Posts by careful

31

Wythenshawe Kingdom Hall - Sold

by AdamCzarnobay in

jw
friends

i was slightly surprised to see that wythenshawe hall has been sold.

it's now a mosque.

this one had an attached flat where the co and his wife lived, i wonder what accommodation they put them in these days..

careful

Blondie, I have long appreciated your well-researched and informative posts here. That said, I have a problem with this statement:

But a jw can't donate money to another religious organization or accept money in pay for work done from a religious organization.

There are bros/sisters who work or have worked for colleges and universities run by Catholic and Protestant religions. I knew a sister who worked at a Protestant one as a postal clerk. I asked her whether her paycheck was from the postal service or the college. She said the latter. She was in good standing in the cong. and loved the FS.

Right now and for years, there is a brother named Edgar Foster in good standing who teaches part-time at Lutheran Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina. He got a PhD from the University of Glasgow and has a blog defending the org and its beliefs:

https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com

Here is a description of a course he teaches from the university's online catalogue:

And another of a teaching award he received in 2016:

So it appears either that things have changed or there was some long-standing "exception" in this regard. I knew that sister many years ago.

What do you think?

18

The Watchtower—Study Edition | January 2025 Husbands, Honor Your Wife

by RULES & REGULATIONS in

14 a husband who physically or verbally abuses his wife needs to take additional steps to repair his relationship with jehovah and with his wife.

what are these steps?

first, he recognizes that he has a serious problem.

careful

liam,

I can think of numerous sisters, both single and married, who would absolutely cherish (one group) and hate (other group) your pic! I had to lol! To me it looks like the cover pic of the underground Witness "Handbook for Single Sisters".

As for R&R's OP: conspicuous by its absence is any ref. to calling in Caesar to protect the wife. How they don't want to touch on that! The scenario they portray looks entirely in-house, as if sisters—in the predicament of being married to a guy who could give a rat's ass about what the scriptures say or of having a "relationship with Jehovah"—don't matter.

9

Does god punish children for their parents sins?

by moomanchu in

ezekiel 18: 1-4 , “the word of the lord came to me: ‘what do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of israel: “the parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”?

as surely as i live, declares the sovereign lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in israel.

for everyone belongs to me, the parent as well as the child—both alike belong to me.

careful

What people want to believe themselves (or what they want to believe the scriptures say) and then what the scriptures themselves do say are usually two different things. That said, from a purely historical perspective, there does seem to be an evolution of thought within the history of the Hebrew Bible itself.

For example, acc. to the Mosaic Law (in a dramatic date perspective, prior to David) David should have taken vengeance sometimes but did not. Indeed, he should have been stoned himself for arranging Uriah's death, but he was not. So the contradiction between Ex. 20 and Deut. 18 that you point out can be easily conceived of—again from a purely historical perspective—as simply an evolution of religious thinking within the Hebrew/Israelite/Jewish faith, that is, "our ancestors used to believe that our God Jehovah takes vengeance for the sins of fathers upon sons. But we Jews [by the date of Ezekiel] now know that isn't how God operates. Each person is individually responsible for his/her own actions."

That's a nice tidy explanation, but then we encounter in the NT, which is supposed to be more loving and tolerant than the OT, Matthew's report that the Jews responsible for wanting Jesus dead exclaim, "Let his blood come upon us and our children" (27:25), clearly a return to the spirit of Ex. 20.

Go figure! If we want any sort of crystal clear theology rooted the Bible, we're dreaming. It's generally pretty murky stuff, full of contradictions or at least what look like such on the surface. Enter the theologians.

7

Conversion Therapy for Gay Bethelites in Poland (?)

by Jensus in

recently, there was a rather accurate report on jw on german tv station "sat1".

you find it on their streaming service joyn.. https://www.joyn.de/serien/jenseits-des-glaubens-zwischen-religion-und-verblendung/1-2-die-zeugen-jehovas.

there was one piece of information that was new for me: a former bethelite explained that he realized that he was gay.

careful

Sounds rather bizarre . . . Who paid for this "therapy," the org? Or did some European socialized medicine program offer it?

22

Memory hole, international conspiracy, and the JW international network

by slimboyfat in

can anyone else who was around 15 to 20 years ago remember an odd story about jw missionaries being stopped at the swiss/italian border with american bonds worth billions of dollars in their possession?

because i can find little to no information about it anywhere online, yet at the time i am sure i recall it being reported by different mainstream news sources, including the bbc.

why do some news stories seem to disappear from the internet altogether?

careful

SBF, what have you been smoking? Drinking? Dreaming about? Have you looked into any side effects from medications you take?

Have you thought about fixing your concerns and energies on more tangible subjects?

Just a thought . . .

21

Any information about a special talk on Marriage in December 2024

by insearchoftruth in

two folks from the local kh visited the house yesterday looking for my wife who is an on again off again baptized jw.

wife was not available so they asked me to tell her about a special talk on marriage next week.

any outlines available for this ‘special talk’ or could this potentially be a local issue?.

careful

One thing you can count on in Witness land: anything that is designated as "special" will be ordinary, normal, run-of-the-mill. It's a phrase they use without normal meaning in order to spice up their unexciting life—at least in their eyes.

What special could they say about marriage that they haven't before? Maybe that blow jobs and cunnilingus are OK now. That might be viewed as "special" to them. However, it's not altogether new since it's been in print/on video now for some time.

27

Memories of Excessive Laughter

by Sea Breeze in

jw
friends

jw's are not known for laughter.

there are the rare exceptions.

they are more known for their fear mongering and doomsday scenarios where "the dead shall come to be as manure on the surface of the ground from one end of the earth clear to the other".

careful

It wasn't her laugh that people mocked it was like "why the hell are you laughing right now there's nothing funny." For her it was a defensive delay tactic to give a reaction to a question so that her brain had time to come up with a reply.

moomanchu, she's not laughing any more. Instead "trying to figure out" why she/her dem. cronies lost—all the while while not facing the real reason that the majority of voting Americans rejected her: the dems have gone too far in their liberalism. We witness the long-simmering anti-liberal reaction all over the West: in the UK with Brexit, in Hungary, Germany, and Poland with the rise of the radical right. People are scared of encouraging kids to choose their body gender surgically before they can drive a car or even reach puberty. That's what the liberals have brought about.

37

Prepare to get Pelted by Symbolic Hailstones

by raymond frantz in

https://youtu.be/idhmflud3p4?si=9xc4svrhxslduwvz.

so david schafer a member of the teaching commitee and a helper to the governing body has come out yesterday with a new video that goes through the king of the north, the hailstones message and other things in the wake of the possibility of a ww3 and especially now that tensions are escalating with russia so he is making quite a few end time arguments and i will be expanding on those one by one but today let's see what he has about the hailstones message of the end(video) so this is the paragraph in question, paragraph 14 from article 20 of the watchtower 2020 study edition: "sometime after the start of the great tribulation, “the kings of the entire inhabited earth” will form a coalition of nations.

(rev.

careful

Why is it that this David Schafer chap reminds me soooo much of a United States Marine Corps drill sergeant? Does anyone else see this? He sure isn't growing any facial hair!

27

Memories of Excessive Laughter

by Sea Breeze in

jw
friends

jw's are not known for laughter.

there are the rare exceptions.

they are more known for their fear mongering and doomsday scenarios where "the dead shall come to be as manure on the surface of the ground from one end of the earth clear to the other".

careful

Show me one instance in the bible where Jesus laughed.

Thank you, nicolaou. I remember once meeting a chap, a critically-thinking lawyer, in FS who had never been raised in any "Christian" tradition, so his exposure to so-called Christianity was limited to the mainstream, liberal social gospel version that the media generally reports on as safe/normative. He said he'd recently read through the four gospels and was struck with how grim and judgmental Jesus was, and how dissonant the gospels were from what he had expected they would be. I told him he was far more spot on (or I guess it was "right on" in those days) than most religious folks.

People love to focus in on passages like Jesus blessing the children or the parable of the shepherd picking up the errant lamb and putting on his shoulders, and they discount (for all practical purposes), eschew, or at least avoid the many times he condemns not just his opposers, but the crowds overall, and even his own disciples. He states how few are on the road to life and how difficult the path to it is. These and his multiple anti-family statements are written off as "the hard sayings of Jesus" and rarely dwelt upon both by church attendees and biblical scholars.

I remember reading the gospels apart from the Witnesses and thinking how radical, how difficult Jesus' message was, and how I was reacting like the disciples, "Then who can be saved?"

No, he never laughs, but does cry, twice. I remember how condemned I was in JW-land for bringing up these points, but I suspect I would be even more so by church clergy and parishioners like those in the OP's post (no offense, She Breeze! I often enjoy your posts).

11

Fashion in Heaven

by peacefulpete in

why is it that fashions are assumed to have stayed the same in heaven for thousands of years?

you'd think that after wearing the same boring robe for eternity you'd crave something different.

yet no, angels and god are still wearing the same white onesie they had when they vacationed on earth with abraham.

careful

Drawing Jesus with a machine gun, or angels playing electric guitars invokes a negative reaction.

Well now, I knew this homeless guy who enjoyed both psilocybin and LSD. He once said he saw Jesus and Jimi Hendrix playing together ...

Now I'm "trying to be humorous" ..., right PP & KOW?