Posts by Anitar

7

The Delusion of Certitude

by IsaacJS2 in

the delusion of certitude pt 1. and how we, the "the lost sheep," help them maintain it.

no one has enough information about the universe to truly know if they have "the truth.

" to me, anyone who claims to have the absolute, ultimate truth of everything is literally claiming to have absolute knowledge.

Good afternoon Isaac and welcome to the board!

I've said many times here before that I believe the ideal witness is one who is mostly unaware that the Watchtower even exists. To them, it's their mother, and you never question your mother. That's how the Watchtower likes them. So as a result, many of those who end up being disfellowshipped are those who believed the JW message the most, those who were the most dedicated ones. They felt their faith was an impregnable shield, just the way Mother wants them to feel, but in their hunger to find all the knowledge of the Watchtower, they unintentionally stumbled upon the REAL TRUTH. At some point along the way, their faith and confidence comes crashing down around them like a house of cards.

My mother is the perfect ideal witness. She bounces out of bed every morning (as much bouncing as she can muster being a handicapped single woman of 60 with slowly decling health), and I've literally heard her proclaim to an empty room, "ah! another day of saving lives! I can't wait!!!"

She's energetic, enthuastic, pushy, arrogant, and unaware of the much more important things that need to be done during the day. She poineeres at least 20 hours a week. She goes to all the meetings, and like every good witness, she knows exactly when to fall asleep. She'll doze off doing her sunday Watchtower and wake up and underline the answer in a hurry as if God is peeking over her shoulder. I often wonder how the message of the good news, God's kingdom rule come to Earth, and the vital importance of the preaching work, can be so sinfully boring. On some level, she knows the elders are using her as bait because it's harder for a stranger to slam the door in the face of a woman in a wheelchair. And just as you said, she loves it. It reaffirms her narrow-minded world view that she is right and the world is wrong. After all, how could it hurt you when it feels so good?

However, the moment you start talking to her about the Watchtower itself, trying to get her to examine their teachings from an objective point of view, her mouth slowly droops open, her eyes glaze over and slide out of focus. When you show her facts, concrete evidence of the endless indescretions of the Watchtower, she goes into zombie mode, spitting out phrases like "we're not the ones who are saying it, the Bible is!"

Suddenly, it's like the Watchtower doesn't exist anymore, yet just five seconds ago she was spouting their teachings as if they were God himself. And then something interesting happens, something that is the final nail in the coffin of our conversation. She shakes her head and a slight smile plays across her face and she gives me the most kind, gentle, pitiful, and revolting look anyone ever gives me. She is pitying me, I'm such a poor fool that I'm rejecting the truth and will be destroyed by God at any second.

I bet you know that look. It's the look you give your favorite pet when he doesn't know he's about to be put to sleep. It's the look you give a six year old child when they don't understand their daddy is going to jail and never coming back. It's the look the person you love gives you when you tell them your feelings for the first time, and you know they want nothing to do with you no matter how nice they let you down. I hate that look more than anything in the world, and my mom gives it to me every single day.

So, I know what you mean by the delusion of certitude. If only the Watchtower weren't so blindly convinced of their own superiority, I would still have a mother today.

Anitar

108

How Far Up The "Ranks" Did You Go In The Organization?

by minimus in

jw
friends

at age 18, i was a regular pioneer.

at 20, a ministerial servant.

at 24 an elder.

Anitar

I remember a few years back when the Mormons came to our door and my mom practically wet herself from excitment at having such enthuastic listeners. After bantering their beliefs back and forth, I meanwhile was trying to keep a straight face, she asked them a rather dumb question.

"How do you all get to be elders in a position of responsibility at such a young age?"

She failed to see the irony that people in her organization were bapitsed at age 12 and 14, became "ministerial servants" by 20, elders by 25, and so on. They can point fingers at my religion until they're blue in the face, which they always do, but at least my priests all have a doctorate in divinity from an accredited academic institution.

I mean no disrespect to the people here, you know I love you all. It just seems crazy to me that the Watchtower convinced so many honest people to put their faith in an organization that holds no academic weight in the outside world at all.

Anitar

26

My Bethel Experience part 4

by new boy in

jw
friends

black thursday september 1972. knorr gathered all the bethel "heavies" and gb to the kh in the 119 building.

the three freds (circuit overseers).............and about 50 brothers.....thats right only 50. the other guys chickened out, they knew it was going to be a blood bath.

i was there with 7 others from the launrdy............... it started out with dan smoally (not even 30 years old and partaking) telling about what max larson (head of the whole factory) told him "there was no way he was one of the anointed!

Anitar

Hey New Boy, when you mentioned Fred Franz's comments, it made me wonder, did you see Raymond Franz at Bethel at all? If you did, did you know him or ever speak to him? Just out of curiousity, what did you think when he published Crisis of Conscience?

Anitar

40

My Bethel experience part II

by new boy in

jw
friends

back to the food..........the saying was "its the best food in the world before they cook it" the coffee was the really bad.

they would take a 55 lb.

bag of good coffee beans and boil the shit out of it.the joke was if anyone could find the guy that made the coffee, and kill him, our production nwould go up and armageddon could finally come.

Anitar

Wow, New Boy, I feel sick after reading this. How can anyone in their right minds think this is God's house? I would rather hang myself than go within 10 feet of that horrible place. I have old ladies in my church that are in their 90's and they're the sweetest people in the world.

I feel sorry for the old guy who didn't get married. What shocked me the most is that he sounded like he knew this organization was all horseshit, and was saying it out loud like it was an accepted fact! Yet he stayed and lived a miserable life until the bitter end. It's so hard to believe for an outsider like me that places like this exist. And to think my mom thinks this place is the most sacred, heavenly place in the world.

By the way, Blondie, were you once a Bethelite too?

Anitar

58

My Bethel experience

by new boy in

jw
friends

because of the length of this, it will be done in two parts.

part 1. i when to bethel march 21,1970. at the time you had to be a pioneer for two years to apply, by the time i left in 1974 they were calling people in who had never pioneered..........average stay was 5 months ( they had signed up for 4 years)..........the reason they left was......well, it was hell.. one of the reasons was, knorr hated bethelites, but he loved the gilead students and why?

because when they screwed up they were thousands of miles away!........just before i got there, they had kicked out over 60!

Anitar

Hi NewBoy. Your story is incredible, and you tell it well. I could talk for hours about the hypocritical Jehovah Witnesses and the closeted gay people at Bethel. I've said to my mom many times that for someone who hates gay people, she sure keeps some strange company.

Instead, I will comment about how you said the food was at Bethel. Forgive my candor, but right now I am laughing my ass off. As a sophmore in college, with several years of grad school ahead of me, I can say that I get the best food in the world. It's basically anything I want, anytime I want. True, I pay for it eventually through my student loans, but I have never been healthier in my life. To all the JW lurkers out there, I advise you to go to college, get the hell away from Bethel, and everything else to do with the Watchtower. The food is great, the people are fun, non-judgemental (not to mention alert and awake), and you don't have to feel like you're a prisoner at Auschwitz. Oh, and there's the added bonus of getting a degree and a decent job.

Anitar

77

Why Can You See Through the Watchtower While Others Cannot?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

why can you see through the watchtower while others cannot?

compared with the six million jehovahs witnesses worldwide the .

so-called apostates are comparatively much smaller.

Anitar

Paisley: Yes, exactly! My mom truly believes that disfellowshipping and shunning is a loving practice. I've been trying to say it for years. She loves to have every thought and word of her's monitered. My dad did it to her while they were married, and now they're divorced and she converted to the borg and she simply replaced one tyrant with another. Very sad, but true.

By the way, I wish you a very big welcome to the board.

Anitar

77

Why Can You See Through the Watchtower While Others Cannot?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

why can you see through the watchtower while others cannot?

compared with the six million jehovahs witnesses worldwide the .

so-called apostates are comparatively much smaller.

Anitar

Robert and TrueOne, welcome to the forum! Those are some pretty incredible stories. Good point about the GB living in Brooklyn and traveling all over the world at other people's expense.

And I was especially shocked at the elder's comment about life at Bethel. I guess people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...

Anitar

77

Why Can You See Through the Watchtower While Others Cannot?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

why can you see through the watchtower while others cannot?

compared with the six million jehovahs witnesses worldwide the .

so-called apostates are comparatively much smaller.

Anitar

Thank you Willyloman, I thought the analogy made perfect sense.

77

Why Can You See Through the Watchtower While Others Cannot?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

why can you see through the watchtower while others cannot?

compared with the six million jehovahs witnesses worldwide the .

so-called apostates are comparatively much smaller.

Anitar

Hi everyone, and a big hi to Mike! I've been absent for a while settling in at my new school, and I thought this was a good thread to come back with.

First of all, excellent question Wanderer. This is a universal topic that applies to many people, not just the Jehovah Witnesses. We were talking about a similar topic this week in my philosophy class. The teacher wrote all the major problems of the world on the board and he ran out of room before we could name them all, which was his intention. He wanted to show us just how many problems there are in the world.

I'll try to explain it like this. Things like poverty, disease, war, intolerance and prejudice have always existed in some form or another in all groups of human life. No one, I repeat no one, is exempt from this. I've heard from the JW songbook how they boast and brag that they are no part of the world and "we don't fit into the the world's perception of society." They think they're better than everyone else when in reality they're much worse. I know, many of you know this already, but let me explain it the way my professor does.

He told us that simply by being college students by choice, that meant we were acknowledging that we don't have all the answers to life and we want to work hard to earn our place in society. That's what true bravery is. The ability to admit you don't know what you're doing, and that you learn from your mistakes. The Watchtower paints a nice pretty picture where they have an answer for everything, but in reality if you join the Watchtower, you are essentially giving up on life. You send a message to the world "I have the truth, everyone else is false, and I'm going to paradise after armageddon." This is a copout on life. This is what Jesus warned us about. It's not even about religion or God, it's about having the courage to say "I'm going to live my own life and think for myself and be a good person, not someone's grunt or pawn."

We live in a very challenging world full of problems that no one has the answer to. People like Jehovah Witnesses offer an escape into their own imaginary world where you hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil, but only if you choose to be deaf, dumb and blind. However, I believe that it's the struggle itself, not the end result, that makes us good people. Anyone can come along and give you a quick fix or an easy way out, but so often it's the journey, not the destination that makes us who we are.

I once explained to my mom how the Watchtower prohibits her from rational thinking and keeps her always busy slaving their works. Her answer to every single criticism was "But I love it so much!" She loves being dominated by these people. She loves how they tell her what to wear, what to eat, what to read, what to say, and what to think. That's just how some people are.

I remember when I was five years old in kindergarten when the entire class was convinced we had cooties. Anyone else remember that? Well, since we were all going to die of cootie infection, or a least miss Saturday morning cartoons, we had to get a cootie shot. But only the cool kids had the cootie shots, and they got them from a mysterious source like an unnamed hospital through a very powerful "doctor." How did we get these cootie shots? Simple. All we had to do was give the cool kids our lunch money and free reign of the monkey bars at recess, and we got the shot. The shot itself was usually just a punch in the shoulder or a poke in the ribs with a pencil, and the cool kids said the effects were invisible, we couldn't feel them, but they assured us with great sincerety that the shot was working and we would surely die without it.

Now everyone reading this, I ask the question: Does this sound familiar at all?

Of course, this scam only lasted a few months before the parents and teachers found out. Maybe something similar happened at your school. My point is, the Watchtower is exactly like the cool kids with the cootie shots. They never seem to explain where they get their medicine, but they assure you that you would die without it. And what about their constant use of fear of armageddon and the grisly death of all your loved ones? Nothing more than an imaginary cootie outbreak.

I hope someday the Witnesses will wise up, get some backbone and dump this worthless cult once and for all. I'm not saying you have to join us, or replace it with another religion, but just do it for yourself. Yes, there are those who see the truth but still stay behind for their loved ones. That is a truly brave act, and I commend them for it. But at what point do you say "enough is enough?"

After all, do you want to spend the rest of your life in fear of cooties?

Anitar

27

The death of the last Jehovah's Witness

by free2beme in

jw
friends

obituary january 13, 2095. .

john mcdonald 1990-2095. the last known jehovah's witness died today, of natural causes at his home in brooklyn ny.

he survived by three children, six grandchildren and two great grand-children.

Anitar

"Watchtower, proclaiming the beauty of sex."

Ha ha ha ha! Good idea with the female Pope too!