Jamie, I hope your husband is doing better. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.
neverendingjourney
JoinedPosts by neverendingjourney
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55
Update on Jamiebowers - not sure what to think...
by sd-7 ini just got a call from jamie this afternoon, saying she found her husband in the bathroom, not breathing.
i've not had the chance to speak to her, she left me a voice mail.
but i'm very worried.
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54
Tower of Babel built by Babies!
by Billy the Ex-Bethelite inthe weekly tms bible reading assignment is not read, or not carefully read, by most of the sheeples.
it doesn't really matter, because the consideration of the bible reading material is one of the shortest parts on the meeting with a limited number of comments, and those comments are restricted to less than 30 seconds or you will get counselled.
over and over, the dubs are told to read the bible, yet the organization gives no real encouragement to read the bible by keeping everyone busy in the recruiting work and using relatively few scriptures in their "talks".. why?
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neverendingjourney
This conservative number would be ample to fit the circumstances relating to the tower construction and the dispersal of the peoples
How is assuming that "each post-flood male parent ath the age of 30 were to begin fathering children at the rate of one child every three years, iwth an average of one male child every six years, and continued up until the age of 90" being conservative?
By the way, I've seen Christians defend the 600,000 Jewish men at the time of the Exodus (probably around 2,000,000 total) story with similar arguments. I haven't really given it a whole lot of though, but there's gotta be something they're leaving out.
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To Current Elders or Former Elders I have a question ?
by Pitchess Co-Gen inin the new elder's manuel they said that if you molested someone or been molested than you can't be an elder or a ministerial sevant even if it was before bastism .
i find that to be wrong because i thought when you got basptised than all your sins are forgivin, but thats the case here i guess..
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neverendingjourney
Hi, Jamie. "Unbecoming" is a polite way of putting it...haha.
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To Current Elders or Former Elders I have a question ?
by Pitchess Co-Gen inin the new elder's manuel they said that if you molested someone or been molested than you can't be an elder or a ministerial sevant even if it was before bastism .
i find that to be wrong because i thought when you got basptised than all your sins are forgivin, but thats the case here i guess..
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neverendingjourney
As to your original question, my understanding is that whether or not a man may serve as an MS or elder turns on whether he's a "known" child molester.
Basically, if it happened a long time ago and it's not widely known in the community, and MS or elder can continue serving. However, if it becomes known, then he must be removed. There were secret letters outlining instructions along these lines that are on the board somewhere. The impression you get from reading WT literature is that no molester may serve, but the use of the word "known" opens up a big loop hole, the details of which escape me right now. I'm sure you can find all the info you want by doing a search. Only "known" molesters are banned. Who exactly is an "unknown" molester? That's the key question that's handled at the highest levels of the WT bureaucracy.
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To Current Elders or Former Elders I have a question ?
by Pitchess Co-Gen inin the new elder's manuel they said that if you molested someone or been molested than you can't be an elder or a ministerial sevant even if it was before bastism .
i find that to be wrong because i thought when you got basptised than all your sins are forgivin, but thats the case here i guess..
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neverendingjourney
I find that to be wrong because I thought when you got basptised than all your sins are forgivin, but thats the case here I guess.
It's a long story, but this line of questioning served to open my eyes. From a purely Biblical perspective, I think you're right. Nowhere in the Bible does it say men who have abused children (or who are "known" child abusers) are to be prevented from holding positions of responsibility in the congregation. The Bible DOES say that we are washed from our sins. So, from a Biblical perspective, there should be no reason why such a sin should disqualify a man from serving as MS, or elder. When the WT changed their official policy, it made me realize they were responding to political/legal pressure. They were afraid they were going to get hit with a series of lawsuits similar to the Catholic Church and decided to adjust their doctrine accordingly.
If the WT was God's handpicked religion on Earth, why would it cave to human pressure and legal concerns? It seemed unbecoming of a God's people. Of course, from a practical, non-indoctrinated perspective, it makes complete sense to protect children from people who have demonstrated a perverted tendency to take advantage of them. But common sense didn't matter to me when I was a JW; what the Bible said was ALL that mattered. Jehovah wiping out children in the flood made no sense to me, but it must have been just because that's what God wanted. If God didn't tell us that child molesters were to be permanently banned from serving in the congregations, then men had no place imposing their judgment for the will of God.
That was my thinking at the time. I'm glad I no longer hold those views. Once the indoctrination wore off, I could see the many, many flaws in the organization.
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Challenges Facing the Watchtower Org
by eric356 inive been thinking about the future of the watchtower organization and the challenges it faces in coming decades.
its difficult to address the issue without allowing personal feelings affect the analysis.
many people seem to think that the society will collapse fairly soon, based mostly on the fact that the person dislikes the leadership or cant understand how others can believe the doctrine.
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neverendingjourney
If the GB is truly still in expectation of Jehovah's lifeboat, why the building plans extending to at least 2014?
This is what I was getting at when I was talking about mixed signals coming from WT leadership. Maybe there are 2 or 3 delusional GB members who would stop long-term planning, another 2 or 3 who feel we're in it for the long term and another 2 or 3 who aren't quite sure. On any given matter, the long-term faction might convince the undecideds to go their way, and on another occasion the end-is-near faction wins their support. The bottom line is that we don't know for sure, but policy-decisions have definitely been inconsistent.
We can point to long-term expansion projects and say, "See, the GB is full of money-hungry, evil-geniuses, cynically manipulating JW membership for their own benefit. They don't believe a word of what they're saying." But, if this is true, why does the WT continue to discourage higher education? Why does it encourage its members to work in low-paying jobs? Why doesn't the WT require tithing?
Before somone says it's because they need to have an uneducated membership in order to preserve their power, look at the Mormon Church. Their members are on average more educated than the general US population and they run their own universities. Education has not caused a decline in membership, and it can be argued that their beliefs are more easily disproved that the Watchtowers.
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Challenges Facing the Watchtower Org
by eric356 inive been thinking about the future of the watchtower organization and the challenges it faces in coming decades.
its difficult to address the issue without allowing personal feelings affect the analysis.
many people seem to think that the society will collapse fairly soon, based mostly on the fact that the person dislikes the leadership or cant understand how others can believe the doctrine.
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neverendingjourney
The flaw that plagues a lot of the speculation on this board (in my opinion) is that we tend to view things from a rational perspective of people no longer indoctrinated in the WT belief system. Therefore, we tend to look at things from the vantage point of what "makes sense," or to put it another way, what a rational business/religious organization in a comparable position would do. That's a mistake.
Most signs point to (again, in my opinion) the GB being delusional believers who honestly expect some version of their religious expectations to play out sometime soon. They're waiting on the Jehovah life-boat to come by and fix everything for them. That, of course, isn't going to happen. That's why I tend to think there is a strong possibility of something really goofy happening down the road in the sense of certain GB members getting desperate because the end never came.
Now, there are indeed mixed signals coming from the top. Long gone are the days when Rutherford ruled with an iron-fist and all policy-making authority resided with one individual. It's clear to see that legal/political concerns are driving at least some of the policy decisions. The more you see practical, real-world concerns driving policy/doctrine, the more you can believe that the decision-makers have become more cyincal and pragmatic. I don't see that right now. However, if the more cynical types win control, it's very easy to see an LDS-like mainstreaming movement take foot because it makes practical sense. This would be a path that a rational, non-indoctrinated leadership would make. If the more delusional types win out (think Loesch), however, I think the future really is unpredictable.
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Challenges Facing the Watchtower Org
by eric356 inive been thinking about the future of the watchtower organization and the challenges it faces in coming decades.
its difficult to address the issue without allowing personal feelings affect the analysis.
many people seem to think that the society will collapse fairly soon, based mostly on the fact that the person dislikes the leadership or cant understand how others can believe the doctrine.
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neverendingjourney
Good analysis!
However, you appear to assume that the evolution of the Watchtower movement will be steady and gradual. I don't disagree that this is one way in which matters could play out. Nevertheless, I think there is a good possibility of a tipping-point, game-changing event down the road that could figuratively blow things up. Before you think I'm being unrealistic, allow me to explain.
If we postulate (and I do) that the governing body members believe in the Watchtower organization whole-heartedly, as opposed to being cynical manipulators, let's try to put ourselves in their shoes. Each is clearly more delusional than your average member, as evidenced by their claiming to be anointed despite the strong institutional pressure against such claim. Moreover, they've invested their lives into this belief system. It is becoming quite clear that the current JW belief system has failed. What would we do if we were governing body members? We could keep pretending like nothing's changed, keep repeating the same ol' "the end is right around the corner" mantra, or we could do what the Bible Students did when 1914 didn't pan out: re-invent the religion in significant ways.
Big, significant changes are harder to bring about in Watchtower today because of its rule-by-committee structure. From what we know, 2/3 of the GB must agree on any changes to traditional policies. But, what if you have several strong personalities on the GB who start believing that Jehovah is personally using them to correct something or another in the organization? We can easily see how the seeds of discord can be planted and could potentially lead to power struggles at the highest levels of the organization. If you combine that with an already-weakening faith of the membership in the Western world, and perhaps a decline in membership/donations that serves to create a quasi-panic situation, it's not hard to envision a scenario where significant changes are brought about in the Watchtower organization in a fairly short period of time, perhaps along the lines of what happened at the World Wide Church of God.
Again, I'm not saying this scenario is any more likely than the more gradual scenario you described above. I'm just saying it's a possibility we should consider as well.
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Do you agree to disagree?
by cyberjesus insometimes in many conversations or debates, some people try to end it by saying "i agree to disagree".
if you have an inquisitive mind and critical thinking, are you comfortable disagreeing about factual information?
i am not referring to opinion.
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neverendingjourney
All I've said is that when the time comes (whether through death or Christs second coming) WE will see who is right and who is not. If I'm right, too bad
for you. If your right, then wow...how horrible.
I used to end my conversations with recalcitrant householders in field service in a very similar fashion. It's been so long, I've forgotten my pet scripture in Acts where the apostles say some variation of this. At the time, I thought it was a pretty cold-blooded way to end things, but actually it was acknowledgment of defeat.
I could not conclusively prove my position, nor could I disprove the householder's position. So all I was left with was, "We'll see." It was defeat because I was the one claiming to have truth. Truth, by definition, should be provable. By acknowledging that I could not in fact prove the "truth" I was peddling by any conventional methods, my allegations were proven false. What I was bringing them was opinion, not truth. I wasn't telling people that my position was better than other religious positions; I was preaching "truth." If you can't prove "truth" you're preaching, then you have in fact proven yourself a liar.
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Brotherdan's New Blog
by brotherdan inalthough i know it is not the place to advertise, i just wanted to inform you guys that i am starting a new blog.
i will be updating it at least weekly.
it will be an analysis of older wt publications.. as you'll see in my first post, my intention isn't to "bash" the watchtower, but only to give a critical eye to what was said (good and bad) and how it contributed to the jw culture that we see today.. if anyone is interested, check it out.
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neverendingjourney
Here's to hoping you (or anyone for that matter) is able to succeed in this endeavor. There is a lack of good, dependable information out there on the early history of the Watchtower movement and its leaders. I'd love to read some good biographies about Russell and Rutherford, but I haven't really found any. I'd also like to read a condensed, yet thorough summary of the movement's beliefs and the evolution of same, but I haven't found that either. Most of the material out there, with the notable exception of Ray Franz's works, is quite biased one way or another.
I've come to believe that our former religion is really of interest to mainly two groups of people: JWs and XJWs. JWs, of course, get their history strictly from WT sources. As far as XJWs, most just drift away and don't bother spending too much time really understanding the movement they were a part of. They're either just happy to be free or retain a semblance of an it's-still-the-truth-and-I-might-go-back-one-day mentality. Other XJWs spend a few months (years?) learning about JWism, but eventually most of us get bored or tired of rehashing the same material over and over and decide to leave the past behind. Either way, there doesn't appear to be much of a market for these sorts of materials. I have no idea how many books Ray Franz sold, but I'd imagine his books (being "must reads" for XJWs) represent the "ceiling" of how well material about JWism can perform commercially, which is probably not very well at all. I don't think Ray ever got rich off of his books.
I suppose there is probably some interest in academia, but JWs are notoriously unwilling to cooperate in any way with academic studies of their religion, so maybe any academics or grad students attempting to study JWism simply give up and decide to focus their efforts on other subjects. After all, it's not like JWism is anything more than a slight curiosity to the vast majority of the public, a minor footnote in the history of modern life.
