oh really.
the boy was six year old when he said he was in heaven with the angels.
now he admit it was made up for attention..
Yeah, I thought it was bogus from the get go. Even if he hadn't made it up, he could simply have been having a lucid dream based on his understanding of what happens when you die. People are so desperate to believe that there is some basis for thinking that they will go to heaven when they die they will believe anything.
I was at a funeral at one of those ugly big box churches and they had it prominently featured in the Book store.
has anyone had success in using this article to convince their family member or spouse that critical research of what the society presents is important to build faith?.
this article has this passage that jumped out at me:.
of course, not all doubt is bad.
The problem is that, for most Jehovah's Witnesses, you can't use reason and logic, because they have been conditioned to think a certain way about these things. Any attempts to show them the obvious contradictions of the Watchtower will cause them to become fearful and shut down the rational part of the brain, and then nothing you say will make any difference.
The religion is full of examples of this kind of hypocrisy. The bible says we should keep testing our faith, but that only applies to people in other religions, Jehovah's Witnesses are trained to never look at anything critical of the Watchtower. This is so deeply ingrained that most Jehovah's Witnesses become fearful at the thought of looking at "apostate literature", as if such could cause them to loose their faith against their will, by its presense. But why? Doesn't "the truth" stand up to scrutiny? If these viewpoints are wrong, they should be easily disproved, so why are they so afraid?
Another example is this statement from their own literature.
"No one should be forced to worship in a way that he finds unacceptable or be made to choose between his beliefs and his family." Awake! 2009 July p.29 (p.28)
But of course that only applies to other religions, not to them. They are happy to convert people from their faiths, but if a former member joins another religion they are apostate and evil and are shunned. But you will not get the average JW to see this contradiction, they have been trained to not see the elephant in the room, for them it doesn't exist, even when it's sitting right next to them and they can smell the peanuts on its breath.
i keep reading that jehovah's witnesses are in effect monsters.
i keep reading that they kinda leave chaos and distrust in their wake.
so i simply wondered if anyone had anything nice to say about them?.
jehovah's witnesses believe that god sent humans to write the bible because his servants can relate better to humans since they are humans.
i heard that at a meeting two weeks ago.
it does not make sense to me at all but i do not know how to explain it.
If God is all powerful, why does he need to use humans to communicate with us? If he created us, shouldn't he know exactly what to say and how to say it so that we completely understood what he wants us to do?
Instead he supposedly used various men who wrote down various contradictory accounts, leaving us with no clear message. This message is so unclear there are hundreds of religions that claim to be following the bible, all different, most claiming to be the only one doing it right.
The God supposedly sent his son to die for us, but the four gospel accounts contradict each other so you don't even know which account, if any, are correct. Then God, after thousands of years of communicating with us, completely stops doing so, but not before leaving us with Revelation, a book of what seems to be drug induced hallucinations, with no explanation as to what it means.
It's so puzzling, it's almost like it's just a bunch of weird stuff some random people just made up.
in 2018, cyprus goes bankrupt (again).
many of its inhabitants, lacking jobs and prospectives of a better future, emigrate to more prosperous countries.
cyprus' society is on the brink of collapse.
I would imagine it would be much like Bethel. A rigid hierarchy based strictly on seniority and who you know. You would be assigned a job, you would have no choice. You would be paid virtually nothing, live in a dorm style room, and eat whatever cheap food was served to you. You medical needs would be paid for, as long as you don't need anything more than an office visit, no hospitalization, scans, surgery or cancer treatment.
You would have no free speech, no civil rights, no legal recourse if another Witness stole from you (can't bring reproach!). If you are a woman you will be a second class citizen, no positions of responsibility. No matter what your age or abilities you would be considered less than a sixteen year old baptized brother. Is your husband beating you? Too bad, he is your husband and head of the family. We're you raped? Too bad, you should have fought harder and you probably brought it on yourself anyway.
Your entertainment would be severely restricted, your quarters will be regularly searched for contraband. Television would consist of g rated movies and old episodes of Matlock. Reading any non Watchtower literature would be discouraged if not banned.
At any time you could be disfellowshipped over anything three elders agree on, there will be no recourse and no appeal. You would lose your job, your housing and all your family and acquaintances. You would have no choice but to leave your country or live as an outcast, with no means of support.
It would be a paradise for child molesters, no police or justice system to worry about. As pedophilia is often swept under the rug they would be free to molest anyone they want, especially if they were an elder or related to one. Who would dare to complain if the elders refuse to do anything?
No thank you.
all i want is this: for us to be a family, to spend time together enjoying life.
i don't wish to debate about their beliefs when together.
they can remain jws for all i care.
Sometimes peace comes with acceptance of things you cannot change. I doubt there is any way to reason with your parents, it's not about logic or reason, your parents are under cult mind control. You cannot counteract thirty years of indoctrination with a conversation or two. They have been trained to be fearful, on a very deep level, if challenged with different viewpoints, especially from former members. Fear like that is very powerful.
Even if you could convince them, I am not sure your parents would be better off, change is hard, especially when you are older, it's a way of life for them. I know that's hard, my mother died while she was shunning me, but I take comfort in the fact that she only did it because she felt she had to.
If you choose to reason with them, you might remind them of this, the July 2009 Awake p29:
“No one should be forced to worship in a way that he finds unacceptable or be made to choose between his beliefs and his family.”
Also, if you consider the scripture used to justify disfellowshipping, you can see it actually is talking about something very different than what is practiced by the Jehovah's Witnesses.
I cor 5:11" actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler-- not even to eat with such a one."
Notice that it talks about someone who is a so-called brother. While that might have applied to you previously, it hardly applies now. It also says nothing about a judicial committee, any formal announcement, or parents shunning children even when they are no longer a part of the congregation. It simply means that if you know a person who pretends to be a Christian, who does these things, you don't talk to them.
"12For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?…"
The intent was obviously to keep the congregation clean, so what purpose does it serve now? What point is there to shun someone who is not even in the congregation anymore? You minght tell them that that many people have committed suicide after being disfellowshipped, and that many people have been disfelowshipped even though they had done nothing wrong. Also many people have repented and attended meetings for months or years but were never reinstated. It is also evident that elders, or the family of elders are treated more eminently that others.
You might remind them of the story of the prodigal son, who was warmly welcomed back, even after many year of a sinful life. His didn't greet him with a judicial committee, he didn't interrogate him, he didn't judge him, he threw his arms around him and had a feast. Also remind them of the story of the adulterous woman, where Jesus said that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone.
wow, what a surprise that was!.
i expected a warm welcome, as this was someone i have known for a very long time.. nope, uber disfellowshipped jw.
totally caught me off guard.
This doesn't surprise me. If you are doing something you believe is wrong and are disfellowshipped, your guilt will be overwhelming and the shunning is very painful, so your focus is on fixing your own issues and getting back in, you are probably not thinking about the faults of the Watchtower.
Is different for those that lost their faith before they got disfellowshipped of course. Also, if you were disfelowshipped in error and didn't actually do anything wrong, that might cause you to start questioning things.
all you have to say is "who says jehovah is not using me right now?
" something to that effect.. if they say you are just a low-life nobody just point out amos nipper of figs.
and if they say "do you think you're a prophet?
If you found a Catholic in service and exhaustively showed him from the Bible all the things that were wrong with the Catholic church, only to have him say "I'm just going to have to wait on Jesus to fix things" what do you day to that?
Are you serious? Does the fact that a Catholic is willing to overlook the faults in his own religion make it right for a Jehovah's Witness to ignore the faults in his own religion?
"The other guy does it too" has never been an excuse, even less so in this case, as the Watchtower has criticised the Catholic church more than any other religion, acting as if they are so much better, the only true and good religion.
so i decided to sign up after many years of lurking.
started researching after finding out about ray franz, which inevitably brought me to this site.. i'm still well and truly inn, but don't want to give any information out, i'm sure you guys know the reasons.. since "jay double you .
org" came online, there has been a definite sense of hysteria with everyone who is "inn", and i get a feeling it's going to get a whole lot crazier as the years press on.. one point i would like to raise is that i feel, without a doubt, that 2034 is going to be the new finish line.
I was reading a book the other day, it was historical fiction, but took place during the time of the Millerites, a group following William Miller. The believed based on some chronology he pulled out of his rear that the end was coming in 1843. People actually didn't bother bringing in the crops or milking the cows, they went up on the roof of their barn and waited for the end. At the end of the night they sheepishly got down and went on with their lives.
The millerites did not give up, they then explained that Christ had come invisibly (sound familiar?) Various factions come up with alternate theories and new dates, one group becoming the Seventh Day adventists, and of course CT Russel browsed heavily from them for his own special end time predictions. The bible states quite cleary that no one knows the day or the hour, so anyone making any prediction is going against the scriptures, but they just keep doing it because fear is useful to manipulate people. The more things change, the more they remain the same. It's a con game that has been going on for a while.
It made me realize that I was just as foolish as those people standing on the roof of their barn. It's hard thing to have to admit you were wrong, but the alternative is to remain in ignorance, afraid to see reality.
i've always been a "spiritual" person.
i've been an avid bible reader since as early as i can remember.
i read the bible cover to cover for the first time when i was about 17 years old and have read it at least twice more since then.
It's a dilemma, one we all have faced. No one can make that decision for you, each person and their circumstances are different. There is a price to be paid no matter what you do, it's hard living a lie, it takes its toll. It's also hard to lose family and friends, the harsh disfellowshiping policies are there to keep people from leaving, being shunned is very painful.
I am glad I left, I would never go back, but that doesn't work for everyone.
