humbled

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Posts by humbled

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  41

  Circuit Overseer wakes up, packs his bags and leaves!

  by Anony Mous in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i just heard this about a co i knew back in the day before he was even a co. he must be in his mid-late 40's now, my mother told me the story as she knows the family very well (the entire family has gone 'apostate' including several elders, circuit overseers and missionaries - this was an "example" family, always on the stage etc).. he wasn't 'feeling well' so he took time off from his co duties.

  that week he packed his suitcase, told his wife he can't do it anymore and he's leaving, leaves her the car and the house and went to live in a small apartment, bought a small car and a week later got a decent job.. this was very recent so not everybody within the org has heard yet what happened..

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  humbled

  HurraH! I love It. He will hurt for a long time but not forever and ever.

  OMG. Staying in the lie is to burn in a lake of fire.
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  126

  This is my first post

  by Make Lemonade in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  i wanted to express appreciation to the members of this forum.

  there are resources here that are deep.

  like we heard from the stage, "what is your depth and breadth of bible knowledge?

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  humbled

  Welcome! Great to have you on board! It is for many a refuge many of us thought we would never, ever go to.

  Rest easy, friend. We can be a rowdy crowd, but we are careful of the injured that show up here.

  Maeve
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  55

  A medieval question for you, if you believe in god....

  by snare&racket in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  many ancient believers of god used cognition to 'think' their way from belief to atheism.

  what initially seems a silly question to reason over, can actually destroy a whole theology.. here is a question made famous by 'saint' thomas aquinas, believers in a almighty god with unlimited ability, please have a think about this..... the omnipotence paradox:.

  "could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even he could not lift it?

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  humbled

  Snare,

  Poor St. Thomas was stuck with a mind that fed on Aristotle and had to regurgitate it as theology.

  He was caught in the crushing bind of having to accept a popular belief that even the Pope bought into: the Immaculate Conception of Mary

  You know, that idea was not that Jesus was immaculately conceived (that's the Virgin Birth)--He had to swallow that Mary was sactified almost instantaneously after conception so as not to be born with original sin. Most Holy Mother of God.

  There were many that held that she wasn't ever stained by "original sin"-- But Thomas' mind knew that ALL had sinned and needed redemption--that why Jesus had to be born and die, of course. So he had to reconcile the crazy idea that God could work a personal redemption before Jesus died?

  Talk about a mind-%$#&!

  If God could do that in the case of Mary--sort of erase the possibility of her being able to sin in the first place--I wonder why he didn't do the same for Adam and Eve?

  Or, hell--why didn't he do it for everyone else?

  At one point Thomas is said to have remarked of all his theological writings"It is all straw".

  Personally, I think that is the truth.
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  6

  My thoughts while watching Schindler's list movie...

  by NVR2L8 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i'm not a big movie watcher but last night i watched part of schindler's list.

  this was my second attempt to do so because i couldn't watch the whole movie when it first came out.

  again last night i cried at the cruelty of it all and hatred behind the extermination of 6 million people because they were of different origin or had different beliefs.

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  humbled

  NVR2L8,

  Good description of how your heart can teach you what is true if you let it "talk" to your brain.

  Something like this worked on my brain when some of my children just could not believe--really believe---that God was there or( if he was) they just could not find any way to honestly relate to him--even with Jesus leading the way.

  They studied and lived without hypocrisy--our dialogues were as open as could be.

  One girl broke down and I got a counseler to come to the home for her. She was suicidal--having been baptised: her crisis of faith, she knew it well, would cost her mother.

  to know your beloved 16 year-old daughter had stopped on her way home from school, talked to the neighbor about an inability to believe in her religion's god anymore and then curl up on her couch and sob "I going to lose my mother, I'm going to lose my mother." --Until the woman called me and I went to her.

  (She didn't lose me--but if we had not moved out of state soon after this event, I don't know what would have happened. I was, after all one of JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES. The elders were NOT sympathetic, NOT happy that I got her a counselor ASAP . But that is another story.)

  It really was painful to watch a child grow--and sometimes get baptised or sometimes resist it because they had so much respect for the idea of god that they didn't "play" with it. It was so emotionally rending that I did FINALLY let my brain talk to my heart---

  I had to ask myself--would god really destroy a person because in all the integrity of their heart they wouldn't pretend or fake anything. They trying to mask bad behavior. They were people that the WT taught me would die at Armageddon.

  It wasn't just that these were my kids that I couldn't believe they could die at the hands of the God-of-Love. No--it was that I had seen them struggle with faith with honesty as genuine as I had ever had. I had struggled too--and I had come up with the "blessing". How was it that could happen?

  It took time. It did take time. But finally, all the things about WT doctrine and Love came into sharper contrast, polarized and began to break me down--and open me up.

  Yep, it came in sideways and opened me up.

  I hope the same happens to your wife as has happened to you.

  I know it happened to me.

  Maeve

  Added later: As for the theology of it--Here is the seguey to release from the fear of God: If god operates as the WT says he does, then I definitely don't want to live for ever in his world, their world. And having gone that far I went further yet......
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  45

  My Mom is in the hospital

  by JeffT in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my mother broke her hip last week.

  she had an emergency partial replacement surgery friday night.

  we don't know how she did it as we have caregivers with her at all times, she may have fallen while in the bathroom for a few minutes.

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  humbled

  What a peculiar time when a long, happy and helpful of life is coming to an end.

  When it happens as your mother's is happening, there is sadness--but sometimes a celebration of how entirely wonderful that life has been. What a success story that there is so much love in her end. Take care.

  maeve
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  52

  GB's letter regarding UN membership - How Do You Prove Them Wrong?

  by will-be-apostate in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was reading brant jones' experience (published on jwfacts.com).

  i read both letters: the one he wrote to the gb and the one he recieved from them.

  link: http://jwfacts.com/watchtower/experiences/brantjonesunresponse.pdf.

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  humbled

  ADCMS--so even the thin excuse of going to the UN library is without any merit. Why would they join?

  There was something in it for them. But what?
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  12

  What Made U Feel Special As A Jehovah's Witness?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  for me, it was the idea of never dying and living forever.

  plus being a bible scholar.

  lol.

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  humbled

  I liked that they didn't kill people in wars--but they had the strength of conviction to die for the love of their fellow humans and for the love of God.

  It was not as it appeared. Not just that way at all.
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  16

  I just got to play householder!

  by Laika in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was a little nervous and a bit dazed, i think i will do better next time.

  he offered me the memorial invite, i told him i had jw family who would invite me and he got interested and wanted to find out more, so i told him i wasn't interested in the jw religion, he asked why and i said i find it too controlling.

  he thought i was talking about moral rules so started on about how jehovah doesn't want to restrict us 'blah blah', so i pointed out that i meant they're not allowed to read certain materials which is wrong if it's as true as they are confident of.. he then went on about how satan uses false teaching to manipulate us and so we have to be careful of what we read.

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  humbled

  Laika,

  Don't beat yourself up about not staying on track--"before I used my example about the catholic he managed to complain both about the Koran and teen pregnancy".

  look at the wild flight HE was on!

  he sounds a bit flustered and stalling for time to think.

  He'll think about what you said--and may be a bit nervous about it if he's not intrigued.

  maeve
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  17

  A Saturday Knock on the Door & the JWN Forum

  by kepler in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is, of course, a recurrent topic that's made possible whenever a kingdom hall decides to march out on your neighborhood and street.. today it happened again in my neighborhood as a drum up for the memorial observance scheduled for monday the 14th of april.. why christ's passion and death should be observed on a monday of holy week i failed to ask this morning.

  perhaps someone else might like to volunteer, but it seemed just another reason to be sceptical about the whole thing, though hardly ranking with changing ancient chronologies to get jerusalem's temple destruction 2520 years before 1914.. anyway two gentlemen in white shirts and ties greeted me politely enough at my door and presented me with a flyer about an event which they described as momentous.

  they asked me if i had ever intended one and i assented.

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  humbled

  kepler,

  That was delicious: "I observe that you have an awful lot of people WITHIN your organization that are very unhappy with it. Now here's a question for you. Why should I be interested in joining an organization that causes so many people so much grief?"

  Thanks for saying that and asking them that question.

  A real feel-good story. To an XJW, anyway.

  Maeve
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  54

  What was the most rebellious thing you did while you were a devout jw?

  by DuvanMuvan in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was just thinking about how humans being imperfect and satan's influence was the root of everything bad that anyone has ever done.

  well i know that apparently everyone is vulnerable which got me thinking about what "bad" things people have done while they were a jw.

  i'll start it off.

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  humbled

  I was not rebellious. But I did try to do something that I learned was not done--ever---because I was asked by a family friend to participate in a panel discussion as the U.S. prepared to make war with Iraq. He knew I was a JW and he had a group of representatives from various area churches who were to explain their faith's traditions for peace. It was the very subject that had enticed me into a home bible study(and subsequent baptism.)

  I had no idea how rebellious was. Because I lived in an isolated rural situation --no running water and 5 children still at home with their father at that time absent--I could have no IDEA until the panel's organizer called me with some exasperation and concern that he had been receiving emails and messages that I could not possibly be a JW in good standing--certainly a person unfit/unqualified for representing the Society!

  Later I found that it was the sharp eyes on this website that busted me out.

  I learned that though I was to know the Truth and teach the Truth--that no women and only special permits let you say anything about the Truth except in a very narrow setting.

  It was a shit-storm-feeding-frenzy on the board here. And I never knew it til I was "out" and started putting 2+2 together.

  The old s**t-storm thread is on archive here titled: New JW Interfaith Meeting

  It still makes me sick to remember it. My old avatar then was "not a captive" at the time I figured out all the back room drama.

  Maeve

  It's a cult!