Posts by humbled

42

My best friend died yesterday

by TimeBandit in

jw
friends

sometimes people make special connections to animals.

sometimes they bond very deeply and are real friends.

yesterday was the end of such a friendship that lasted ten wonderful years.

humbled

I know how much you had to love your friend to end his suffering. Nothing says it so well as that. It is amazing to find such friendship and love in the hearts of another creature, isn't it?

Take care,

Maeve

35

JW's and depression

by FeelingFree in

jw
friends

i was wondering how many of you suffered badly with depression when you were in "the truth" and if you feel your depression was related to being part of the organisation?

are you better now you have left or still have issue's?

whatever your experience's i would be very intrested to know (if you feel you can talk about it.).

humbled

I was a cradle Catholic, wandered into the clutches of the Witnesses at 35 years of age.

Catholic guilt and Irish genes, a difficult family situation and the being a JW for 22 years.

Depression? OH YEAH! up-and-down-in-and-out. the only good was reading the gospels without the propaganda attached. all that eventually got me through religion and out.

In and out of counselling when I could afford it--even as a JW. Small spurts without real--like taking an antibiotic for tooshort a time.....

This past month suffered a mental collapse that sent me to a mental health facility. I am having to deal with the aftermath--

-I do recognize the effects of trusting a sky-daddy to write the narrative of your own life. I suffer terribly from overwhelming sadness at the mis-use of the precious time with my children and husband. when I see the strugglesof my children I cannot help but grieve for my mistakes.

JW's suffer certainly from religious distortion of our mental/emotional growth. But other religions can be hazards to us as well.

52

Are first world countries to blame for the bulk of third world squalor?

by tootired2care in

throughout several past threads various posters have emphatically made the point that countries like great britian, united states, france etc.

basically countries where white people exist, are to blame for the poverty in many other third world nations.

some have even went so far as to suggest that the first world is to blame for all third world conditions.. i often see excuses such as these for why a country refuses to provide clean water, some food and basic sanitation for its people:.

humbled

It seems that economic exploitation of poorer nations by richer nations keeps them from being a threat to the powerful nations. If a poorer nation tries to cut free of service then there are pretexts made or else covert actions aken to destabilize them. Rich Man's Club vs. anyone who wants a chance

At the top of it all is greed--not so much patriotism/nationalism. Just money/power/greed setting up shop in the countries that are best able to secure these interests.

The record of the C.I.A. 's operations for the past 60 years gives an idea of what the wealthy and powerful U.S.A. will do to stay on top of the heap. and I personally feel that the rank and file citizen of this nation has been victim more than victor of the Rich Man's Club. If there ever was a "trickle down" effect that benefitted working people then the obscenely wealthy have found the leaks and plugged them up.

42

Lurker no more

by DaleRivers in

jw
friends

hi folks:.

i've been lurking here all summer and i finally decided to take the plunge and join you all.. i'm a single, 53 y/o black woman living in the nyc metro area (usa).

i was brought up around jws:mom's mom, mom and my favorite auntie were all in.

humbled

I was in my late 50's when I figured out I wasn' livin the life--I was livin the lie.

So glad to have you here.

Maeve

46

my first post! (long read sorry in advance)

by Letts Party in

long time lurker, first time poster here finally looking to get some things off my chest.

i've always been a very curious person with tons of questions about everything, and i also care deeply particularly about societal issues like social injustice, racism, and homophobia.

that, coupled with how boneheaded all the elders in my congregation are (except for one), led me to ask even more questions that led me to find ttatt.. .

humbled

Welcome, Letts Party! Sounds like a fairly clear road ahead--compared to some who learned TTATT.

It's good to hear your wife seems to think. Very happy for you both.

Maeve

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

I appreciate the poetry and the universality of your sentiments, kassad84.

It may be pleasant to frame God in this way and feel certain that He will certainly include every suffering soul in the great after-show party, but you have to step out of the orthodoxy of scriptural readings to do it. Many other lofty-minded Christians make remarks such as yours that blythely include the unsaved in eventual happy here-afters. But Classic Christianity does not place the unfaithful/unbelievers in the same heavenly healing station as you describe.

But I am far from complaining-- I am glad to find you so ready to resolve the clear problems in the bible's story of God's power and love.

You see, I too am hopefully inventive. I similarly subscribe to the possibility of a generous spirit or force who promotes love and patches us up from time to time -- but my invisible force is vastly underpowered compared to the need we face on earth. But see here, I don't at all believe a great powerful God had to wrap himself in a man's hide to play at suffering to save us. This is a part of the story you kept, but i don't understand why.

Rather my thoughts run thus:

I believe there was a man, who really was just a man. Just a man wrapped in a man's skin. He was a born-in Jew and he was as sad at God's poor showing as I am. He thought about it as he worked hard making rough furniture and farm implements. He tried hard to fit a kinder version of that God into his religion--much as you and I are doing. He also felt sad for others of the working folk who trafficked around his place. He could see that religion didn't lighten their load either . So he taught simple lessons of how to be loving and enjoy life without religious rules choking your every thought and every action. His betters didn't like the stir he caused. They put a stop to his talk.

So he suffered and died but left a good example of kindness such as: Share with strangers; women needn't fuss too much about kitchen chores and that fish fries are a good thing for a fellow to do for his friends. As well as other more trenchant teachings....

Thus, we too can follow a spirit of love and enjoy life without holding to un-proven stories that would in turn choke our every action. It works very well for the here-and-now, by the way.

But you think it is fine that all-powerful and all-loving God will show his love later on.

Sorry to say that it is a thin story for me to tell the ones whose pain and loss never find a boundary.

Not to sound flippant, but I really think that my story is as good as yours. And I have as much ground to say it has value equal to yours. Because think, kassad84, once you violate the stream of scripture (rejecting unpleasant parts) and promote personal variations--as you did with your idea of universal salvation--then you haven't a leg to stand on for saying you have faith and I do not. And we can equally be fools--only I have a story I not only find more credible than yours but it cann't disappoint me. And it's value is possibly more practical than yours.

The God of the bible is a no-show at present--and you are teetering on a thin edge regarding orthodoxy.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

New Hope,

I am following your fair and melancholy (does that meet with your euphoria?) reflections on the life, suffering and death of all creatures.It is a pertinent branch of this conversation that would be a shame to lose it in a separate thread.

It is my own observation of the animal world in my own life that there is one thing and only one thing to distinguish me as I kill a chicken to eat it and a dog who savages it and perhaps will eat it. It is this: I care how the chicken feels.

Yes, every moment of its life I have been happy for the chicken that it enjoys its life.

From your posts I trust you will not find me disgusting for regarding myself and the dog as different cases.

(And, frankly, I wish that there were a god that were more distinct from the dog than he has shown himself to be. Which perhaps is a thought I need to examine a little more...)

But here is the case for me:

I have seen so much the suffering of animals. When I first came to live with my husband on his farm in the Ozark mountains I could not bear the ways that pain and death overtook creatures in the barnyard and woodland. A stray dog tore through a nest of kittens, a hog waiting for his feed reached sideways to a rooster and munched off shoulder and breast of the bird whose grieving cries were hushed when the hog swallowed his first bite and then ate the rooster's head off. I heard the strange cries a frog makes as it commences its one-way trip into a blacksnake's belly. The plaintive shriek of a young rabbit when the farm dog lays tender flesh bare with a flick of her teeth. Not to mention the torments of innumerable mice and baby birds for the amusement of generations of barn cats. and horrors more than these....

Jesus quoted "Ye are gods..." and yes, there I am. I rule the world of animals around me if, in a haphazard way, with something like consistency. Yes, I kill some.Yet I do care how they feel. I have killed to end pain. And all thee while, within the limits available to me, I try for them to have a good life. And for those destined to feed the family, I go to lengths to provide a sense of security for them. They trust me to look after them--truly. And as the moment arrives for my killing them, for them I take care that they not feel the horror of betrayal, if it is betrayal to be locked in this cycle of life and death with them. Because finally, I will supply their end that will certainly come one way or another--as Heaven above said-- does inevidibly come to every life. But I, I make that end swift and painless.

So that is my case--The dog does not do the same for a chicken. And sadly, he cannot gainsay me.

Obviously it is only fair to say on the dog's behalf that he doesn't have the same resources as I do-- even if he had a disposition toward the chicken as kindly as my own.

But God doesn't have the dog's excuse, does He?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I eat very little meat as the years have gone on. I cannot eat commercial pork because hogs in this country are now raised in such mental suffering that I cannot enjoy their delicious meat as I did formerly.

And I am far from a saint. My failures depress me--but it has served this: to make me all the more suspicious of claims that an all-powerfull all-loving God who supplies no evidence of a concern equal to my own.

Take care, and I am certain that there are many others who appreciate your thoughts in this thread. No wories abot yur spellig--

maeve

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

New hope and happiness,

Ebola is shredding West Africa in a bloody and terrible way. The tsunami devastated countries and obliterated hundred thousands of lives. Large scale suffering makes us broken bugs instead of valuable, beautiful human beings.

It would be a comfort to believe an all-powerful and loving Father/God watches and protects his children. But this thread looks at the comforts the Christian God offered and only finds that promises of his power and love deferred to a time after we suffer and die here on earth. Promises made for the select, or (as religion says) only the "elect".

So what convinces us that God loves us? The God powerful who works miracles?

I was at a funeral two months ago. The priest told the story of Lazarus. "Lord, if you had been here he would not have died!"

This thread amplifies that complaint to the greatest extent possible:

This thread charges that God has failed to live up to his own standards. This charge is based on the established, written qualities that have long defined the God of bible Christians. These describe God as all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful and just. Also, God is Love.

New Hope,

Perhaps we all, as Jgnat says, are grappling with a feeling that this thread doesn't fully allow for the possibility of there being some agent(s) of good in the world of suffering--that there is yet room for faith. Well, words for talking about spiritual things are inadequate, and so I'm not sure if that was any of your concern. It is a concern of mine.

I am at a loss for words before your friends' monstrous suffering. As I am when I see others' grief and suffering. If they had some comfort through faith and feel that God is helping them though their troubles--I will not tell them otherwise. Even though I do not find the explanations for suffering from christian teaching to convince or comfort.

Yet I sense force(s)-- (overworked?), often unavailable, and not all-powerful---that help us on occasion. Like an over-worked medic on a vast field of battle. Many cries for help go out yet many have no help come while some do. I have no better way to express this. How to account for the inconsistency of a benevolence that isn't routinely available when ever one desperately needs help?

What of it, considering the OP?

This thread did help me reason past the God of Christian Theism, Yet the scope of this thread cannot address the experience I -and others-- have of a transient benevolence. Does such a thing comes from within? without? or both? Does love and evil have material force that will be known someday--scientifically!!

Jgnat sorts through the sometimes scrambled ideas that shoot through these discussions and helps tidy the lines of thought. She mentions the need to undersand one another--and open dialogue.

I am here: whatever words I can find to describe my present condition of faith or lack thereof,-- if the idea of love dies with the loss of the bible's God--hope will die with it. Yep, faith, hope and love--and the greatest is love.

Maeve

60

Accuracy of the Revised NWT

by dabster in

i was speaking with a jw yesterday.

i'd previously mentioned the removal of the brackets around 'other' in colossians 1 making the mistranslation complete.

during our chat he said that the previous edition of the nwt was the more correct one, that the revised version was simply more readable and that it shouldn't be considered the best translation.

humbled

Thanks for the response Apog and Bobcat.

I had given only a quick glance back then to a couple of bibles--one a KJ bible-- by way of comparison--I realize now that the sister's emphasis on that scripture eventually prejudiced me against its being an unbiased translation. There were the ocassional sops thrown to sisters, I felt this might be one.

I have no business poking around in this topic--I am so sickened by the distortion and the control that was used on us.

Religion is the creation of scribes.

60

Accuracy of the Revised NWT

by dabster in

i was speaking with a jw yesterday.

i'd previously mentioned the removal of the brackets around 'other' in colossians 1 making the mistranslation complete.

during our chat he said that the previous edition of the nwt was the more correct one, that the revised version was simply more readable and that it shouldn't be considered the best translation.

humbled

Does the new translation still have that very unique translation "Jehovah himself gives the saying; The women telling the good news are a large army." ?

I never saw how this could be translated this way. It seemed to be swept under the rug later but when the pioneer sister came to study with me, well, she seemed to love this verse. It is Psalm 68:11.

Anyone know anything about this verse?