my first post was a few days ago now, and finally my heart has stopped pounding whenever i log on.. :-).
so, i have been in the truth all my life, 3rd generation witness, never left, never been in trouble, pioneered for years, and am a respected member of my congregation.
at the moment.
The bottom line is that the whole blood issue pivots on the Old Testament (sorry, the Hebrew Scriptures).
If we were to adhere to these ancient Jewish writings, which Jesus clearly said he was replacing, then we:
1. Would not eat bacon and pork products today
2. Would be publicly stoning sinners today
3. Would be making animal sacrifices
... and so on.
what do you think about the reduced time of the public talks?.
i actually find it pleasant, it makes it a lot easier to tolerate some of the boring speakers.
but what about the service.
There is no time for additional info, experiences, illustrations, etc. It is just another step in controlling what is said during the meetings.
Spot on, lrkr.
i find myself in a situation where i need to make employee hiring guidelines for our personnel department.
we are going to have hundreds of positions to fill late this summer in a major corporate merger between our corporation and six others.
there will be several jobs opening in our textbook department using new digital presses and book binding equipment.
Absolutely not.
I would be completely embarrassed to ask for "extra consideration" because my family is or was involved in a cult.
tired of the hypocrisy's post got me thinking ... how many jw "kids" over the age when they should have left home still live with their parents.
i say this because i have many of those in my congregation.
fyi it looks real bad to be a older man (ie 25 and up) scrub laying up at home unless you have a outstanding circumstance i.e.
But something like 99.9% of all children without outstanding disabilities should prepare to move out soon after they turn 18.
No, I'm afraid that's a cultural thing and not a religious thing.
In many places around the world offspring are expected to stay with their parents.
In some mainstream cultures, sons will marry and bring their wives to live at home with the parents. It's a true balance in the "looking after" dynamic - parents look after their kids, after which the grown kids look after their parents.
So I understand that this forum is mainly the US/UK perspective. But this is just a caution that the US/UK way of life is not necessarily the only "correct" way of life.
recently we seem to have had a few different dramas and subsequent fallout on the fourm which i feel has detracted from its purpose.
with this in mind we have decided that we need to bring the forum back on track and as such we will be clamping down on a lot of the aggressive / insulting posts which have begun to become the norm for a few people.
we will also be clamping down on the paranoid assusation type of comments against newbies, if someone joins the fourm and you do not believe everything they post - so what, why do we need to hound them away with shouts of troll and fake etc, just ignore them if you dont beleive them.
Some of what Simon says is good, like not getting too emotionally involved with anonymous people. But Is it only me, or does Simon's post say nothing of substance concerning a change in the administrative policy going forward?
... we have decided that we need to bring the forum back on track and as such we will be clamping down on a lot of the aggressive / insulting posts which have begun to become the norm for a few people.
But not all of? If not, then who will be clamped down on and who won't? I don't mind a tiered policy - some respected posters are aggressive and insulting sometimes, and often they have earned the right to be.
But here "a lot of" is an empty policy.
On the other hand, many of the supposed falsehoods are trivial, unimportant or could be misunderstandings and I fail to see why people get soo emotional about them. Has someone told a lie on the internet and you found them out? Wowee ...
The internet IS real life. Telling a lie on the internet is telling a lie. Telling a lie by email is telling a lie. Telling a lie by IM is telling a lie. Yes wowee.
On another subject, we will no longer be allowing ANY solicitations for donations or funds from the forum without prior consent
Without prior consent? So SOME solicitations will be allowed? I struggle to see the policy here!
we had a guy who used to bang on about natural remedies.. at the doors and meetings he would tell everyone what was wrong with them and what to take to remedy it he even told the brothers of for sell coke at the assemblies.. however there was know remedy for his mental health apart from that he was a fat little porker who looked like you could grow spuds on his teeth and washing wasnt big on his agenda last i heard he joined scientology.. we had 4 sisters in the congro pregnant one nut case confessed to the elders he was father to all of them.. one sister used to attack the po's wife in the kh then stand up through the meeting and abuse at the speaker after that they would call the sike team it wasnt uncommon for her to go door to door at midnight.. last i heard she became a counsellor..
The weirdest ones to me were always the DFed people, one alone, or maybe two, a few seats apart, who would be sitting alone in the back row of every meeting.
Silent. Ignored. But desperate enough to be accepted that they'd accept a year or more of public humiliation.
(And if there were two DFed people, they'd both be ignoring each other, how screwed up is that?)
Firstly, what was it about them that would make them want to punish themselves like that?
And what was it about me and my family that we accepted that this human being could not be talked to?
At the end of the day, any of us that practised shunning were weirdos too.
did you ever get the feeling each time you opened the substantial labia majora of a wt magazine that this was one insatiable brainphomaniac?
and that you never quite had enough to fill it?
That's quite an offensive analogy.
Edited to say that the original poster's analogy is offensive, not subsequent comments.
for me, it was joy.
i was raised in the religion, and i always figured i'd be dying along with 6 billion others because i hated the meetings, the preaching work and the rules, morality and threats of 'jehovah'.
i did not want it to be true.. for others here, finding out it was false was a hard time to go through.. as well as asking which feelings you had at first (joy/sorrow/or add your own) i have a follow up question for those who found it hard- what was it that made the impending deaths of 6 billion people okay for you?
For me there was never an actual "time when I first found out".
Rather, it was a creeping realization that happened over the years, a realization dulled by the routine, by the JW social life with many nice people, by the feel-good moments, and of course by that wonderful in-built "sanity protector" called cognitive dissonance.
It probably started when I was a child, when I couldn't buy into, let alone explain to anyone else, the fragile arguments about why we didn't celebrate birthdays, although other types of anniversaries were fine. Over the years the things I couldn't explain to myself, let alone to others, increased.
It was lots of little things really. An increase in earthquakes being a sign of the end? Why didn't anyone else see that we were merely living in a time with an unprecedented level of monitoring, reporting, and communication of seismic activity?
Reporting of field service hours? Simply not a Christian concept, and I don't recall them even trying to justify that one with a scripture. That just didn't fit with the spirit of Christianity at all.
And so it built, all the little things I couldn't believe, until I simply knew that I didn't agree with the religion I was practising.
Perhaps the biggest "moment" for me was realizing that my having been dunked in water at a convention was not a legal contract with anyone, and that Elders Tom, Dick and Harry had no right to tell me what to do.
The feeling then was one of empowerment, plus the slightly daunting challenge of responsibility for making my own decisions going forward.
has anyone else had a browse of the new study watchtower for april?
what then are valueless things?
thus their words were "a valueless thing.
thanks breakingfree
hey guys,.
my wedding is coming up and i am going to invite my mom and my dad and the rest of my siblings.
how should i react when my recently new regular pioneer mother starts pitching a fit????
Lu, I wish you a truly wonderful day.
Have fun.
Love your husband as hard as you can.
