Posts by donny

21

Living Vicariously Through the Sheep.

by donny in

when i got baptized as a jehovah’s witness in the summer of 83, my honeymoon period lasted about two years before i began to wonder if the society and its adherents were all it claimed to be.

no of the things i encountered for the first few years was really faith shattering, they simply just made me pause and think.

after a short while, i would file those issues in the back of my brain files and move forward.. .

donny

Schnell, I know about Sulphur Springs! It was the approximate halfway point between Dallas (where my parents and I lived) and the Texarkana area (where is where my parents were raised (Maud / Redwater / New Boston). We often stopped in Sulphur Springs for gas and refreshments.

21

Living Vicariously Through the Sheep.

by donny in

when i got baptized as a jehovah’s witness in the summer of 83, my honeymoon period lasted about two years before i began to wonder if the society and its adherents were all it claimed to be.

no of the things i encountered for the first few years was really faith shattering, they simply just made me pause and think.

after a short while, i would file those issues in the back of my brain files and move forward.. .

donny

When I got baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness in the summer of 83, my honeymoon period lasted about two years before I began to wonder if the Society and its adherents were all it claimed to be. No of the things I encountered for the first few years was really faith shattering, they simply just made me pause and think. After a short while, I would file those issues in the back of my brain files and move forward.

However, in the summer of 1990, I stumbled upon something that really sent me reeling and wondering about the organization that I had been a part of since I began attending meetings in the spring of 1982.

We are living in North Texas and my then wife was given the opportunity to go to Florida with a sister in congregation who parents lived there near Dayton Beach. She would also be taking my three children with her for the weeks’ excursion which would leave me alone for the first time since we had been married eight years earlier.

By sheer coincidence, during the week my family was in Florida an elder in my congregation, who served as the secretary, was going on vacation for the first time in several years. He and his wife would be heading to the Rockies in Colorado for a week.

Since three of the other five elders in the congregation were helping with the district convention preparations, he asked me if I would take care of collecting the monies collected at the literature counter and the donation boxes and deposit it at the bank the Kingdom Hall used.

He came by my house to show me what I was to do and when. He arrived with a large box-style brief case that opened at the top which revealed two removable halves that each had several file folders in them. He removed one of the sections, the front one when the opened case was facing you, and proceeded to show me the spread sheet-like document he used to log the monies collected.

He explained that I should place the money from the literature counter and the “local needs” collection box and place it this green zippered pouch he pulled from the briefcase. I was then to fill out a deposit slip that was contained in the pouch. Next, he said I was to collect the money from the box marked “Worldwide Work” and place it in the red zippered pouch and fill out the deposit slips that were stored inside it.

After a few more things were explained I told him that I understood and would take great care to make sure everything went according to his instructions. As he left, I told him to enjoy his vacation and not to worry.

Four days after my wife and the kids had been gone, I found myself totally bored. I realized how much of my time had been taken up by my family and I was missing them greatly. It was stifling hot outside in North Texas and there was not much on television and I began to get stir crazy.

So on the next Friday evening, I was sitting at home processing the money I had collected from the previous night’s Theocratic School and Service meetings and as I placed the two zippered pouches in the front section of briefcase and placed it back in its slot in the front.

As I did that I began to wonder what was in the back section of the briefcase. I pulled it out and noticed that the manila folders were labeled “Confidential Judicial Case” followed by the “offenders” name. I immediately placed it back in the briefcase and walked outside to see if there was anything to do in the yard. It didn’t take long for the 100-degree heat to drive me back inside.

As much as I knew I shouldn’t, I found myself going back to the briefcase. I sat down and placed it to my right and pondered whether or not I should look at the “confidential” information. After several minutes of the demon on my left shoulder and an angel on my right, I finally kicked the angle one to the curb and reached for the back section of the briefcase.

I once again removed a few of the folders and began to examine their contents. I had expected to read boring notes and data regarding persons who were subjects of the judicial meetings held in their behalf. However, I was aghast as what was written in the so-called counseling sessions. They all contained matters of a sexual nature and were framed in a format that could only be called pornographic.

I have to admit that as a then 31-year-old, I found myself in need of a very cold shower. I could not get over what I had just read. This was far and beyond any documentation of an illicit sexual encounter. This was erotic writing by a seasoned expert.

I then went on to read other similar “counseling” and judicial sessions and they all were written in a style whose main purpose had to be to incite sexual feelings in the reader. I read accounts involving several of my fellow congregation members and I was never able to look at them in the same way I had before I opened that back section of the briefcase.

Another case described oral sex (which was\is forbidden) between a brother and his wife. Instead of just stating that engaged in oral sex, he wrote how.

After that eye opening week, I knew something was seriously wrong with this organization but I was at a loss on how to deal with it. If I mentioned it to the other elders, then I would be guilty of snooping in congregational matters that were none of this ministerial servant’s business. As much as I regret it now, I let the incident fade into the background and never did reveal what I had read that crazy Friday evening. It was truly a case of one living vicariously through the sheep of the congregation.

Years later, when I began to read about all of the cases of child sexual abuse cases that were plaguing the organization, I revisited that occasion back in 1990 and wondered how much perversion my friend and elder had been a part of. He died three years ago and we may never know the answer.

34

Ridiculous ways you kept your "time going" in service?

by HereIgo in

i used to go out early mornings with 2 pioneer elders, we would drive 20 miles out of the territory (a big no-no) to look for hikers to preach to lol of course there were never any hikers.

then off to starbucks for another hour lol easy way to count 2-4 hours.

i am chuckling as i write this, what a joke!.

donny

I did what apparently many others did which was to waste time driving. My partner and I would do our schedule our return visits so that we were constantly driving across town between each one. What should have taken an hour or so was strectched in 3 or 4.

4

Religion: Overselling and Under Delivering

by Simon in

if you've worked in any kind of business where one group of people sells things that another group has to deliver as a service, you inevitably run into problems.

this is especially true in it services where poor sales people over-sell things.

that is, they can't sell 6 months of work but they can sell 3 months of work or throw in some other promises ... so they do ... and some techy person then gets landed with an impossible task and is viewed as under delivering while the sales-person gets a bonus for their great sales job unless their management is savvy enough (they never are).

donny

Great post Simon,

If the Society were a real company they would have filed for bankruptsy years ago!

30

JW Broadcasting reeks of desperation

by oldskool in

again, i'm a decade removed from the faith.

i'm catching up now, and can't believe what i'm seeing.. i get that jw leadership faced a dilemma.

there is no intellectual apparatus within the faith.

donny

Great post OLDKOOL,

I have shown some of my friends and coworkers the material presented on JW.Org such as the Caleb "kid" videos and the like and the result I almost always get is WTF?

And to think I used to be a part of that mess!

50

Does the governing body know what they are doing?

by Gefangene in

what do you guys think?.

are they only some uber religious zealots or do they pursue hidden agendas beyond religiosity?.

donny

I sincerely believe that the G.B, like other leaders of these type of hierarchal groups, know that most of what they peddle is B.S. and it's just an ends to a mean of keeping their flocks safely enclosed in their pens.

16

Running ahead of Jehovah can be done with a slow walk.

by donny in

a few days ago i read a post of someone who has recently awakened to what the watchtower bible and tract society really is.

in their comments, they stated that they had been accused of "running ahead of jehovah.".

"running ahead of jehovah" was a statement levied at me many times during my convoluted journey through that organization.

donny

A few days ago I read a post of someone who has recently awakened to what the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society really is. In their comments, they stated that they had been accused of "running ahead of Jehovah."

"Running ahead of Jehovah" was a statement levied at me many times during my convoluted journey through that organization. I often wonder how many JW's think about that phrase "running ahead of Jehovah?"

If Jehovah actually existed and was the ultimate being he is portrayed to be, is such an act even possible?

Of course, what the Societies representatives usually meant was that your idea or understanding of a matter was something that could possibly happen one day but it was not yet time for God's one true organization to embrace that mindset.

The first time I recalled hearing that phrase was at a elders / ministerial servant meeting one time at the presiding overseers house around 1985. He was talking about a situation regarding the ability of a woman being able to scripturally divorce her husband if she discovered him to be a practicing homosexual.

Prior to sometime around 1972 or so, homosexual behavior was not viewed as "pornia" and therefore it was not an act that severed the bonds of matrimony. It was something viewed as an "unclean practice" like masturbation or oral sex.

The elder commented that before this "new light" of the early 1970's, a woman who divorced her gay husband and remarried was disfellowshipped for "conduct unbecoming a Christian" since she had now committed adultery.

Then when the Society had updated its teaching on the matter and did consider homosexual sex as something that severed the marriage vows, some asked the question as to the status of those throngs of women who were still disfellowshipped and if they would be automatically reinstated.

The answer was "No" and the reason given was "they had run ahead of Jehovah" or had "run ahead of the organization."

I always had an issue with that concept. How could one run ahead of an entity that was the "Most High" and supposedly knew everything and anything there was to know?

It was a question to which I never received a satisfactory answer to and that phrase haunted me until the day I plugged the hole in my head where the contents of my brain had been leaking out.

I came to realize that the reason it was possible to run ahead of Jehovah because he was the product of human beings who wandered around the deserts and plains of the Middle East about three millennia ago. They committed their stories and viewpoints to parchment that would later be retranslated and reinterpreted thousands of different ways.

Unfortunately, some of us just happened to become part of a group who were suckered and bamboozled by the versions presented by Joseph Rutherford, Freddy Franz and other subsequent members of the so-called "faithful and discreet slave."

Well I for one, am glad that I ran ahead of ol' Jehovah and it makes me happy to see him farther and farther in the rear view mirror.

10

It's not your conduct, it's your status

by donny in

jw's often state that their practice of disfellowshipping is used to keep the congregation clean and free of "worldly" influences and the like, however that is just pure b.s.

in actual practice, all they actually care about is your status according to the watchtower society.

case in point is ray's situation.. ray disassociated himself about 20 years ago because elders and other jw's were constantly spreading false rumors after he quit attending meetings.

donny

Not loyal at all.

16

How much of the Society's publications just get stored away in the garage?

by donny in

almost a year ago i moved back to the dallas - fort worth area after spending 16 years in the northern california area.

the area i live in has several nearby parks and walkways and these areas have several "share a book" pods mounted on a pole spaced about 1/2 mile from one another.

people are encouraged to add books they no longer use to these pods and to take one if they are interested.. i have been diligent on removing watchtower publications from them and what has surprised me is how many old publications in pristine condition are added almost on a daily basis.

donny

What was of particular interest was not just the age of the publications, but how good a condition they were in. They looked like they just left the publishing room. For those of you who have messaged me or stated in this thread something they are looking for, if I come across said publication, I will make arangments to send it to you.

34

Jehovahs Witnesses and the Curse of Music.

by donny in

jehovahs witnesses and the curse of music.. .

i was inspired to write this after listening to a recent podcast of the thinking atheist by seth andrews.

as many of you know, seth was a devout christian who not only loved contemporary christian music but was one of the hosts of a popular morning show on kxoj in tulsa, oklahoma in the 1990s.

donny

It's interesting to see that nothing has really changed except the ones who attend the meetings.