Posts by CalebInFloroda

58

Governing body deceiving members on purpose?

by wwjdnwt in

i was born into this religion.

i was a jw for well over 30 years.

i did much research before i had internet, i compared bibles and prayed deeply to help me to know if this was the truth.

CalebInFloroda

@Island Man

I gather you are talking to galaxie and not me since you are quoting the words he directed at me? I actually stated the same you did in reply to his comment earlier...

58

Governing body deceiving members on purpose?

by wwjdnwt in

i was born into this religion.

i was a jw for well over 30 years.

i did much research before i had internet, i compared bibles and prayed deeply to help me to know if this was the truth.

It's hard to say when and exactly how, but yes. They will come crashing down and hard. They will either self-destruct or push somebody too far that will push them back to their doom or they will assimilate to the point that they will become mainstream like the Worldwide Church of God.

This whole child sexual abuse problem is "pushing somebody too far," and it might be that the survivors will "push them back" in such a way that the Watchtower cannot recover. I don't know for sure, but if not them someone else will or one of the other two things will happen.

36

Going to a bad place when i die

by 060702015 in

i've thought and said too much to ever gain jehovahs forgiveness and love if i want to be a christian again.

i made a topic on my unforgivable sin and blaspemy of the holy spirit.. i feel saddness everyday having no relationship with god, no religion and fear of the afterlife.

even when i was kid i feared death and the end of the world.

CalebInFloroda

Part of what you are experiencing is a natural phenomenon. This might sound odd, but you are going through what is called an “identity crisis.”

You might think it is a spiritual crisis, but it isn’t…not exactly. I used to be one of JWs, and now I work in the field of Bible scholarship and translation. It’s been about a couple of decades since I was a part of the Watchtower religion, but I’ve been exactly where you are.

What we believe actually defines what and who we think we are. When this core belief system gets damaged or destroyed, the same thing happens to us. We are who we think we are, and a lot of that has to do with how we understand the world and the universe around us.

When we were Jehovah’s Witnesses we defined everything according to what we were taught. Upon leaving we might step into a vacuum unless we are ready to agree that everything, not just a little bit, but everything we learned from the JWs can’t be relied upon. Even things that might be accurate or true are affected in one way or another by the false doctrines and teachings of the JW religion.

The only way to get through this is to start from scratch.

That means you have to ignore anything and everything you learned from the Watchtower…at least learn not to trust any of it unless you can verify what you learned as a Witness from other sources and people (and person experience).

This means you can’t believe anything about the Bible, religion, other cultures, the world, or even the universe that was taught to you by the JW religion. You have to start all over again. You must take nothing for granted.

You might end up being an atheist, an agnostic, or even choosing a different religion. It sounds like you might feel the need for some spirituality—at least for now, at that’s okay. You can find hope and spiritual answers outside of the Watchtower. You can also learn to live without them and not feel that you are lacking hope or direction—yes, without a religion or spirituality.

But the reason you feel this way now is because you still believe that the only type of hope you can have is the religious one you were exposed to as a JW. That isn’t true. If you really want to understand religion in general, then open yourself to learning and even experiencing them and the people who belong to these other religious traditions. How do Hindus or Muslims deal with life? What kind of hope do Buddhists or Jews have? Is faith an earmark of all religious or spiritual movements?

You might also learn that religion might not hold the answers you seek. You might find that hope and faith are not as important to you in the end. But you can’t get even to this point unless you take the previous steps of letting go of the Watchtower and admitting you weren’t given a real hope or faith or religion as a Witness.

You didn’t really know anything about the Bible or God or Christianity because JWs don’t know any of those things. So you had no real hope to begin with. You were denied a hope, a faith, a religious experience as long as you remained a JW. If you really want one then you need to go find one as very different from the JWs as you possibly can.

Be patient. Don’t give up. You will find things out if you let them work themselves out. There’s an old Jewish adage that states: “Pray as if everything depends on God, but act as if everything depends on you.”

Go ahead, pray, ask God for help. Whether it is God or something else you end up embracing in the end, you will get there. But don’t expect answers to come down from the sky to your lap. Search them out yourself. The end result might not be what you are expecting, but nothing will improve unless you make it improve yourself. (And we will do our best to help you along on your journey, wherever it may take you. You're going to be okay.)

58

Governing body deceiving members on purpose?

by wwjdnwt in

i was born into this religion.

i was a jw for well over 30 years.

i did much research before i had internet, i compared bibles and prayed deeply to help me to know if this was the truth.

CalebInFloroda

@galaxie

i think that is a wise assumption, but I can't say that I know for certain what these men on the GB actually think, plan or feel. I don't have that ability, nor can I offer more than assumptions of my own based on my particular limitations.

58

Governing body deceiving members on purpose?

by wwjdnwt in

i was born into this religion.

i was a jw for well over 30 years.

i did much research before i had internet, i compared bibles and prayed deeply to help me to know if this was the truth.

CalebInFloroda

But my comments are still hypothetical and an opinion. I agree that the truth might be a combination of things and also introduce the possibility that when it finally does come to end that the world will be left with more questions than answers about it all.

58

Governing body deceiving members on purpose?

by wwjdnwt in

i was born into this religion.

i was a jw for well over 30 years.

i did much research before i had internet, i compared bibles and prayed deeply to help me to know if this was the truth.

CalebInFloroda

@galaxie

I generally agree with you, but I hold on to the ideology theory when I realized that the changing details of the religion is also an earmark of ideological groups.

A from of "confirmation bias" and denial create a means of bending or re-interpreting reality when reality starts intruding on ideologies. For instance, prior to the dropping of the atom bombs the belief in kamikaze (the spreading of the worship of the Japanese emperor) was a non-negotiable part of the invasions and war effort of Imperial Japan. But after the war began to turn in favor of their enemies, "new light" suggested that engaging in kamikaze could be limited to the Japanese people only without proving false to it and that the central principle behind kamikaze was the protection and preservation of the emperor and his divine status (it's a little more complex than this, but I am trying not to go so far off the subject and thus I am condensing things).

Japan tried to make peace based on this new interpretation of kamikaze, but the American government demanded full surrender, including that of the emperor. When the Japanese refused the atoms bombs came down. In the eyes of the Japanese the impossible happened: their "gospel," kamikaze, was declared false by the emperor himself when he announced the unconditional surrender of the Japanese on national radio, thus dissolving Shinto from a god-worshipping cult into a shell of mere customs that it has become today.

The central idea behind the Watchtower is really but one: they are the one true religion. If you go back to the 1870s and check their doctrines and practices from back then and compare them to what they are today, you will note that everything has basically changed but that one central view. They are an ideology with an impromptu theology designed to twist and turn every way to preserve the main illusion: that they are the one true religion.

They will disown Jesus and Jehovah before giving up that central belief.

45

Governing Body, painted in a corner, now what?

by Wasanelder Once in

the governing body have painted themselves in a corner, so to speak.

if they acknowledge their response to abuse claims was insensitive, unloving and inadequate they are denying the belief that "god's way" is best and risk losing abuse cases.

if they stick with it and say it is "god's way according to the bible" they will be seen as cult leaders and risk losing abuse cases.

CalebInFloroda

I think the response of the GB would be like an "faithful" JW would be: Ignore the news reports, not even see them but they are likely lies spun by the Devil and his cohorts.

If the GB does respond, they will only do so because they will be dragged into them by authorities. The GB will go then and only then, "kicking and screaming," which will play into their self-prophecy that the nations are attacking them.

This is only a theory, but I predict the GB is on the path taken by David Koresh. The authorities are on to them and they will use this opportunity to make it appear that their prophecies are true and the end is near. I would not be surprised if this is followed by some sort of "self-destruction" on one scale or another.

58

Governing body deceiving members on purpose?

by wwjdnwt in

i was born into this religion.

i was a jw for well over 30 years.

i did much research before i had internet, i compared bibles and prayed deeply to help me to know if this was the truth.

CalebInFloroda

While I strongly agree with others that it is definitely possible that some members of the Governing Body might be purposefully fooling others and even themselves, I think the truth may be a little more frightening.

The Jehovah’s Witness movement is more than a cult. It’s what is known as an ideological movement. Imperial Japan was a state-religion ideology that fueled that country into the devastation that was World War II. ISIS (ISIL) is such an ideological movement too. Nazism is probably the prime and darkest example.

In ideologies while it is often possible that leaders know they are entrapping others, horrifyingly enough the leaders are the biggest drinkers of the Kool-Aid, so to speak.

This means that it is very, very possible that each and every one of the Governing Body truly believes what they teach and that they are the very mouthpiece of Jehovah, directed by Jesus and the holy spirit in all the do.

This is a far more dangerous situation than someone who is fooling others. The People’s Temple under the direction of the infamous Jim Jones is one of the most familiar examples of a leader who took a cult and drowned into his own ideology. To demonstrate the extent that leaders can very much believe the garbage they teach, Jim Jones not only had his followers drink the cyanide-laced fruit drink, he killed himself as well.

When ideologies began to spin out of control—and they all do, because they are not only destructive to the world around them, they are self-destructive—more than a few members begin to act like they did in Jonestown before that mass murder/suicide at the Guyana commune in 1978. People in the commune could see a bad ending on the horizon coming quickly, and they wanted out. This happened before the fall of Nazism, and it even occurred before the two atom bombs were dropped on Imperial Japan.

This is more than a shared coincidence. It’s an earmark of an ideological movement that is spinning out of control because the leadership believes its own twisted tale. This pre-self-destruct warning that is causing people to wake up and want out rarely hits when con-artists are at the helm. If the leadership is just out to take some type of advantage of the followers, the leadership will exit at the first sign of trouble. It is clear that they are not doing that, and that is a sign they are lost in their own web.

The sad thing about such ideologies is that because members believe in them so much, there is no exit strategy for anyone. The organization doesn’t supply one because that would be admitting that it wasn’t “the truth.” And members don’t consider one at any time because that would be a sign that one is doubting—a forbidden train of thought in an ideology.

So members begin to just stay, give up and go through the motions. Ideologies rob people of the ability to know what to do at this point. They are prepared for Armageddon, yes, but they are not prepared for the religion to self-destruct and/or be proven false.

It will not be a pretty sight when the end does come. People associated with ideologies often kill their families and themselves because they cannot cope with the fact that they sheltered themselves from reality and real truths. Others attempt to kill others and cause destruction. Some refuse to accept any truth but the ideology and continue to “drink the Kool-Aid” long after the original group dissolves, even going so far as to attempt to distribute it to others believing they have now been chosen to carry on “the work.”

7

When did things turn from paganism to religious?

by ssn587 in

jw
friends

heard someone mention that certain acts are pagan.

so thinking about it, i surmised that marriage, sex, eating certain things were okay and then after g-d gave the law to moses (supposedly) there was a separation for things, actions etc., that were pagan and otherwise bad.

just wondering what others may think about this.

CalebInFloroda

JWs mistakenly use the term "pagan" when what they really mean is "heathen." Paganism is a religion unto itself and is also the label of the Hellenistic/Roman cults of the first century.

A "heathen" is someone who does not worship the G-d of Abraham and Sarah, and the type of customs and traditions the Watchtower is talking about actually go back to heathen religions.

To illustrate: the names of our months and days of the week come from paganism (mainly Roman paganism), but Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos customs generally come from heathens (Celtic and Native American religions). Halloween is often called pagan by JWs, but in reality it is mostly heathen.

To be honest, unless it comes from the Jewish culture, it is paganism or heathen in origin. Since JWs don't allow the practice of Jewish customs among their members, it itself is pagan/heathen because the terms are generally used from the standpoint of that which qualifies as connected to Jewish, non-Gentile culture.

If you don't walk like a Jew, talk like a Jew, dress like a Jew, eat like a Jew or pray and live like a Jew, you're a Gentile...and if you are religious on top of that, guess what that categorizes you as?

39

Horrible Bosses

by John Aquila in

i just heard this a few minutes ago by a jw friend who is still an elder in my old hall.

the kingdom hall i used to attend and my mom still attends was paid off many years ago and serves about 6 congregations.

one of the english congregations has a lot of financially well of members.

CalebInFloroda

Marvelous, John, just marvelous! If only more had access to you in situations like these!