i'll start by saying, i'm a ministerial servant who is trapped in the religion.
my wife is hardcore...but i've slowly been getting her to lighten up, so i'll take it!
all my friends and family are jw's, and i am employed by a jw (who is actually a great boss).
'Who wrote the bible' by Prof. Richard Elliott Friedman is an excellent book that looks at the history and different sources that constitute the OT.
For the NT anything by Bart Ehrman and Bruce Metzger are excellent. Robert M Price has some good books about the NT like Deconstructing Jesus, The Amazing Colossal Apostle and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. Despite the fun names they are actually serious scholarly works. It depends what you feel about a mythic Jesus as to if you take to them.
why do wts portraythe messiah with neatly combed, cut hair and western origin looking in their pictures.
question: can any of you that have successfully faded out of the jw world without being df'd or da'd relate to me/us how you were able to maintain at least one or a few of your "still in" friends or family?
(and even if you were df'd or da'd and still maintained some relationships, how did that go?).
obviously, the truly demented, sick and twisted (and highly effective) policies and structure of the wtbt$ to set up a system by which anyone that chooses to no longer believe or participate must be treated as "mentally diseased" and a pariah by their own friends and family is the hands down, numero uno reason why many hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of jw's do not leave.
I faded mainly by moving town about 300 miles away so they couldn't keep tabs on me. My parents once contacted the local cong without telling me so I got a visit from an elder. We had a decent chat and I just said I had no interest in being a witness any more. My parents were somewhat fanatical JW's and so me and my brother didn't really have any JW friends as they weren't deemed spiritual enough, so I didn't lose any friends apart from my cousins who I don't see very often.
I still have contact by email with my parents and brother and once a year visit my gran. I've learnt not to bring up religion in conversation or argue and if they want to tell me about field service or a convention I just listen. It's all they know so jw stuff is gonna be on their mind.
It's true that you can't rationally argue a person out of a position they didn't embrace rationally. It has to be their journey to realisation if they want it.
so said the co last night.. apparently a jw was on a flight and just happend to sit next to some big wig from pixar and when the man from pixar heard that he was a jw the pixar man just gushed over what great work that the watchtower has done in producing the caleb video's.
he siad he only wished pixar could do such great work.
the co said we are able to do it because we have free labor and jehovah behind us.. my husband stayed home from the meeting but wanted to tie in by phone and that is what the co said in his talk.. the co also talked about all the changes that have happened in the last ten years and how if some of the friends did not like it they needed and to quote him "they just needed to get over it" these changes are going to happned period.
I had to watch some if these Caleb videos to see what all the animation bigwigs were frothy about. Wow, really amateur.
I have experience of 3D modelling at work, mainly scientific, but I do a bit of character stuff as a hobby. I'm not amazing at it but I couldn't do much worse than the JW videos. The rigging and weighting of the characters and their ponderous movements at certain times were quite poor. Some sections were animated ok, like run sequences and mouth movements. They've obviously bought predesigned scripts for some parts, but they then look out of place next to the poorly animated parts especially facial expressions and general body movement. Also no effort has been made with cloth or hair simulation ir any physics that I've seen so far. It's not even that hard with the right software, you just need enough cpu power to compute it.
I will eat all my shoes, 4 pairs in all, and post the video on youtube if an employee of Pixar passed any positive comment on the Caleb videos.
should christians drink tea?.
would you like a cup of tea?.
this seemingly innocent question has been asked countless times, and is regarded as a gesture of courtesy and hospitability in many parts of the world, in both eastern and western culture.
I totally bought that till halfway down, haha. Great piece. Like something from Jehovah's Bugle.
I think my aunty at one point did give up tea and coffee cos they were drugs and therefore defiling. As if being a JW isn't hard enough without making up new proscriptions for yourself.
the other night, i was told about a question that a friend's bible study had asked them.
the bible study asked: "if jesus is perfect, why does he need the 144,000 to help him rule?
" this friend does not know how to answer this question.
Jesus needs them to help with all the murdering at armageddon. He probably doesn't want to get his hands dirty. He's also got a sword coming out if his mouth like a circus act so he has to tread carefully in case of an accident.
It's a good question though tidalblitz. There's also the question of why jw's take 144000 literally when everything else in revelation is figurative.
Like Sir82 said the JW theology is sit down and shut up.
ref: http://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/activities/construction/1000-kingdom-halls-philippines/.
while looking at the article one thousand kingdom halls and counting on jw.org, it immediately made me think: ahhh, this is where a large portion of the funds for the construction projects must go.
clearly, the philippinos are all poor and they need the financial support of richer countries.
Ecan6 - you're creating your own definition of poverty that doesn't tally with either of the statistics from the USA or Philippines. The Philippine govnt reform act put the poverty threshold at enough per day to cover subsistence ie basic food, clothing, housing. If you want a better education, toys for children, savings etc you need income above that poverty level. You could give to the local church but you would be a large percentage of your disposable income.
The US definition of relative poverty means that even those in the 15% of the population below that level can have a decent amount of disposable income because the average standard of living is much higher. There's also govnt services that add value to income (though this is somewhat offset by different tax rates in different countries) A better gauge of poverty is the percentage of income spent on basic foodstuffs as this also gives an idea of ppd, purchasing power per dollar.
I'm not arguing with your broader point of why other countries should or shouldn't contribute and if there really is a need for all those new KH's. I agree that the org uses the U.S. & others to bankroll its plans around the world. All I'm pointing out is that your poverty statistics aren't equatable and so can't make the point you want them to make.
ref: http://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/activities/construction/1000-kingdom-halls-philippines/.
while looking at the article one thousand kingdom halls and counting on jw.org, it immediately made me think: ahhh, this is where a large portion of the funds for the construction projects must go.
clearly, the philippinos are all poor and they need the financial support of richer countries.
You're comparing two different types of poverty statistics. If you look at the figures the Philippines are using an absolute poverty scale of what looks like around <$1.50 a day. The usa poverty stats are relative poverty i.e what percentile of the population live on a certain fraction of the average salary. Even taking into account greater purchasing power in the Philippines per dollar the figures still aren't comparable, as it makes clear in the wiki.
A good question to ask is how much did the org get in contributions for those KH's. Probably a lot more than the building costs, especially as they always get free labour. The org operates like any business, it invests its capital where it sees growth hoping to get the best return. Only difference is the workers aren't paid and actually contribute to the wealth of the owners. It's all incredibly cynical and why the WTS shouldn't be a charity. They don't do anything charitable.
from the book "a separate identity" p.248 & 249 by schulz and de vienne there is a quote from storrs that is prefaced this way: this wasn't the first time barbour and storrs had clashed.
though not naming barbour, after the 1874 failure storrs addressed barbour's dictatorial exclusivity and failed predictions:.
"teachers who manifest a disposition to exalt self and make it appear that they are something remarkable, are unmistakably false teachers.
It does sum the GB up doesn't it. Sounds like an interesting book. I'll have to pick up a copy.
do you know who the son of perdition is ?
do you know he is here and active today more than ever ?
do you know that america is the mystery babylon spoken of in scripture ?
What was your research? Watching the Flintstones?
