i remember, possible 15 to 20 years ago an actual challenge to the wtbts from a reader published in the watchtower, i believe.
but it did stick in my mind.
it was on the subject of the nazi persecution of jews and the jws.
Yes, LEG,
That's the one! Did you get this off a recent CD because the comment about the girl surving the events so we should be able to survive reading of them, is not there. This is why the CD gets me angry - they follow a policy of constant editing revision and re-interpretation. This is the real reason they want to shut down Quotes: he is giving the original non-revisionist version of the propaganda.
HB
Why didn't the almighty favor me in the muscles department like the guy in the yellow tank-top?
HB
i remember, possible 15 to 20 years ago an actual challenge to the wtbts from a reader published in the watchtower, i believe.
but it did stick in my mind.
it was on the subject of the nazi persecution of jews and the jws.
I remember this one.
The reply said that this girl had survived the actual events, and we should surely be able to survive hearing the truth about what she experienced.
I cannot find fault with this reply, as the person who wrote in probably switches off the news, documentaries about child rape - you name it. Editing facts to protect the dainty senses of an ADULT reader is censorship which prevents an ADULT making a reasonable decision or discussion,on the facts in hand. Why not edit all the details on the Silentlambs website, so it is all cean, non-distressing and clinical? No talk of panic, pain, physical injury, just something "not nice" happened to me.
Just read the accounts of women being stabbed up the vagina or thrown from parapets to be savaged by dogs in the bible.
If God can watch it all happen every day for millennia, we can surely survive hearing about it second-hand. Why not edit the tesimonies at the Nuremberg trials? These are also at least as horrible as what the objecting reader saw in the WT.
If I recall it was a Q from readers about the mid eighties. I remember because the sister's name was spelt with 'OE' instead of 'O' with the german umlaut. If I can dredge up the name from my rodent memory, it will be easy to find. Something like Poetzinger, Shroedinger that sort of thing...
HB (of the 'don't remember names, but I remember facts' class)
yeah,
one elders son had been letting other guys "rump us" for years while pio'ing.
to this day nobody can see why he wasn't DF'd. Oh yeah, and two elders were next door neighbours, despised each other, and were known all along the street for fighting like cat and dog. The wives were always screaming at each other over the fence about what their kids had been doing to each other. One elder fought like a cat with his wife, and made it up like a dog with a pio sister. This is all so like what the rest of the christian world does, the witlesses HAVE to be chrischuns.
HB
.
will revelations, grand climax at hand ever be studied again, or is the book apostate?
The contradictory interpretations have been too well published on the web for anyone in the know to put their hand up and point one out without being labeled unwholesome, apostate, or unhappifying association.
HB
getting baptized should be between you and god, and the watchtower should bud out of your personal relationship with god, right?
According to the suit filed against quotes, one of the things they allege is that he is in breach of contract. (ie his baptism. There are plenty of articles in the mags on the contractual nature of Witless baptism)
The new wording of the baptism questions makes it clear that the baptism is only valid if we are "in association with God's Spirit-directed Organisation"
Not that its direction is straight, and what sort of spirits are guiding it is another big ???
Baptism is a contract now, "in the name of the Watchtower, Awake and Flock book, in association with Freddie's sidekick, God, his stooge The holy ghost, and stunt double Jesus."
HB
the listener said on an earlier postyou've been out for awhile, perhaps your insight will help some of us who are still in the exiting process.
which was a lovely thing to say, and made me feel 'valued' (thanks listener!).
but, you know, 14 years on, and there are times, when i feel like i just left.. i took the children to the pictures yesterday (to see 'wallace & grommit').
They really hate it if you say you are happier now than you ever were in da troof.
Your experience is what Transactional Analysis calls a "rubberband" - it illustrates how we respond at times as if we were catapulted back to a painful childhood scene. Imagine a giagantic rubberband stretching back through time. It hooks onto some feature of the present that reminds us of earlier pain, and twang! off we go into the past. Most people have no clear memory of the childhood scene, thus we don't recognize the point of resemblance.
(I would say a witless upbringing has a disproportionate amount of unresolved pain and denial issues)
Because Mother and Father are such important figures in our early life, they are often found at the end of a rubberband. So are our siblings and other parent-figures like grandparents, aunts or uncles. Whenever we are part of a group of people, we are likely to cast each of the group in the role of a parent or sibling. Talking to anyone with whom we relate significantly, we identify them some of the time with figures from the past. We do so without conscious awareness.
Rubberbands do not always stretch back to people. We can hook back to sounds, smells, particular surroundings or anything else that reminds us of painful childhood situations. By disconnecting the rubberbands, we can tackle here and now situations with all the grown up resources at our command.
TRY THIS
Think of a recent situation in which you were under stress and which ended upleasantly or unsuccessfully for you. In particular think what bad feeling you experienced during that situation. You need not actually experience that feeling again while you do the exercise.
Now recall a situation in the last year which turned out badly for you in a similar way, and in which you felt the same bad feeling.
Go back about five years and recall a similar situation where you had that same feeling.
Now bring back the memory of a scene with the same unpleasant feeling from your teenage years.
Recall a scene with a similar bad feeling from your childhood. How old were you?
Think back to even earlier scenes where you felt the same bad feelings. What age were you? Who is there? What is happening?
The aim of this exercise is to find the far end of the rubberband. What was the similarity between the recent experience and your childhood experience? Once you are aware of what past experience and beliefs you are replaying you can begin disconnecting from the rubberband.
Use your adult awareness to remind yourself that people in the here and now are in fact quite different from what they were in the past and have no power over you. If you find yourself experiencing that same bad feeling be aware that the current situation will not end the way those past scenes did.
In some families, if you are having too much fun you are labeled lazy or sinful. If you are supposed to be a solemn little grown up, you may believe that if you feel too good, something bad will happen. To ward off evil you feel bad about yourself, instead of letting the other person handle their own baggage.
HB
i'm not thinking of just jwd posters, but in total how many do you suppose had their eyes opened and left the borg after reading coc?.
what's your gut feel?.
just curious, i don't know the answer but can only guess.
Most true blue witlesses would not read it out of loyalty, or fear.
Don't you think when somebody decides to read it they are already looking for information that confirms the doubts and sense of something not right in the State of Denmark?
I have not read it yet myself, but what others have said confirms many suspicions. A lot of the anecdotal evidence in the book tallies with stories I have heard from Brothelites and COs and others.
HB
i took kate, my girlfriend of between the last five and ten years (depending how you define girlfriend) to paris this weekend and proposed.
i had a couple of scenarios mapped out, but was playing it by ear as to the right moment.. on saturday night when we sat down to eat at a restaurant the waiter asked me if i "had got engaged to the lady yet", and then said "if not, i will".
i'm sure he does it to every foreign couple where the women isn't wearing a ring but i could not believe it that one .
Abaddon -
The rainbow was a "MEANINGFUL coincidence"
HB
if you've ever been away on vacation, have you noticed a jw is in your midst?
what stands out to you in knowing that a certain person "must" be a jw?
The miserable face.
They don't really look at and interact with the people around them.
The "I'm pretending not to judge you" look.
John Updike in his short story "Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car" :
"...into this pit hesitantly walked a plain, painfully clean girl... She had yellow hair, thick lips, and, behind pink-rimmed glasses, large eyes that looked as if they had been corrected from being crossed. they flicked across our faces and focussed straight ahead in that tunnel vision gaze of those who know perfectly well they are figures of fun. The Jehovah's Witnesses who come to the door wear that expression."
(Very good and moving story by the way)
HB
