<!-- .style1 { font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; } .style2 { font-size: 18px; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; color: #005959; } .style3 { font-size: 16px; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; color: #005959; } --> did the societys literature ever make you question or doubt it?think back to when you thought like a jehovahs witness.
do you ever recall when a magazine, book, pamphlet or tract made you start to question .
or doubt the written material?
The Revelation book had many things in it that I questioned. It mentioned many particulars, such as the Anglo/American empire being represented by a sheep with horns, that I would ask myself, "how do they KNOW that?". There are many things like that in the book.
In the broader sense, for many years I had a difficult time reading the literature due to its 7th grade readability.
j
it is a fallacy that the early christians weaved the tale of a dying and rising god-man on the loom of mystery religions.
the idea of the dying-rising god as a parallel to the christian concept of the death and resurrection of christ was popularized by james frazer in the golden bough, first published in 1906. scholar edwin yamauchi (1974; easter: myth, hallucination, or history?
) has observed that, although frazer marshaled many parallels, the foundation was very fragile and has been discredited by a host of scholars since frazers ideas were at the height of their popularity in the 1960s.
Everything is relative?? Surely one can prove whether or not there was or was not a man called Christ who walked the earth 2000 years ago.
I never said everything is relative, you've managed to read into what I said too much. Secondly, there is much debate as to whether Jesus actually existed or not. Do some research.
j
as an elder, i knew a lot of things that happened in the congregation, including "secret sins".
what i also knew was that some persons were quite good at being sneaky----especially the teens.
years after my daughter stopped hanging around certain friends and she was in her 20's, she told me little juicy tidbits of what some of her best friends regularly got away with.
There were lots of things, but the probably the worst was a brother in a neighboring hall who got trying to steal an ATM, (made the news and all). Didn't pull it off. Got nothing more than public reproof.
Oh yeah, while on the theft topic, I thought of another one in a different hall, (even better). A brother that I knew, (I went to college with him actually), quit his IT job and began working for UPS, (never knew why). As it turns out, he began to run some kind of a theft ring, by stealing packeges from UPS, and actually having them dropped off at this elder's business, (for the record, the elder was NOT in on it), and selling them on ebay presumably. Anyway he managed to pull at least one other brother into this thing. The elder whose business these packeges were being dropped off at began to get suspicious when the FBI came to his business, and started questioning him. He proves his innocence, but now UPS brother is in trouble. He gets df'd and goes to jail. The accomplice brother gets private reproof, and no jail.
j
I love to cook, some things I'm better at than others but my faves are:
1. Steaks
2. Chili
3. Wings
4. Anything that can be grilled.
j
alltimejeff got me thinking about this.
he was very ambitious as a young jw, .
things changed as he wised up.
The whole thing is set up as a competition!
Yes. That NEVER sat well with me.
j
it is a fallacy that the early christians weaved the tale of a dying and rising god-man on the loom of mystery religions.
the idea of the dying-rising god as a parallel to the christian concept of the death and resurrection of christ was popularized by james frazer in the golden bough, first published in 1906. scholar edwin yamauchi (1974; easter: myth, hallucination, or history?
) has observed that, although frazer marshaled many parallels, the foundation was very fragile and has been discredited by a host of scholars since frazers ideas were at the height of their popularity in the 1960s.
The terrorists who flew airliners into the World Trade Center were willing to suffer a truly sadistic death (as well as extinguishing the lives of many innocents) because of their religious belief, conviction and attitude of utter certainty.
True. However, although I'm largely agnostic, (in other words I don't "know" anything from a religious standpoint for sure"), I sense, for most Christians, it's not about absolute certainty. That's fundamentalism, (which some are, such as jws), but not the majority. Christianity is mostly based on faith, not certainty, and it certainly can't be proven on purely a rational basis. It also cannot be UN-proven on purely a rational basis.
j
i have been left for about 18 months now and am trying to get 'unindoctrinated' or 'unbrainwashed' or whatever is the correct term is.
but there still exists in me a considerable fear of 'armaggeddon'.
whether the jw teaching of 'armaggeddon' is true or not i am not sure, but such was their very powerful strong mental indoctrination of this event it has left me with what i think will be a permenant fear for the rest of my days.
I must say Grissom, your love just shines through in your comments.
j
<!-- .style1 { font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; } .style2 { font-family: georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 18px; color: #663366; } .style3 { font-family: georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 17px; color: #663366; } --> 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.
I believe that in many cases those of us who manage to escape are the ones who have another of these challenging episodes that forces their hand and makes them re-evaluate. In other words shocked in and shocked out
Precisely. That's what finally did it, for me. However, long before that, experience with people and situations outside of the borg taught me that things were not exactly what the borg taught me they were. So doubts existed before anything monumental took place. It just took a good jolt for me to be brave enough to face them.
j
my story is sub-titled so you can skip ahead to parts that interest you most.. by way of reminder, my posting on "faith in god and the church" is not meant to convert anyone, because i have been out of the preaching business now for 14-years.
i am sharing my views given the questions i get when i do post about belief in god or my association with the catholic church.. why the catholic church?
protestants, especially fundamentalists and evangelicals have a hard spot with the roman catholic church.
Interesting journey, Jim. Still working on mine.
j
when i'm discussing problems i have with the wts with my family they often say well they make mistakes just like the early christians did, they are not perfect.. i try to argue that if you think that way you can go to any christian church and say the same.
but usually they say that compared to other religions the wts makes less mistakes so you should go there.. i know that such reasoning doesn't make sense to me but what is a good response to this?.
Sooner or later every JW experiences an injustice so deep from the the org.or made possible by the org. that they will question whether it is indded God's Organization. THAT"S the moment to take advantage.
True, that is usually the enabler. However, I know of individuals who became inactive over such things, never did any research on the org, and are now back in full swing. It is much harder to convince these folks. They already learned how to live with their cognitive dissonance.
j
