i thought it might be nice to see some positive things mentioned about jw's.
now, i know mentioning these things may be hard given the experiences here, but i've yet to find a group of people who don't have something positive about them.
if there weren't something positive, no one would ever join.
Some jws I know used to be basically nice people, and may still be.
Since none of them speak to me now, I have no way of judging
whether their characters have changed or not.
As for the watchtower org, I see no good in it's continued existence
whatsoever.
i found this on the wts website.
do jw's ever help anyone else but their own??
(words in red - my emphasis).
I was told that the best help we can give anyone is to teach them
the "truth". No jw I knew would help non jws in more practical ways.
It must be a real comfort to starving people when a jw comes along
and offers them a bible study or a watchtower - after all, what could
be more nourishing than spiritual food at the right time?
when i attended meetings years ago, if a brother or sister got df'd they weren't supposed to come back to their meetings right away even if they wanted to repent..... if i remeber well, you had to stay away from the meetings for a few months and them come back if you wished, as if to show that you made changes in your lifestyle and then decided to come back.. if you were disfellowshipped and went back to the meetings right after, it was a sign that you didn't understand what happened to you and you weren't trying to fix what you did wrong.. .
maybe it was different in other congregations..
Around here, they like to see the df'd person attending the meetings
before the ink is dry on the S-77 form.
They need them there to keep control over them, to make sure that
they are still being indoctrinated, rather than risk having them go out
into the "world" and maybe getting ideas that being df'd isn't such a
bad thing after all.
I think they must get some sort of perverse pleasure from seeing df'd
ones having to sit at the back of the hall, not being allowed to speak
to anyone, comment in the watchtower or other q&a items, and being
ignored by the rest of the congregation. It's as if being announced isn't
humiliating enough, and they want to teach the "sinner" a lesson they
won't forget.
if a jw is an ardent believer, and faithfully practices his or her religion, are they, in your mind, "bad" or "evil", in reality?
Well, most of the jws around here see me as "bad" and "an evil apostate",
but I don't see them in that way at all.
They are merely misguided, and still fooled by the same teachings that
once fooled me.
what the heck.
i'm sitting here with idle time.
ok, so what's so great about that?
The past three weeks have been the best I've felt in three years. I'm still under the hospital but I feel cured.
Ian, it's so good to read that! I found it very inspirational, and I think
Linda will when she sees it (she's away for a week with Marion at the
moment - back Thursday).
Linda has felt reasonably well of late, but needs further treatment, most
likely starting next month, so she is making the most of her time between
now and then. We hope to get to see you sometime this summer, and I
am likely to be in Manchester for work in the next few weeks. I should
have been up there yesterday,but the trip got cancelled due to the
weather conditions. Maybe I'll see you then - I'll pm you when I know
the date.
In the meantime, I hope the way you are feeling now lasts, and gets
even better
Trev
That "skin head" tat with the swastika in the middle on his forehead
should read "dick head".
if a lot of the negative experiences and comments about the watchtower bible and tract society and jehovah's witnesses on the internet really was all apostate lies, surely the wt society would have a legal right to take such supposed slanderers to court and sue to have the information removed.. they were able to remove quotes site just for repeating what they themselves had said.
why do they not take the same action with regard to information they insist is just apostate lies?.
Could it possibly for hundreds of ex witnesses to set up a version of the quotes site
That was done around the time of the watchtower's legal action,
and there are several Quotes sites on the net these days. I use
this one for reference myself,
http://www.quotes-watchtower.co.uk/home.html
but there a few others.
if a lot of the negative experiences and comments about the watchtower bible and tract society and jehovah's witnesses on the internet really was all apostate lies, surely the wt society would have a legal right to take such supposed slanderers to court and sue to have the information removed.. they were able to remove quotes site just for repeating what they themselves had said.
why do they not take the same action with regard to information they insist is just apostate lies?.
31. The Defendant’s main purpose in operating the website is not "fair use", but rather to try to embarrass the Plaintiffs by quoting selectively from some of the Religious Works in a manner that misleads Internet users as to the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses
Prior to the internet, the watchtower's greatest "enemy" was their
older publications, which clearly displayed their many doctrinal flip
flops. However, they could keep them away from most of their more
recent converts far more easily than they can now so many of them
are on the internet.
The action backfired on them though - instead of just one site, there
are several now, and plenty of opportunity for anyone with an internet
connection to research the org's past history. It's no wonder the wt
hate the internet so much!
while you still were jws did any doubting jw ever try to talk to you about the flaws of the org and instil in you some doubt?
someone had told me that he didn't believe the gb members were straight and honest people that many of their ideas were wrong and that they had a secret agenda to pursue beyond the one they publicly proclaimed.
at the time i thought he may be right since they seemed to control everything and didn't allow anyone to contribute even the (so called) anointed.
No one ever approached me with doubts, but when I
satrted my research I expressed a few of my own to
another jw, and he is now an ex jw as well.
I think a lot of jws would probably be a bit fearful of
doing that in case the one they were confiding in
turned them in to the elders.
anyone know the dates for the dc in brighton (uk) this year, i want to go for an experience, i did it last year and it really made me feel smugly happy (what??
i am allowed to be smug, i'm not one of the idiots who believes this rubbish hehe).
cheers.
Mariusuk,
No I haven't been to a dc since 1998. I vowed to myself several
years ago that I would never set foot in a kingdom hall or any
other jw venue when I left in 1999, and that is one vow I intend
to stick to.
