Thanks again for your welcome!
AlmostAtheist, Americans and American culture are just fine with me save the Neo-cons of Bush and the Theo-cons from Brooklyn (isn't there a similarity though..?).
Greendawn, you were born six weeks after me... Actually, I do not spareth the brush from hitting the canvas once in a while. I spent a couple of years in St. Albans, Hertfordshire.
Pretty misspeaches, judging (though beyond judging, I hope) by your avatar/pic you won't be sold on BS anymore for a long time to come.
You have quite correctly understood the rumors about the extraordinary beauty of my country - It cannot be emphasized too much, I'm afraid. Now, can I trade it for yours then..? Please..? I so much more enjoy the sun. I spent a couple of years in Adelaide by the way.
Stillajwexelder, when you visit this great country again, drop me a line.
Fullofdoubtnow, as far as life in general is concerned so am I... as far as bOrgylon is concerned, I passed beyond that stage in a surprisinly short time indeed.
Legolas, I guess you're a woman of few words and strong convictions. I tend to get a bit verbose at times. Please forgive me.
Van Gogh
JoinedPosts by Van Gogh
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Van Gogh
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Van Gogh
Thank you for your warm welcome fellow Country Woman!
Read some of your posts, and Vivamus's as well.
Thanks under74, serendipity and ozziepost.
Theo (AKA Vincent - depending on mood) -
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Farewell to a Friend part 2
by wanderlustguy insomeone i cared for has taken her own life.
things between us were not the best lately even though i cared for her deeply, we last parted on bad terms and there wasnt ever closure.
and please, dont ever think it is too late to change the person you see in the mirror every day.
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Van Gogh
Two weeks ago at the last meeting I ever went to, I spoke to one of the single-mother-silent obedient sisters from the "back-row" class. There were tears in her eyes as I tried to say some comforting words to her. She has been abused by her ex in many ways, and has only recently left him despite her fears to fall out of line for it. She is trying to work and care - while endangering her own life - for her knife-wielding adult schizophrenic son that she's afraid of having institutionalized because in that case he will no longer be under her parental care, and will therefore die in Armageddon - according to some elders. She lives with excruciating guilt and is afraid of displeasing Jehovah; blames herself for everything. Her yoke is not light. She applies the rigid theo-con rules to herself while the others just laugh when tactically and calculatingly rationalizing which rule to burden themselves with. How long will she last? My parents self-destructed in the late seventies. Tranquillizers, alcohol abuse, frequent institutionalization. Much shame. Much silence. By the time they died they hadn’t been able to look in the mirror for many years. First my mom - a pioneer for many years - committed suicide. Six months later my dad drank himself to death. He had been a prominent elder for many years. (I have posted about this earlier.) Ever since I have been wandering - things are finally starting to fall in place. I felt ashamed for all those years. I never realized it was a trend.
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I am new to the forum!! Help!
by Jdarley ini have come to this website/forum looking for friendship and guidance along with a bit of support.
i hope here i can learn more about jehovah.
my family is soo against it, and i hope i can gain more knowledge here, for i am thirsty for it.
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Van Gogh
Welcome to the forum Jdarley! I have found this forum a treasure trove for support and information during times when other people are giving you a very hard time for adhering to your conscience and your most personal and sincere beliefs. Just like you. My mother and grandparents were baptized in 1943, and I myself was baptized in 1973 (32 years already, how time flies!). This was during the Second World War, so they were persecuted as well. I'm not sure if you're a big reader, but someone, a very well respected and loving church elder when he was actually a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses!!! - his name is Ray Franz - wrote a very balanced and helpful book that might give you everything you need - all in one. (Mr. Franz was baptized in 1938, was a missionary for over twenty years and actually wrote lots of Watchtowers and other JW books like the bible encyclopedia "Insight in the Scriptures"). After being baptized for over 32 years, in this book I learnt many, many things I never knew, and it really made me grow in knowledge. I truly wished that when I was your age, I would have had access to this great book. Almost all of us here have read it - it's a must. The book is called "Crisis of Conscience" 2004 edition - you can easily order it from Amazon. Please do not alienate yourself from your loving parents Jdarley. Be gentle on them. They are the means by which Jehovah has given you the precious gift of life. They must be so concerned for the well being of their precious daughter. To me, you sound like a sincere and moral young person, so they must be very proud of you! Please respect them for that even if you do not agree with them. Why don't you make a deal with them and try to involve them in your decision-making process? Buy the book together with them and promise to answer each others questions based upon it? Then you decide, and they will at least not feel having been shut out of a decision that they must also feel is very important you. Take very good care of your precious life, Vincent (Hope my formatting wasn't lost again and obliterated my paragraphs again. If so, could you please advise me?)
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Former JWs' First Christmas
by jschwehm inhi gang:.
i thought you guys would find this article interesting:.
http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=6&art_id=31266.
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Van Gogh
Codeblue, Over here we nationally celebrate all Queen's/King's birthday's on the 30th of April, whatever their actual birthday. It's been a tradition ever since the early fifties - it somehow just turned out to be a convenient date: one the first sunny Spring days, just right for exploding into a huge street celebration and to have a huge flea market/garage sale. Of course this is the exact opposite of the reason to celebrate Christmas in the dark days of December, when you want to be inside nice and cozy, and cuddle up to each other with lots of dimmed lights, when you need comfort from the cold. Actually, now I come to think of it, I don't know of ANY active dubs - including elders - who do not indulge in the Dutch 30 April Queen's Day celebrations. But, wait, isn't the fact that Queen's Day is NOT celebrated on her actual birthday the perfect reason for the ever calculating, rationalizing jdub to soothe his/her conscience and actually engage in a bout of idol-worship celebration? Isn't it in fact the case that all those years we've been brainwashed into a distrust toward warm, intimate, personal relationships that the bOrg felt they couldn't get a handle on? My personal experience as 3rd gen jdud is that where all of my extensive family were or still are in, all family relations have completely disintegrated: no regular birthday get-togethers. Personally, I wouldn't actively start celebrating Christmas (at this point in my life). But where has all this supposedly theocratically correct chronology and time/date keeping ever brought me? Not even into a spiritual paradise… On the Service meeting two weeks ago TWENTY minutes of the “local needs” item were reserved for warning us to not light even the tiniest firecracker or eating on of the traditional Dutch New Year’s Eve doughnuts… These doughnuts (wintry weather, so people eat carbohydrates) can be bought on street corners for about two months around New Year’s Eve. But you just cannot have them on the 31st… This was all substantiated with irrefutable historical proof effortlessly lifted from the annals of Babylon. Why are the worldly’s so spiritually blind that they cannot see this for themselves...? But, why have I myself been so blind? Incidentally, I have interrupted my fading process - this was one of the last meetings I ever went to. (Hope I got my formatting right this time.)
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Van Gogh
Actually I'd started fading (after a brief zealous upsurge around 1978 - three years after 1975! - ; a true blue spot of pioneering that alas fell in rocky soil) around 1986 when common intuitive sense somehow seemed to have gotten the better of me because of unbearable boredom when I went to university. Of course, that is when I happened to meet my "worldly" girlfriend as well… but guess what? Around 1994 the guilt trip had again prevailed and I had started to come back! So there I was that memorable 1995-Sunday morning (twenty years after 1975) on the back row of the kingdom hall wondering what this esoteric newspeak in the Pravdatower was all about. I still remember elbowing this guy, sorry bro, on my right side what the **** this exegesis was all about, and between which lines (not having underlined unfortunately hadn't helped me either) I should actually read… As the big spiritual sleep also seemed to have infected deep into this small European bOrg chapter as well, his shoulders seemed to start shrugging almost as on cue. As the judicial committee had lovingly let me back in on the condition of marrying my girlfriend, you can imagine I was in the submit mode. A couple of months later she surprised me by proposing one Sunday morning at 09.00 hours a.m. to accompany me to the meeting. After one of the most imbecile public talks imaginable, she managed to make it through about the first ten minutes of the ensuing Pravdatower when she suddenly got up and left. The sound of the door slamming that must haven woken even the most persevering narcoleptics present initiated the divorce proceedings… Somehow she managed to pick up something that took a third generation zombie like me yet another ten celibate years to sink in. I guess I'll have to give her a call one of these days to ask her how she managed to perform this clairvoyant trick. My head is still spinning…
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Need help! Have you read Randy's books?
by bythesea inhey gang, i have been searching for a way to dent my hubby's mindset on the theology of jws and came across two books by randy watters that i wondered if any of you had found useful.
"refuting jws" and "the truth will set you free".
if any of you have read these i'd appreciate some feedback from you before ordering them.
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Van Gogh
“It is so maddening trying to figure this out.” Why are people still Scientologists, Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists or Islamic fundamentalists? Think about it. From the outside these religions are all just as weird or even more so, but we still keep on thinking we were/are more clever than the others: humility. You're either raised in one of these religions, as many of us were in the bOrg, OR you fall for the sales pitch: It's the first rule of great advertising and good copywriting: You first appeal to a desire or fear (sell to the heart: death, loss, belonging); Then you paint the picture of a promise in someone’s mind (benefits: paradise/eternal life); You have now already sold to the heart, so you have to make your prospect feel good about what it is going to cost him by summing up the features of the product (rationalization) - you have now sold to the head as well; The customary risk reversal or money-back guarantee is the free bible study Now you close the deal (baptism) Now you have compromised yourself and you stay in the dead-end job because you cannot afford to lose the pension plan or you have now joined the wartime army you cannot desert because you’ll get shot (as you will for talking to the enemy: disfellowshipping): All age-old tried and tested mechanisms for social control. In fact the bOrg isn’t really all that special at all. We all wanted to be The Chosen; We all wanted to conform to a group; We all wanted eternal life in paradise, so many of us did not have to worry about getting a life; It was too good to pass up, so we all compromised and looked the other way (and many of us still do) AND DID NOT FOR ALL THOSE YEARS SERIOUSLY INVESTIGATE because if so many others believe(d) all this stuff, then somehow it must have been OK. People (yes, we) tend to want to look the other way, as the population here in the Netherlands did when 110.000 Jews were sent quietly off to their deaths during the Second World War, so the innocent bystanders had to invent the myth of the resistance who sheltered Anne Frank... (and yes, in all fairness, we were sincerely pursuing the meaning of life itself, like an orphan who will set out on a lifelong search for his/her biological parents, identity, as sense of belonging, homecoming, like any other psychologically healthy human being). It is not much different from the system of the German Democratic Republic (see the German movie "Goodbye Lenin"). People always want to be sold - want to be sold lies by politicians. People do it all the time: we did it all the time to ourselves... AND THERE WILL ALWAYS BE OTHERS THAT WILL BE ALL TOO HAPPY TO PERPETUATE THIS BLISSFUL STATE OF IGNORANCE FROM THE TOP DOWN. It's too good an opportunity to pass up for any aspiring elite. And that is why I so admire the whistleblowers who were willing to take all the flack to make a stand for the TRUTH... who's books and research we now have been able to read, so as to spread the underground gospel ourselves in the catacombs of the social surroundings we were forced to trade in for all those who we had to shun out of our lives because they were not susceptible. Healing is to start taking/admitting responsibility - to take charge: We were actors and perpetrators ourselves (except for all the lonely old sisters who sit in the back of the hall – and will be sitting there till their death because they truly have nowhere to go): We constituted the system; We were the bOrg, the abusers... we will have to start to face up and to start forgiving ourselves… but we were still abused.
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14
no more Pin machine in assembly hall
by DannyBloem infirst let me say hi to you all again.. have been away for some time as the new internet polecy in the company i work for, suddenly did not allow people to use the jwd site anymore.
(there is a filter to the sites that are allowed and not.
do not know why jwd was suddenly on the list of blocked sites, probably i did use it too much....).
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Van Gogh
Just for the record: I have heard this particular circuit assembly hall - which has the ambiance of a public swimming pool anyway - being refered to as the "kringatorium". (For all the English-speakers: circuit means "kring" in Dutch - so combine this with the all-pervasive austerity and color scheme reminiscent of a giant crematorium and presto) Theo
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Need help! Have you read Randy's books?
by bythesea inhey gang, i have been searching for a way to dent my hubby's mindset on the theology of jws and came across two books by randy watters that i wondered if any of you had found useful.
"refuting jws" and "the truth will set you free".
if any of you have read these i'd appreciate some feedback from you before ordering them.
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Van Gogh
Thanks for your welcome, you all. I’m tending more and more towards the position of Garybuss (Is this me speaking?); however, I’m not sure they reject the Jewish God or Jesus as savior completely. Let’s not forget that if God and Jesus do not recognize the bOrg, they might just as well see many good actions on the part of some individual members, who, in my opinion, insofar as they practice love for God and Christ, are not misled. I presume you would agree with me that your clear-cut opinions would need to be revealed to bythesea’s husband in a more “progressive way” without “running ahead.” Though we cannot consider ourselves to be members of the WTS anymore, we still need to apply their tactics for a while. Remember, once we were all there ourselves, thinking and acting the same: Patience takes precedence over content here. How could Jehovah's Witnesses be "Christian"? I was always convinced they did so by heeding Jesus’ foremost command by loving their brother in a very technical, though efficient way: By at least not having blood on their hands by killing them through partaking in any military activities… I completely agree with moshe. My dad was herded on the elder-bandwagon from the very start in the early seventies; with 1975 just around the corner he worked his butt off for a couple of years. We never saw him. An intelligent man, without a college degree, it was the only chance for him to be somebody. Paradise would obviously take care of the rest. He took care of the congregation. I can still remember the CO telling us from the platform in 1974 how Armageddon might only be a couple of months away. The CO must have flattered him into going to the neighboring cong for an additional PO term in order to support the infighting body of elders there. It must have been toward the end of 1976 when he suddenly went completely off the rails and started drinking heavily on and off for several years. We all lived in a hell, day after day. You simply knew you could never talk about this to anyone in the cong, let alone the outside world. How could anyone understand our truth? There was nothing more left in him; he simply hadn’t planned the rest of his life (or our lives for that matter), there was no place to go. You can imagine how disfellowshipping him solved the mess for some, especially the second time around. One day in November 1978 my mother couldn’t take anymore, as she jumped from my four-storey bedroom window. She died at the operating table while shouting to please not give her blood. She had come into the “truth” in Nazi-occupied Netherlands, and had for instance been arrested during the door-to-door work (A pioneer my grandfather sheltered did in fact die in a Nazi concentration camp). These hardships, and many more she suffered as a long-time pioneer in the fifties in a poor and war-ravaged country were, however, not enough to afford her with a proper funeral talk: a service was deemed improper for her by the “brothers”. My dad didn’t last long after that. Ridden with excruciating guilt, he died a horrible and lonely death. He too had paid all his dues by properly spending his “tour” in a labor camp for refusing his military service, though at the time he, and his band of brothers, were threatened with disfellowshipment by visiting Brooklyn bro’s for not opting instead for jailtime (is OK now). Dysfunctional social misfits indeed; all of us. Bythesea, what always bugged me was that we are (were) being taught how Jehovah can be anyone’s informal “friend”; like opening a prayer with “sweet Jehovah”. You can somehow just skip Christ and claim to have what Abraham was only rumored in the NT to have. But there he was said to be CALLED a friend of Jehovah. And he was the only one ever in the scriptures. The WT-study a couple of week ago went so far as to construe that Jehovah is in fact humble. Who are we to call our almighty creator humble? Why would we? Christ should be a Christian’s example of humility, and the WTS/GB would be wise to for once follow his example. Will God in fact be humble enough to come down to the level of those who claim to speak in his name by bypassing his scheme? It is interesting how they profess to reject the Trinity, yet still manage to confuse God and Christ. I can imagine your husband feeling threatened as, in your own words, he sees the one basis for your marriage slipping away. Our lives have been so completely orchestrated by the WTS, even the choice of our marriage mates. My parents’ marriage was one that was wrought in the “truth”, and an unhappy one for that matter. If he is truly valuable to you, you yourself will have to practice truly Christian principles of love, understanding, and patience. We are/were part of the bOrg because we sought solace there for our dysfunctional souls in the first place. As he, in is own mind, fled from debauchery, others, like my parents, fled into the bOrg… and debauchery as well… so others, like myself could grow up in a dysfunctional JW-environment. So you should be considerate and careful with the one that is special to you, and you should not add to the WTS-record of wrecked lives and relationships. Of course, you so want your family to know the real truth, but remember, often this search for the real truth is elusive, and dependent on whatever stage we have reached in life, as our own record has undoubtedly shown. Sometimes the real truth turns out to be a very relative thing.
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Need help! Have you read Randy's books?
by bythesea inhey gang, i have been searching for a way to dent my hubby's mindset on the theology of jws and came across two books by randy watters that i wondered if any of you had found useful.
"refuting jws" and "the truth will set you free".
if any of you have read these i'd appreciate some feedback from you before ordering them.
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Van Gogh
Though I still would like to consider myself to be something of a Christian, and still firmly believe in the Creator, I'm afraid I have to concede the remainder of Garybuss's points - notwithstanding the fact that I think I have met - what I believe to be - many true and sincere Christians in the bOrg. M. James Penton's "Apocalypse Delayed" is what recently served as a fair and balanced appetizer for a third generation guilt tripper like myself - but this is a 400-page book, and you must be willing to take the time for it... and be ready for it. What finally pulled me over the edge after this, however, was "CAPTIVES OF A CONCEPT" by Don Cameron. It is short and to the point, and focuses on the main doctrinal bottleneck: The legitimacy of the FD&S - never mind the total bankruptcy of 607 BCE. But if you stick with 607 just for the sake of it, nothing significant could ever have happened in 1919. At this point the house of cards came down for me - it has served as a catalyst to make me completely change beliefs (or a concept) I held sacred all my life... (and for which some people in my immediate family were not only willing to pay with their lives, but actually did - though through utter despair and suicide) within a couple of hours. Only now have I started reading Crisis of Concience (2004). After only fifty pages there's never going to be any way back now. Was I disappointed to find confirmation of something that I remember myself as a little boy wishing to be the case: that I would rather not know this "truth" that was always looming over me? But what will this newfound freedom of conscience bring me when I will have finally finished my fading? Go to: http://www.geocities.com/captives_of_a_concept/index.html or download it immediately from: http://www.reachouttrust.org/pdf/pdfmenu.htm