Posts by under

25

My Dearest Gumby

by damselfly in

jw
friends

or should i say gimpy?

it is always a pleasure to see you pop your green & bendy self onto the board.

how's the knee?

Re: Ex-jw from London predicts destruction of WT on 6-6-06 <Message encl.>

by Enlightened1 in

wow, this one really got my attention.

gordon, and ej-jw from across the pond has broadcast his email which is an unequivicating diatribe and prediction of doom for the brooklyn bethel complex on or near the beast day : 6-6-06. well here's his email in it's entirety, feedback is welcome.

i heard the fbi showed up to question him when he visited nyc recently to deliver a warning message to brooklyn headquarters.

under_believer

If you read on the guy's site he even admits to making false prophecies, and says that in doing so, he was FULFILLING PROPHECY, so that false prophecy should make you trust him MORE.
Can't make this stuff up.

38

Overheard in a public library

by under_believer in

jw
friends

when i was a kid, my parents (strong in the truth: father elder, mother regular pioneer) encouraged me to read.

in reality, they could hardly have held me back; i come from a long line of bookworms, including my father.

books were like water.

under_believer

About the missionary sister with Jesus Eyes--
She is still "in the truth." Their health problems have caused them to slow down a lot these days, but they're still around. Never did get back into the ministry work. She still has the eyes.
About Jesus Eyes--
These are a component of the affect that some people get when they become religious. Other symptoms include a flat, peaceful voice, slow physical movements, and face that is expressionless other than the wide eyes and a very slight smile. Not a huge grin, just a closed-mouth smile. I have seen many Witnesses adopt this affect, there are always two or three in every congregation. This also seems more common in movements like Pentecostalism that practice "charismatic services."
Another Jesus Eyes story--a few weeks back I was having lunch at the food court in the local shopping mall. There were two Christian (not JW) women sitting at the next table. They both had some kind of annotated Bible open and were having a Bible study. Both of these women had the Jesus Eyes and the rest of the components of that "peaceful believer" affect. At the end of their study they linked hands in the middle of the table and took turns praying. I am not exaggerating when I say that this praying lasted 10 minutes, in public, in the food court of the mall. One of the women was especially animated, I could see her eyebrows and face expressing great ecstasy and pain during her prayer. When she finished there were tears in her eyes.

38

Overheard in a public library

by under_believer in

jw
friends

when i was a kid, my parents (strong in the truth: father elder, mother regular pioneer) encouraged me to read.

in reality, they could hardly have held me back; i come from a long line of bookworms, including my father.

books were like water.

under_believer

Leolaia--
Man, I thought I was an early intellectual bloomer; I was nothing like that. In the 8th grade my main interests were computer programming, video games, science fiction, and trying (rather unsuccessfully) not to get beat up in school.
If you don't mind my asking (and perhaps you've already answered this in another thead) how were you able to harmonize the truths you were discovering on your own, vis a vis archaeology and the Biblical account, discrepancies in various ethnic chronologies, and conflicting accounts in the Bible (like your example geneologies)? Did you become a more liberal-style Christian? I guess I'm just curious how all that early study affected your faith, especially in the Witnesses and the Society.
Personally, probably through a study of the humanities (via fiction and literature and drama and poetry) and science, rather than archaeology and history, I found myself doubting major portions of the Society's doctrine at a very early age, probably in an organized way around the time I went into middle school, and nebulously before that.
I became adept at suppressing these thoughts, though.

38

Overheard in a public library

by under_believer in

jw
friends

when i was a kid, my parents (strong in the truth: father elder, mother regular pioneer) encouraged me to read.

in reality, they could hardly have held me back; i come from a long line of bookworms, including my father.

books were like water.

under_believer

Leolaia, it shouldn't surprise me, but it does. My God... though from what I understand from reading CoC it's actually among the more scholarly and mainstream of the Society's publications. I wouldn't know--like I said I never used it except for research for talks and whatnot.
Confession--are you KIDDING me? You started on an audiobook version?!?!
The more I post on here the more I realize just how strange the Witness world was (and I was right in the thick of it!)

34

When you receive an ...shepherding visit, why not express appreciation ..?

by jgnat in

"when you receive an encouraging shepherding visit, why not express appreciation for it?

" wt may 1, 2006, p. 21 pp.

sorry for stealing your thunder blondie, but this suggestion really struck home.

under_believer

I have had a few. Shepherding calls are supposed to be neutral and scheduled. They aren't (necessarily) supposed to be in response to a specific misdeed or event, though often they are. I have had some that were just in the normal course of events, and a couple that were specifically because I "screwed up."
The latter one of those I dare not describe, because it would identify me easily to anybody who cared to hunt me down. Someday I will post the whole story on here.
I can tell you about one older one where the dude just SHOWED UP AT MY HOUSE UNANNOUNCED. At like 830pm. I guess another shepherding call had fallen through, and he was all dressed up with no place to go. And what was I going to do? The kids got to stay up late, we made coffee, and the guy "shepherded" us. It basically consisted of the usual mantra of "you have so much talent and potential, won't you please reach out in the congregation?" and me saying "kthxbye."
EDIT: In most cases, no, the elders cannot count time for shepherding calls. Only if the subject is unbaptized.

38

Overheard in a public library

by under_believer in

jw
friends

when i was a kid, my parents (strong in the truth: father elder, mother regular pioneer) encouraged me to read.

in reality, they could hardly have held me back; i come from a long line of bookworms, including my father.

books were like water.

under_believer

When I was a kid, my parents (strong in the truth: father elder, mother regular pioneer) encouraged me to read. In reality, they could hardly have held me back; I come from a long line of bookworms, including my father. Books were like water. Thankfully, even though they were "strong," they still allowed (and even encouraged, on my father's part) me to read secular, non-Witness publications. I read everything--from pages right out of the dictionary, to encyclopedia articles, to treatises on human sexuality (at a young age, too!), to Hardy Boys novels. But my biggest love was, and is, science fiction.
So I spent a lot of time at the library. My mother brought me there every week and I always brought home a huge stack of books, which I'd rip through during the next 7 days and be ready to turn in. She, being the more spiritual-minded of my parents, often worried that I was neglecting personal study and Bible reading, a well-founded fear, actually, because that is exactly what I was doing. I strongly believe that this devotion to reading and exposure to secular material had a lot to do with my gradually developed ability to think for myself.
There was a couple in our hall. They were childless, and were in their early 40's (this would have been in the 80's.) They had served for many, many years as missionaries in Africa. Both of them had malaria from mosquito bites, a disease which you never get rid of--it only goes into remission. They didn't seem like bad folk, though they were hardcore. They were both still serving as regular pioneers (the husband was an elder) and they supported themselves via tentmaking (haha just kidding--it was janitorial.) We had them over for dinner to our house many times and they were well known to us.
One day I was in the library after school. This was after I had gone into middle school, and was I was old enough to walk to the library by myself. I had, as was my custom, a big stack of books. I was still perusing the stacks a bit, but was about to check out and walk home.
The aforementioned pioneer sister was there. I don't know to this day why she was in there; I don't know how she had time to read anything, with her schedule of pioneering, door to door ministry, Bible studies, and housework. Maybe she was there to find ME.
Because she walked up to me, and she said, "what books do you have there?"
"I dunno," I said. Even at this point I was smart enough to keep quiet about secular material, especially stacks of secular material that included Heinlein.
"Seriously, what books do you have?" she said.
I reluctantly showed her. I happened to have Stranger in a Strange land, and believe it or not I still hadn't completely grown out of Hardy Boys. Incongruous choices for a 13 year old, I suppose, but I was long past the age of having my parents vett my reading material.
Even though Stranger was by far the more objectionable book, dealing, as it does, with a homosexual alien Messiah whose followers eat him after he's dead, she zoned in on Dixon. Hardy Boys books, for the uninitiated, are kind of like Scooby Doo, which was actually heavily influenced by them. They would have some creepy supernatural-looking picture on the cover, like a skull or something, but in the end everything would turn out to be Caretaker Jenkins faking ghostly possession to... I dunno, get written into Old Man Withers' will, or something.
I tried to explain this to her, but she wasn't having any of it. She confiscated the book, and looked at me with eyes that showed white all the way around. I since took to calling those eyes the Jesus Eyes. At the time, they just scared the hell out of me.
After staring at me for a few seconds, she said "Have you read the Aid book from cover to cover?" She was referring to the Witnesses' Bible dictionary Aid to Bible Understanding. It has since been replaced by the Insight on the Scriptures book, an almost-identical work with some updated "new light." It was (and is) over 1,600 pages long. Big pages.
I laughed. She didn't. She was serious.
".... Ummmm, no, I haven't. I only use it for research. Have you?"
"Yes, of course I have. I am on my second time through."
I casually put down my stack of books on a nearby shelf and backed away, a little bit. Keep in mind that I was a True Believer at this point--I was definitely one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
"Are you serious? You've read the entire Aid book?"
"Yes, of course. And you should read it too."
The hair rose up on the back of my neck. I backed up a couple more feet. And half-turned. I was prepared at this point to cut my losses, leave my treasures on the shelf, and run for my life.
"Ok, well, see you later," I managed. I couldn't think of anything else to say. I turned my back and started walking.
She called my name as my hand was on the door of the library. I turned and she said "Jehovah sees everything you do, he knows everything you read." This was in public. Other people could hear.
I said, "OK!" and literally ran out the door. I ran all the way home.
The next meeting I looked around during the Watchtower study and she was staring at me with those wide, wide Jesus Eyes.

13

Supernatural experiences

by catbert in

many ex-jw's experience a new found freedom to investigate and question all the things they once felt were true, and may ultimately come to the conclusion that the bible is just a book of stories and take science as their new "religion".

it happened to me...) but a question i have is this: are all supernatural experiences hallucinations?

science would say probably yes.

under_believer

I believe that there is a rational and natural explanation for every supernatural experience.

34

Your personality is IN your Blood!

by gumby in

did you guys know that?

yes-sir -e folks....says right here in jehovahs word...the watchtower.. "using life in harmony with the will of god" .

(watchtower 9/15/1961, pages 564) .

under_believer

This is one of the things that originally made me question the blood doctrine. Not this specifically, but the obvious propoganda. If God actually forbids blood there in Acts, and if they feel that's doctrinally sound, why do they need all the extra stuff about blood they're always throwing out? Why call into question the healthiness of it? Why slander the "corporate blood distribution industry?" Why make up a bunch of obvious pseudoscience? Why keep harping on the risks?
Shouldn't "God has put it off limits, it's sacred" be enough? It's enough for Jewish dietary restrictions, always has been.
I think the reason they do this is that they know it's really shaky, doctrinally, it's a stretch as far as interpretations go, and so they feel the need to put out extra points either to help explain why God did it (BS, it was symbolic for the Jews, not for health reasons) or to give people a little extra incentive to avoid it. Not only does God forbid it and it's sacred, but ALSO.... it's dangerous! And supports corporate fat cats! And might turn you into an evil criminal!

12

Things JW's write: "It is reasonable to conclude"

by under_believer in

jw
friends

question for y'all--do you think that the person on the writing committee who writes something like: "it is reasonable to conclude, then, <wild speculation>" suffers any kind of ill effects?

do they momentarily shudder?

do they even realize what they're doing?

under_believer

I know what it MEANS. But how do you think it makes the person who is writing it FEEL? What does it do to them? What's going through their mind?

under_believer

Posts by under_believer