnesses' Governing Body are Elitists (Here is why)

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  an "elite" group is one which has special privileges not granted to others.. and obscurantist elite, is a group which hides information by virtue of its own claim to be special and a sole source in dispensing necessary truths.. to wit:.

  the gb's elitism shines through in articles such as this:.

  “thus the bible is an organizational book and belongs to the christian congregation as an organization, not to individuals , regardless of how sincerely they may believe that they can interpret the bible .

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  Terry

  We all forget to do that, Marina :)
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  7

  A WRITER (me) looks at the "character GOD" from the standpoint of bad writing

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i pay attention to what other writers write about writing.

  writers always have limits--even writers of fiction.. do you choose to live in a world where pigs fly and deuces are wild?

  that would be an imaginary world.. do you choose to live in a world where god rules?

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• 

  Terry

  I had a friend who once said out of nowhere:

  "We are God's soap opera."

  That stuck with me.
• 
  12

  A very short short story

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i wanted to see how short i could make a story and it still would be effective.

  you be the judge.

  did i succeed?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Terry

  As the 3 stooges might say, "Soit-un-ly!"

  Thanks!
• 
  7

  Should I stay or should I go?

  by olongapo joe in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  hello all, i love reading all of your experiences, and trials and tribulations ( isn't that very jw'ish)?

  while most of my life experiences have almost nothing to do with jw's, as i was never baptized and never believed( in the bible) past the 5th grade, it makes me feel good to contribute a post or two here, i tend to go off on subjects that are probably not very jermaine to the main subject of this site.

  i do really enjoy all of your comments and the time and effort simon and the other moderators spend to make this a truly inspiring site.

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• 

  Terry

  Hard to believe, but it took me from 1979 to about 1995 to finally break my addiction to Watchtower thinking patterns.

  I had time to kill in the local Public Library and I wandered into the Philosophy section.

  Well, I had zero interest in philosophy. However . . .

  I saw a book whose author I recognized and whom I admired.

  Mortimer J. Adler had been the fellow behind the Encyclopedia Britannica volumes of THE GREAT BOOKS of the WESTERN WORLD that I adored so much!
  
  Adler had also written, HOW TO READ A BOOK which proved invaluable.
  
  

  So, I thought to myself--let me see what Adler has to say behind this intriguing title:

  10 PHILOSOPHICAL MISTAKES

  I read the entire book in one hour and immediately went to a bookstore a bought a personal copy for myself!

  I re-read it and took notes.

  I was on fire!

  That book started me on a process of rooting out the philosophical errors buried deep in Watchtower teaching which I would never have detected on my own (without Adler's excellent ideas and concepts stirring in my brain.)

  From that moment on, I've been scrubbing my brain of every trace of indoctrination. fallacious reasoning, ideology and false premises.

  I highly recommend this book to anybody who has been an intellectual victim of a group such as Jehovah's Witnesses.

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