Posts by OnTheWayOut

57

Is it common for old men to marry young JW?

by adjusted knowledge in

jw
friends

i left in the 90's and marriage partners were similar in age at my former congregation.

i ran into a former jw friend from my childhood.

i haven't seen him in 15 years.

OnTheWayOut

While I do get that it looks weird for JW elders (or governing body members) to go marrying someone a whole "generation" removed from them, I don't judge such things anymore. Everyone knows what they do it for. We all know why the old geezer would marry considerably younger and we typically know why the young lady does it. I am only disgusted when it seems forced on the lady, coming out of her high school years to "date" some elder/bethelite/connected JW guy who is somewhere between 30 and elderly. Parents will sometimes do this to the daughter they raised at home school who has only housewife-type skills and no good social skills and they think God will smile on them if they marry her off to that special brother so she can pioneer and make babies.

But if she's an established adult, not starving as a pioneer or still living at home and itching to get the hell outta there, more power to the lady who snags a sugar daddy. (Keep in mind that JW standards for sugar daddy are usually just "employed" or drawing "social security") Taking care of a geezer is hard work and she will have to earn the inheritance.

45

Three elders show up "to encourage me" after 10 years!

by Wasanelder Once in

"hey brother wasa, come on back to the meetings.

" (after 10 years) so i respond that the situation with pedophiles is out of hand.

they tell me "we" elders have received tons of training on the subject, its not like it was 10 years ago.

OnTheWayOut

If you don't want to be DF'ed, NEVER meet with 3 elders under any circumstances.

Actually, 2 elders (or even 1 elder and a MS) would be sufficient. I know you can be careful what you say, but with two or three men together, one is bound to take something you say and twist it ever slightly. Later, he will say you said something deserving of a judicial committee and he will say "Didn't he, brothers?"

I stick with "I am fine."

Tons of training- yeah, right. Still- call headquarters and do what they say. Nothing really new in their "tons" of training.

13

Three Types of Attention

by OnTheWayOut in

jw
friends

i am working on a theory here.

please add your thoughts.. when children seek attention from adults, they generally receive three types:.

no attention.

OnTheWayOut

......and I am not really seeking attention by resurrecting a 5 year old thread. I just noticed it, that was all.

13

Three Types of Attention

by OnTheWayOut in

jw
friends

i am working on a theory here.

please add your thoughts.. when children seek attention from adults, they generally receive three types:.

no attention.

OnTheWayOut

I saw this thread in "similar threads" and noticed that I never returned comments. So sorry.

Garyneal, it depends on the tone your thread takes on after you post. If people think it is just a joke, like some used to say they were followers of THOR on this forum, they will agree and get some laughs. But the typical fundamentalist Christian, no matter how strange, usually has a great enough amount of seriousness to it for it to bother someone and make them comment with negative attention.

steve2, thank you for confirming that I am on to something. I have read some philosophy but still haven't gone into reading psychology. It may be an area that fascinates me.

cyberjesus, I think I understand you. You are referring to the actual part of passive "paying attention." I am including the reaction of a parent or person to clarify the difference between an interaction where everyone is enjoying the interaction and one where at least one party is upset during the interaction. I think I am trying to be applying terms in a less literal way. Otherwise, thanks.

serenitynow, as I don't recall 5 years later why I started this thread, I will assume you hit the nail on the head.

cult classic, I think you have the thought exactly right.

zannahdoll, I suppose we can get all literal and I could say there are 3 basic types of reactions we can have when someone is seeking attention: NO reaction, a perceived POSITIVE reaction, and a perceived NEGATIVE reaction. But I hope you can see how that is already bogging us down with a quantity of words and qualifiers. And I hoped it wasn't necessary to say that "NO reaction" on a forum is quite different from keeping yourself from reacting in front of (or near) children who are misbehaving in order to draw attention. A poster on this forum may assume you are reading their comments and ignoring them, but they have no way of knowing that you haven't chosen to skip reading them altogether or that you read them and then refuse to comment.

LongHairGal, thanks for your thoughts. You seem to be in harmony with me on not being so literal and focusing on the thoughts behind the "3 types."

24

"What will I do if I leave Jehovah's Witnesses ?"

by Balaamsass2 in

whenever we visit the board we see a lot of angst among jehovah's witnesses who are just learning the tatt (the truth about the truth).

hey, don't feel bad, we had it at one time ourselves.

"angst means fear or anxiety (anguish is its latinate equivalent, and anxious, anxiety are of similar origin).

OnTheWayOut

Well, first they have to stop assuming that former JW's get up late on Sunday morning because they injected heroine in their veins at the orgy late last night, and that they have to send their sexual partners of both genders on their way home so they can pick up all the bottles and clean up the vomit in their living room, then go buy lottery tickets and cigarettes on the way to the casino, and remember to give thanks to Satan for their high-paying life-draining jobs and miserable greedy families.

Did I forget anything? Somehow, smurfs, blood donations, evolution and cars that are not 4 door sedans or minivans have to come in to play here.

20

Israeli town council cancels Jehovah’s Witnesses event

by Watchtower-Free in

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.652440.

anti-missionary group yad l'achim had claimed christians were planning a 'mass baptism' and launched protest campaign in ra'anana.. the raanana municipality has canceled an event organized by the jehovahs witnesses in israel, concerned that the religious groups meeting would hurt the feelings of the public.

the event, which should have been held saturday in the raanana municipal sports center, was canceled following pressure by the anti-missionary group yad lachim.

OnTheWayOut

The Yad L’Achim claim that “buses all over the country would bring innocent Jews to be baptized on the Sabbath at the Ra’anana municipal sports center” is mostly wrong, but not entirely wrong. No people who happen to get on the bus are going to be baptized unless they went through the process, so "innocent Jews" are not really to be baptized. BUT, the already-processed technically-ETHNIC Jews that get on that bus to go get baptized are being misled about the religion and are "innocent" in some ways.

So knowing what I know, I am not upset at this ruling. Still, the municipality saw that there was going to be trouble. Trouble in Israel is typically not met with signs and media announcements, but with some kind of violence. I don't blame the municipality for attempting to dissuade then cancelling the event. Plus, this is not the United States, so there are no real expectations (despite claims) of something like The First Amendment Rights here.

And Watchtower did itself no favors trying to sneak that high school program in. That cult beats everything. They want to maneuver to violate the principles of laws on religion to benefit themselves, and yet will cry foul when someone else makes a maneuver against them. It's like cheating at cards and someone beats you anyway because they cheat better. How can you really explain and complain about that?

16

They're spying me on facebook

by cookiemaster in

most of you have probably seen the apostasy trial video posted on youtube (and all over social media) recently.

well, there's a "wordly" woman from another country that i had worked with some time ago and she's posted it, tagged me, and asked "wtf?

", knowing i'm a still a jw just for family reasons.

OnTheWayOut

Facebook is a dangerous place. I have absolutely no JW friends. Some have asked, none get chosen. I have many ex-JW friends, but in order to be my friend when I don't personally know you, I have to see that you have some radical ex-JW's already as friends.

Still, there's the backdoor- friends of friends can see something you have commented on sometimes.

I found another backdoor that turned out to be a problem for me. I commented about my wife wanting to go to a JW meeting while we were out of town at my non-JW brother's wedding. Since my wife doesn't read FB and nobody who is close friends of hers reads MY stuff on there, it should have been okay. It wasn't even a regular status update. BUT IT WASN'T OKAY. My non-JW sister follows me and "Liked" my comment and she has this strange habit of saving things she likes on FB on her smartphone as photos. She had literally over 1200 photos on her phone and my comment was one of them. At the wedding reception, she showed a new photo to my wife and walked away for a moment. My wife flipped through hundreds of these photos and stopped at my comment and read it. She was mad about what I said about JW's and her wanting to go to a cult meeting. I couldn't even try explain how this wasn't meant for family but was commented to a hugely anonymous group of former JW's. That just wouldn't help matters.

Anyway, I still post generically against the JW's on FB, but never anything really specific at all. Facebook is just a ticking time bomb for anyone that can't be 100% open all of the time. Watch your back there.

31

Be honest with me "how soon is soon?"

by Sour Grapes in

the witchtower is being more careful now about putting a date.

out there for the beginning of the great tribulation.

they have learned their lesson from 1975. however they sure.

OnTheWayOut

First of all, Watchtower's learning a lesson from 1975 didn't really sink in until the "1914 generation" expired fully in 1995 and they changed the meaning of "generation." Then they learned the lesson more fully when they saw they needed some more imminence put back into the doctrine.

Meetings and prayers where "soon" is mentioned are generally controlled by individual members and not in Watchtower documents anymore. I did notice that they floated the idea of running with Noah's 120-years limit on mankind in a study article before I faded away years ago, but nothing was mentioned in such a way as to directly indicate they were running a new date of 2034. Still, it seemed they were testing the idea and seeing what kind of feedback they might get. I have "heard" that they still do that sometimes- tease or test a thought without directly saying it, to see if they might could say it or if the members have some negative feedback.

I am going to try the "soon we will vacation in Europe" thing with my wife and see how that flies. I really prefer to go in about 14 to 16 years. That's soon enough.

5

$64,000 Questions for "Obedient" Witnesses

by The Searcher in

"if you heard a judge tell a jury not to listen to a single word the accused had to say, what would your reaction be?

" .

"why are you forbidden by the org from hearing a dis-fellowshipped person's side of things?

OnTheWayOut

I am not going to post a bunch of links because it's boring stuff, but experiments show that a jury will not actually disregard testimony because of instructions from the judge. If it was illegally obtained, the information is pertinent to the jury anyway. If it is declared "unreliable," however, a jury will weigh it even more carefully than usual.

So the goal of a lawyer opposed to testimony is to keep it from being heard. Watchtower does this also. And members cooperate because they are not like jurors, but more like mindless followers of this rule. If Watchtower says they should shun, they will shun. Luckily, more and more are waking up, if only on rules like this, and not shunning like they are supposed to. Still, let the DF/DA'ed person start bashing Watchtower instead of just talking family matters and sports, the mindless follower programming will kick in.

I suppose beating this courtroom analogy to death will allow for us to recognize that JW's are not like jurors at all. They are "Witnesses" for Jehovah, meaning they are on the side of Watchtower automatically. So if their lawyer says they are to testify contrary to some other testimony and they are better off not hearing that contrary testimony, they automatically agree.

17

How to be happy flopping whoppers part time while pioneering!

by life is to short in

i was just thinking the other day why is there not service meeting part like my title says.

i mean that would really be helpful to those who totally believe the no collage thing.

since they do not want anyone to have any education why don't they at the very least try to help them to be happy living a life of poverty with service meetings parts, since everyone would be in poverty if they really listened to the fds.. like a part on how not to be upset when anther brother buys a new car parks it two blocks from the hall so as not to get door dings in it and rides all day in your car and does not give you a dime for gas.

OnTheWayOut

I don't think Blondie misunderstood. She was pointing out the double meaning that could be used to make this title ironic.

I think there was a time when they wanted "poor" members to feel happy in their low wages by pioneering and giving a small amount of profit from their literature to the organization. But nowadays, they are just unable to say that donations from members outweighs any profits from literature, so they really want upper middle-class members who feel guilty that they are not pioneering and make up for the guilt with money donations.

If not for that guilt, you wouldn't hear anything about pioneering these days. Let's face it. An elderly pioneer sister, they probably break even on the literature she places and the donations she gets and passes on. Hell, they might even lose a buck or two a month from her. But Joe Lowhours and his family, what with his full-time work and the kids and their illnesses and schoolwork causing them to miss a meeting every month, and Mrs. Lowhours causing them to miss a few more with her Chronic Fatigue, but they turn in 3 or 4 hours a month between them and never fail to drop a hundred in the box each month. That's their ideal members.